The Pac-12 added 4 MWC teams. Here's what it means for WSU

This morning — less than 12 hours after the news broke on Twitter on Wednesday night — WSU and Oregon State formally announced that they are choosing to retain the brand equity and assets of the Pac-12 to rebuild the conference, and that they have started by adding four schools from the Mountain West: Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State, and Fresno State.

It’s been a wild 24 hours. The frenzy started at about 8:30 p.m. PT yesterday with a story by Yahoo!’s Ross Dellinger describing the broad strokes of the expected deal. Within 30 minutes, the major details were subsequently confirmed by a whole slew of folks, at which point the members-only Slack blew up with thoughts and speculation about what it all means for the Cougs.

Before I get to the direct implications for WSU — because that’s why you subscribe to this particular newsletter — here are the top-line takeaways from the story, in case you don’t want to read all that:

• The rebuilt conference will begin play with the 2026-2027 academic year.

• Two more schools must still be added to meet minimum NCAA conference requirements. No word yet on who that might be, but nothing appears to be imminent.

• Rebuilding the Pac-12 with these four particular schools will be spendy: Each of them will owe the MWC $17 million to leave, while WSU and Oregon State will be on the hook for a total “poaching” penalty fee of about $40 million, per the scheduling agreement with the MWC from last December.

• WSU and OSU are expected to use the Pac-12 assets that were won in court last fall to cover the cost of the penalty and also to help the four joining schools defray at least some of their cost of departing the conference.

• WSU/OSU already have good-faith estimates from industry folks of future revenues from broadcast and sponsorship, which are worth more than the MWC’s current and projected revenues.

• It’s not clear yet exactly what this means for CFP access, although it’s presumed that the conference will be eligible for what amounts to a Group of Six auto bid under the current model.

With that out of the way, let’s get to what this means for WSU.