Well, well, well, what do we have here? June realignment drama, just like last year. In June of 2022, the news broke that USC and UCLA were leaving for the Big Ten. In June of 2023, we have fresh reporting from ESPN’s Pete Thamel which indicates that San Diego State wants to leave the Mountain West.
While the Pac-12 — as of Friday at noon — had not yet extended an offer to the Aztecs to join the conference, everyone in the college sports industry is waiting for that to happen. One very obvious point raised by the San Diego State story is that it puts the spotlight on the Pac-12’s pursuit of a new media rights deal. Have media rights conversations been conducted behind closed doors with the expectation that San Diego State would be part of the conference? Was that the holdup here? Is that why no media rights package has been finalized? Everyone will speculate, but now we wait to see what domino will fall next.
Here’s a sampling of the Twitter reaction to the new reports about San Diego State possibly ushering in a new college sports realignment drama in the middle of the year: