Report: San Diego State Will Remain With Mountain West

Speculation that the Aztecs will join the Pac-12 may be dead, at least for the moment

The notion that San Diego State would join the Pac-12 conference after UCLA and USC leave for the Big Ten next summer apparently has been snuffed out, at least for the time being.

ESPN's Pete Thamel reported on Friday that San Diego State will inform the Mountain West that it wants to remain in that conference for the foreseeable future..

Thamel reported that the Aztecs received no invitations from a Power Five conference, which suggests the Pac-12 was not interested in added San Diego State – and perhaps one other school – to maintain its 12-team status after USC and UCLA leave in the summer of 2024.

Friday’s report comes on the same day the Pac-12's Board of Directors met to get an update on the conference’s television-rights negotiations. The ESPN story indicated the board received that update from Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff, but that no TV deal is imminent.

San Diego State and SMU had been the heavy favorites to join the Pac-12 so it could remain a 12-team conference. The knee-jerk reaction to Friday’s San Diego State news is that the Pac-12 intends to become a 10-school conference at least for a while after the Los Angeles schools leave. However, a lot is still up in the air for the Pac-12 in general and Cal in particular. The San Diego State saga is not over, either.

The Pac-12’s continued existence as a conference remains uncertain, and Cal’s future with the Pac-12 and the Bears’ goals for football and basketball in the long term remain unclear. The Golden Bears will no doubt remain with the Pac-12 for the near future.

On June 13, San Diego State officials had told the Mountain West conference that it “intends” to leave the conference. The Aztecs had indicated an interest in joining the Pac-12, but with no invitations from Power Five conferences since June 13, the Aztecs had to stay put as the June 30 deadline to depart approached.

How Mountain West officials will respond to SDSU’s decision to stay after it had said it plans to leave remains to be seen.

Cover photo by Orlando Ramirez, USA TODAY Sports

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