UNLV, apparently, won’t be rebels.
Multiple reports late Wednesday night, confirmed by a league source, said UNLV will remain in the Mountain West and not join San Diego State in the Pac-12 when it expands starting in the 2026-27 academic year.
That would leave the Pac-12 with seven prospective members, one shy of the minimum required for inclusion in the lucrative College Football Playoff. The schools: incumbents Oregon State and Washington State plus Mountain West defectors SDSU, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and Utah State.
The Mountain West was not confirming or denying the reports about UNLV until they have signed agreements from all seven remaining members, which is understandable after what happened Monday.
Once the Pac-12’s expansion targets in the American Athletic Conference spurned its advances, the rebuilding league returned to the Mountain West aisle to shop. The Mountain West countered by offering eight-figure financial incentives to stay and appeared to have verbal agreements from all eight remaining members by late Monday afternoon.
UNLV and Air Force both signed memorandums of understanding that would bind them to the Mountain West through 2031-32, which covers the final two years of the current media rights contract and a new six-year deal. But after receiving seven MOUs, Utah State suddenly broke ranks and jumped to the Pac-12.
That invalidated the MOUs, and UNLV said it was reconsidering. And if UNLV bolted, Air Force was expected to reignite its romance to join the other two service academies (Army and Navy) in the AAC.
The Mountain West is not expected to receive new signed MOUs from the seven until Thursday. Until then, nothing is set in stone in the capricious world of conference realignment. The Pac-12 conceivably could pursue a less desirable Mountain West school – Wyoming? New Mexico? – like it did with Utah State before ink meets paper.
The other expansion options are not optimal. The AAC’s best schools just said no. That leaves folks like Texas State, North Texas, Rice, New Mexico State and UTEP. Sacramento State, which plays a level down Football Championship Series, recently launched a bid to draw a Pac-12 invite with plans for a new football stadium and a major investment in its athletic department.
Gonzaga was reportedly set to become a non-football member, only for school officials to say that is premature, presumably waiting to see what sort of media rights deal the Pac-12 can now command without its top expansion picks.
UNLV had become the object of a tug-of-war between the two conferences after the Pac-12 was spurned by the AAC earlier in the week.
The initial Mountain West offer to UNLV, one source said, included $12 million in payouts from the growing pot of poaching and exit fees from its five defectors that could approach $150 million. That offer is believed to have increased significantly after the departure of Utah State, which meant another $30 million coming to the Mountain West and one less mouth to feed.
One source estimated the new incentive package for UNLV at north of $25 million.
That’s big money for an athletic department drowning in red ink. A recent fiscal report to the Nevada Board of Regents that oversees the state university system cited a $20.6 million athletics budget deficit at UNLV.
Another report, by the Nevada Faculty Alliance in February, cited annual projected budget deficits between $4.2 million and $5.8 million from 2025 through 2028, totaling an additional $27 million. A month after the Nevada Faculty Alliance posted a story with detailed graphs about the “runaway” athletic deficits, UNLV provided the Board of Regents with revised budgets with increased revenue projections that would allow them to break even.
UNLV, the faculty alliance wrote, did not provide “public explanations for how or why they revised their budget projections.”
Had UNLV jumped to the Pac-12, it would have faced an exit fee of roughly $18 million from the Mountain West with the hope of making more in annual conference distributions.
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