Expect more competitive Pac-12 with addition of Mountain West teams | Rushing the Field | NBC Sports

hello and welcome in to rushing the field he's Joshua Perry I'm Nicole arbach we talk about college football from a national standpoint every single week if you like us please subscribe rate and review Us in Joshua there is no better place to start than with actual breaking news that is breaking like as we are starting to record this which is that the Pack 12 is no longer going to be just the pack two they have added four schools for 2026 they're raiding the Mountain West they are adding Boise State Sandy State Fresno State and Colorado State so Joshua this brings them up to six they eventually need to get up to eight by 2026 but big moves from the Pack 12 this is huge right we got a six pack of schools now uh which is important they got to get up to eight though we'll we'll get into that a little bit later I I actually think that you know you start to look at the quality of this and say this can be competitive here we saw what Boise State did last week against Oregon they've been a team that's been prominent over a couple of decades as one of the smaller schools and college football so you certainly love that um Colorado State certainly has a ways to go I think that they can capitalize off of momentum though they get um to an expanded conference it's going to have some more eyeballs a little bit more pull and uh the Colorado population just as a whole is blowing up and I kind of look at that as maybe the high school quality gets better the instate recruiting can be better for the Colorado schools San Diego State again has played good ball and then we we see Fresno State as one of those teams that's really competitive too so I think this is actually a great place to start it's also really interesting you got all the the state schools that are in the Pack 12 now so um maybe as they look to to add to to get to at least eight they start to find the trend there as well yeah it is easy to remember every single school has state in their name so that is easy to remember with the new six um it's also a couple other details worth pointing out so they will join July 1st 2026 this was just announced by the league and about by all the schools so all the applications have been approved this is how it's going to work um and that the six of these schools are going to figure out those final two or more members together um there's no real Rush on that now that they have the six it is going to cost Joshua $110 million for these schools to get out of the Mountain West and for the Pack 12 to pay the Mountain West because if you remember they had this agreement a scheduling agreement for one year it had all sorts of financial penalties to try to avoid honestly this exact situation from happening it would have been a lot cheaper if the Pack 12 just absorbed the entire Mountain West but they didn't want to do that they wanted to add the four most valuable schools and then decide on the rest later if they want to add a UNLV or Air Force or somebody else later of course they're going to want to come because clearly this is the league that you want to be in this is going to be a lot more valuable than the Mountain West so the Pack 12 has been like hoarding its resources it has you know its War chest from settlement with the outgoing 10 schools um contracts like the Rose Bowl the cfp Teresa gold bought for more money in the new expanded cfp deal so there were a lot of reasons why the Pack 12 was trying to see how valuable it was how much money it had and one of those things was to potentially be able to pay for something like this yeah and and it was really smart and I know that there were a lot of jokes made about the pack two uh throughout the off season and and kind of getting left behind but the idea that they were able to stack resources and and have a war chest available for this exact thing is big and to your point it makes sense to not absorb all of those teams right like you're trying to build the highest quality conference because you want to be able to go to networks and say on a game by- game basis we're actually GNA have a product that people are going to want to watch week in and week out they're not going to be a bunch of Duds that you have to consume just to get some of the top matchups to the conference so I think it's really good and now to your point they are going to be in a a a choosing scenario moving forward for those last couple of schools which I think really sets up for them where would you go would you go with other pack uh Mountain West schools or would you maybe go for like take shots at the AAC you could go for like UTSA or north Texas Tain you could go for Memphis like how would you approach this if you're trying to fill those those last spots no I think going for some of the AAC schools would be a really good move you mentioned uh UTSA I think they would be a really good one I think the arrows pointing up on them same thing like Tain and Memphis have have been schools that have done a really good job there North Texas is a school that's made some noise in the last couple years I think those would all be great moves I think UNLV is one that makes a ton of sense there and again just kind of looking at um you know demographics population shifts Etc people like Nevada because of the low taxes and so I think the high school football there um you've got Gorman a lot of those guys are National recruits but you start to look at the quality of high school football and potentially recruiting grounds and building programs I think that can make sense down the line the other one that that has popped into my head and just don't know because they just made a move but like Callen Stanford you can stay on the west coast it be a lot easier travel-wise like I know that um for for those schools they probably want to be around more prominent Brands and and especially for uh some of the the non-revenue sports I think being in the the ACC makes more sense to them but um it's expensive that is expensive Endeavor that they got into with all the travel that's required and I think um you know a hard push at those two schools make a lot of sense yeah I mean I think with that you probably are just monitoring because of contractual agreements I'm sure it would be very difficult for them to get out of the ACC but listen part of the pack 12's pack 2's plan here was to wait this out see what the landscape looks like see what changes and it's very possible maybe even after one year maybe you're hoping that Sanford and Cal realiz I with their reduced shares in the ACC all the travel costs that it's just not worth it and you want to come home back with two of the members of the Pack 12 that you were just with with this more Regional league and we're thinking about a world where I know we don't talk you know in the weeds all the time but like the house settlement is going to be very expensive people are going to be spending you know they can spend up to $23 million paying players directly year-over year you're going to have to find ways to save money and Regional scheduling is one of the ways to do that so I actually really like that this is going to this is a league right now again you could add to Lan or Memphis and that kind of throws a little wrench into this but it it does have some you know Regional ties and relationships and things that make a lot of sense from a college conference standpoint that we honestly don't always see these days because we have now have these Coast to Coast leagues I wanted to ask you a question now um if you know say Pack 12 they get their eight teams are they will they be a power conference or or would they be like the group of six now uh as a as the pack the new packed Club yeah it's a great question um so basically there's two different ways that you would identify a league so the eight minimum members is an NCAA thing so part of what started like power conferences in the first place was NCAA governance reasons like autonomy when you hear people talk about that that's what they're talking about um so the Pack 12 did lose autonomy status and is not being treated as the same as the Big 10 SEC ACC and the Pack 12 and then we just went through negotiations for the expanded college football playoff the new contract that starts in 26 they are not being treated the same as the big boys we also know that the SEC and the Big 10 are going to be taking more money than even ACC and uh Big 12 but they're also not in the same category as the group of five conferences because again they were two members um and they were fighting for more because they were originally being treated you know more towards like what an independent with like a UMass Yukon situation um so now maybe you adjust some of that I mean I think there is um you know there there's going to be a push for this but honestly I think the way that you look at it is like they' probably be treated similarly to how they are at the Mountain West um where you're kind of fighting for that group of five spot um which I again I think makes a lot of sense and obviously they're going to want to push for more respect and more governance power and things like that but you know you can only do what you can do at this point you're a smaller league and it is predominantly Mountain West teams right now so we we'll have to see we'll see what they what they do but listen they were they thought it was really really important to keep the Pack 12 brand to keep the assets but the name like the the respect and all the things that come with that I think is is is going to help them as they try to continue to gain respect and not just be considered you know a Mountain West like reverse merger one other thing I'll say Joshua because we've got the apple cup on peacock you've got the apple cup this weekend you've got Oregon Oregon State this weekend I don't think the timing of this announcement is an accident two days before you have these games where the entire narrative would have been oh poor Oregon State poor Washington State left behind by their instate Rivals and now you have this entirely new Narrative of them being aggressive um poaching big brands from the Mountain West a and look at the like the future is brighter than it's been at any point in the last year and and I still think going into this weekend they get to leverage the idea that they were left behind too so they get the best of both worlds right like there's a reality now that this is a u a situation that looks more and more viable by the day which is huge for them but um as they their teams prepare to play in these games they get to be like oh man they you know they disrespected us they don't like us they left us behind and frankly um you know Oregon looks more Gable than you thought that they would Washington I think has played some good Ball but like we're still trying to figure out what their transition from kin de boore to Jed fish is and roster turnover and all that kind of stuff like it's a it's a it feels like a little bit of spooky season as we head into these big rivalry games that used to be like the conference match up and they're not yeah and listen playing a Coralis is difficult there is going to be a lot of extra emotion in these games like it is a fascinating week to have these matchups so early in the season but we were going to learn some things and again there's this whole different narrative as a backdrop for these games now that the Pack 2 is turning into the six-pack I would just like to say what I would do is definitely handicap the AAC that would be my strategy yes um I would try to because if you handicap the AAC a this is all about Supremacy conference Supremacy so you want to be the premier group of five program you want to be above everyone else but you also like what if the ACC needs to back fill what if they lose some Schools they're going to be looking at teams like in the AAC so you're essentially like preemptively guarding against that as well so that's the strategy I would take although again you're if Sanford and Cal become available become interested like yes you reite you try to do something like that but um that's what I would do and so this is going to be really fascinating they have a lot of time they just have to do this by July 2026 um and again everyone in the Mountain West is going to want to come they're all going to be making calls trying to get into this new pack 12 um but again I think they're going to have some options and we'll see what the media value is who's interested you've got new players like the CW like ion like TNT Sports getting in the mix already for college football rights so we'll continue to track on all of that um it was breaking news this just became official on Thursday morning as we were recording so we wanted to make sure uh that we started with that for the ticket stub which is our point of entry into the pod