SAN DIEGO — How about a Pac-11?
George Kliavkoff, commissioner of the Pac-12 (and soon to be Pac-10), spoke publicly Friday for the first time since UCLA and USC announced their 2024 defection to a conference based in Chicago with a member school 10 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Just minutes into his opening remarks at football media day a few miles from their Los Angeles campuses, he noted that "we are actively exploring expansion opportunities."
He outlined four criteria: media rights value, competitive strength, academic fit and geography.
He declined to discuss specific expansion targets, but he didn't have to. San Diego State doesn't check all four boxes — its TV numbers aren't eye-popping and its academics, though improving, are not yet on par with the top of the conference — but it checks enough of them to clearly separate from college football's next echelon. It also happens to be the only one situated in Southern California, offering the geography component Kliavkoff identified as vital "from a recruiting and student-athlete experience standpoint."
A sparkling new football stadium, a 7-2 record against the Pac-12 since 2016, a Top 25 men's basketball program, the nation's 27th largest TV market, the Mountain West's largest athletic budget, plans to grow undergraduate enrollment to 50,000 and become the flagship campus of the California State University system … all that positions SDSU as the most viable expansion candidate if the West Coast's premier conference is so inclined.
Another plus: leverage.
SDSU is in regular contact with the Big 12, and the Pac-12 knows it. If we learned anything from Kliavkoff's sometimes acerbic comments, it's that the Pac-12 and Big 12 are suddenly adversaries in the race for relevance, and one might poach the Aztecs just to spite the other.
When any of this might happen, we don't know. It likely won't be for months, maybe not until Christmas, maybe longer. First the Big Ten must finalize its new media rights deal, then the Pac-12 will see what networks and digital companies are interested — and how that pencils out if they stay at 10 or expand.
Two caveats:
1. The Pac-12 doesn't control its destiny. The Big Ten does. The latter could dismember the former with phone calls to the Northwest and Bay Area, sending the panicked Four Corners schools (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah) to the safe harbor of the Big 12 and leaving the scraps (Oregon State and Washington State) for the Mountain West.
2. Even if the Pac-12 sticks together, presidents and chancellors — not coaches and athletic directors — are the ultimate arbiters of expansion, and they fashion themselves as bastions of academia. Nine of the current 12 members belong to the elite, 65-school Association of American Universities and all are classified as R1 "doctoral" research institutions; SDSU is neither, although it is moving toward R1 status.
But let's leave that aside for the moment and assume Pac-12 presidents want strength in numbers. SDSU's biggest problem in that scenario might not be its own shortcomings but those of any expansion partner.
And they'd need an expansion partner, right?
History says so, at least. All the power conferences operate in neat, even numbers and typically have expanded in multiples of twos. The SEC is adding Texas and Oklahoma to get to 16. The Big 12, after dropping to eight, will add four: BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston. The Big Ten is adding UCLA and USC to its current 14.
So the Pac-12 would take the Aztecs and ... who?
Boise State
The Broncos were always considered the obvious choice, given their on-field success. But they are 15 years removed from their signature moment — beating Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl on the famed Statue of Liberty play — and 11 years from their last season-ending top 10 ranking. They haven't won a bowl since 2017 and have won only two Mountain West championships since 2015.
And wins and losses mean less these days than other criteria. There's the matter of the 101st TV market and the 38th most populous state (1.4 million less than San Diego County), plus a relatively young university that is still maturing academically. In many ways, Boise State is what SDSU was 20 years ago — trending up but not there yet. US News and World Report clumps it with other national universities ranked between 299 and 391, and it has a 77% acceptance rate. (SDSU is 148th and 37%).
Fresno State
The Bulldogs have tried to position themselves as a viable partner to their CSU brethren, claiming the Central Valley from Sacramento to Bakersfield would be a top 15 TV market (the Fresno-Visalia market by itself is 55th). But the athletic infrastructure is crumbling and ranks near the bottom of the Mountain West, and the academics lag behind SDSU — 213th in US News with a 90% acceptance rate.
UNLV
The sleeper. The Rebels stink in football, but the infrastructure has been upgraded, with a $35 million football center on campus and home games at $1.9 billion Allegiant Stadium. The basketball program has a practice facility rivaling anything in power conferences and an NCAA championship banner hanging from the rafters of its 18,000-seat arena.
Beyond that, Las Vegas is suddenly America's hottest sports destination, with NFL and NHL teams already there and talk of NBA, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer. Boosters have the kind of juice to keep pace with the NIL arms race. And with attitudes softening toward sports gambling, it is viewed as a lucrative future revenue stream for athletic departments.
A law school and medical school help boost the academic reputation (249th by US News and an 81% acceptance rate), but the oversaturation of the nation's 40th TV market may be too large of a hurdle. The Pac-12 already has a Las Vegas presence with its football championship game and conference basketball tournaments, so why add a member school?
SMU
The private university in Dallas clears the academic bar, but it is a non-factor in the Dallas market and would bring a church-linked school (the M stands for Methodist) to a conference of large, mostly public institutions. It also means adding a single member in the Central time zone, creating travel and logistical issues.
Which leaves …
Gonzaga
Gonzaga?
Yes, Gonzaga. Several insiders quietly tab the Bulldogs as the ideal expansion partner for SDSU, mismatched as they might seem.
It's a Jesuit university in Spokane, Wash., that doesn't play football, and basketball is a relatively modest piece of the media rights puzzle. But Gonzaga brings a national profile from its basketball success, has strong academics and would create the perception that the Pac-12 is being proactive and progressive amid the shifting sands of conference realignment — that it's at least trying to do something. The Bulldogs, you'd think, would also come for a significantly reduced share without a football interest.
That still leaves a Pac-11 in football.
To which the conference would say: So what?
Kliavkoff might have provided a clue about their intentions in his opening remarks Friday. He cryptically boasted that the Pac-12 "led the effort" last spring to change an NCAA rule requiring football conferences to have divisions that determine who plays in its championship game. Now you just pick your two best teams. No need for divisions, no need for even numbers.
That's better math for San Diego State. Now we wait to see if it adds up.
