• Pete Thamel

  • Kyle Bonagura

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With Utah State leaving and UNLV exploring options, the Mountain West is left with commitments from six schools for the 2026 football season: Air Force, Hawai’i, New Mexico, Nevada, San Jose State and Wyoming. The conference will need to add at least two more football-playing schools by 2028 to abide by NCAA rules.

Staying in the Mountain West will allow the schools to avoid exit fees. Before Utah State decided to leave, the league was already slated to bring in more than $120 million in revenue from the previous four departures.

Mountain West schools are making almost $6 million annually in overall payouts, nearly $4 million of which is from pure media value. How much the Pac-12 will earn when it is re-formed in 2026 is uncertain as it hasn’t taken the reconfigured product to market. The Pac-12 needs to have eight members to be recognized as an official conference.

What has happened on the Mountain West landscape is part of a high-stakes stare-down between the league, the Pac-12 and the American Athletic Conference. On Monday, the AAC got commitments from Memphis, Tulane, USF and UTSA — some of the Pac-12’s highest-profile targets.

It was projected to cost more than $27 million per school for Memphis and other AAC members to depart the league between exit fees and nearly $2.5 million in lost revenue, presenting an issue for the Pac-12’s expansion efforts.

The buyout cost and lack of a guaranteed television number from the Pac-12, whose estimates project revenue of more than $12 million annually to schools, loom large over the decision-making.