Pac-12 to add four school to WSU’s and OSU’s conference

PULLMAN — Anne McCoy’s watch wouldn’t stop buzzing.

Washington State’s athletic director was at a donor dinner Wednesday evening in Seattle, the site of this weekend’s nonconference Apple Cup, when she started to get a flood of texts.

“I think at first, you hold your breath and you’re like, ‘Oh, no, this is definitely news,’ ” McCoy said. “But is it good news or bad news?”

It was certainly good news for McCoy and the Pac-12, which had just accepted the applications of four Mountain West Conference schools: Boise State, Fresno State, Colorado State and San Diego State, which will join the Pac-12 in time for the 2026-27 academic year, signaling that WSU and Oregon State have decided to rebuild the conference.

The Pac-12 now stands at six schools, meaning conference commissioner Teresa Gould will need to add at least two more to make eight, the minimum number to compete as an FBS conference, per NCAA requirements. Some schools might make more sense than others — Memphis, Tulane and UTSA have been floated as possibilities — but to McCoy and WSU, it’s a step in the right direction.

Mostly, McCoy said, it provides stability for WSU, which had been stuck in limbo for more than a full calendar year. Since last August, when the 10 departing Pac-12 schools left WSU and Oregon State behind, the conference holdovers struck a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West to secure games for their 2024 schedules.

They also landed a deal with the CW to broadcast their games on national television.

But in terms of finding a permanent conference home, there was nothing concrete for the Cougars and Beavers, whose athletic programs were operating with unknowns. That was even true earlier this month, when the Sept. 1 deadline for the Pac-12 and Mountain West to extend their scheduling agreement came and went. Those have been put to rest.

“I think just really knowing what that looks like helps us, strategically, identify our priorities to help our coaches, our student-athletes,” McCoy said. “I think there’s no downside to knowing more about that piece going forward, because at the end of the day Washington State and Oregon State not only needed a home — but the right home.”

WSU and OSU will need to complete a conference of at least eight schools by summer 2026, the end of the two-year grace period allowed by the NCAA that the two schools are using .

The conference has no timeline or set number of schools to add in mind, McCoy said, only placing a priority on making sure additions are the right fit.

“We all were very compatible, I think, as you think about the investments these four schools have made in their programs,” McCoy said of the four new schools, “and then looking at the additional schools: Is there academic fit, competitive fit, financial fit? All of those things have to go into it. At this point, I think anything is on the table, and I think it should be in this day and age.”

Also a priority for McCoy, Gould and OSU Athletic Director Scott Barnes is resecuring an automatic bid to the College Football Playoff. In the wake of the Pac-12’s collapse last summer, the format changed from 6+6 (auto-bids to the six highest-ranked conference champions and six at-large bids) to 5+7, which grants bids to the five highest-ranked conference champions and seven at-large bids.

By summer 2026, when officials plan to have filled out the new Pac-12, it’s unclear if the conference will have access to an automatic bid, but it’s on the to-do list for the conference.

“That is absolutely a priority, for sure, going forward,” McCoy said. “When the four schools are competing in the Pac-12 Conference, and then the six schools, and then hopefully the eight or 10 schools, however many the Pac-12 lands on, that’ll be extremely important, for sure.”

The news comes just a couple of days before WSU plays rival UW at the Seattle Seahawks’ Lumen Field, the same day Oregon State hosts rival Oregon. That timing, McCoy said, was not on purpose — “it just happened to work out that way,” she said. “I will say, though, it’s a nice byproduct that it happens to be this week.”

As a result of the development, the Cougars may be no closer to completing their 2025 football schedule, which has five games, at least not publicly. But it’s a step forward for WSU, which is valuable for the stability and certainty it provides. McCoy also sees it as the right step.

“We’ve talked about needing to be both aggressive and patient at the same time, and I think the Pac-12 will continue that mindset of not rushing for the sake of rushing,” McCoy said. “But if there is a natural next step of the two or more schools that apply for membership in the Pac-12, and if that’s sooner rather than later, and it makes sense, great. And if it’s not, and you need a little more time to vet that out, that’s OK, too.”