Just The PNW Schools?
While Stanford and Cal have had minimal interest from the Big Ten, this scenario relies on the Cardinal and Golden Bears to go independent. Stanford can easily do this with its enormous endowment and can get good games with some of its longtime important rivals like USC, UCLA, and Notre Dame.
Cal is in massive debt and getting a media rights deal cut to pieces won’t help them. They could go the same route with Stanford and schedule some “buy games” to get cash. The last sentence seems wrong to say for a Pac-12 team.
They could go to the Big West in other sports and join that league.
The Mountain West would bring in Oregon State and Washington State to have a 14-team football and 13-team basketball league. They’d get a few more bucks and play some new teams.
No Stanford, Hello UTEP or NMSU?
This scenario has the Mountain West getting three of the four with Stanford going out on its own. That gives the Mountain West an odd number of football schools with 15.
However, that could open the door for UTEP or New Mexico State as both are geographically out of place in Conference USA. The Miners have a history with about half of the Mountain West teams when they were in the WAC.
The Aggies, on the other hand, have wandered into many leagues and their only real connection is being a rival to New Mexico.
Neither would be a mind-blowing addition but each school has slowly improved in football and New Mexico State has had good success in basketball.
Wild Card Option
With leagues getting bigger and bigger, perhaps the Mountain West can think a bit differently and add non-football members, like Grand Canyon University.
They could be an option according to Arizona Sports radio host John Gambadoro.
I also heard to keep an eye out for GCU and the Mountain West. That it could be an option if there is a Mountain West-Pac 4 merger.
— John Gambadoro (@Gambo987) August 4, 2023
On our prior website, I advocated for this move for the Antelopes to join the Mountain West. NCAA Tournament credits are a way for leagues that don’t have mega-dollar media rights deal to find some cash on the side by getting to March Madness and winning games.
Grand Canyon has been to the NCAA Tournament in two of the past three years, has a rabid fanbase, and has had six seasons of over 20 wins in just its decade of being a Division I program.
There is no plan for football at this university anytime soon but their hoops upside could be worth it to add them as a basketball-only member and make that side of the conference have an even number of teams.
Whatever the Mountain West decides to do, it has options and they at the very least should be working to get the four Pac-12 schools that are available.
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