According to Washington State University President Kirk Schulz, the Pac-12’s expansion will double its media rights with the announcement of the four additional schools on Thursday. The conference is also open to the possibility of adding non-football members.

WSU and Oregon State jointly announced that Boise State University, San Diego State University, Fresno State University and Colorado State University will become Pac-12 members beginning in July 2026, leaving the Mountain West Conference.

Schulz said in an interview with KOMO News that talks have accelerated in recent weeks and that the offer for admission to the Pac-12 has only been made to those four schools.

“We felt like those four represented the best opportunity to continue to build brands and the market,” Schulz said. “Those four schools were incredibly ambitious with their athletic programs and wanted to continue to grow and invest, and we just felt like they were the best fit for us, and they were very interested in thinking about the bigger, broader, national landscape.”

“It will be a different Pac-12 going forward, but I still believe we are going to position ourselves as the best athletic conference in the division west of the Rockies,” Schulz said.

That leads to natural questions about where the conference goes from here. The Conference of Champions broke up in 2023 amid negotiations over TV and digital broadcast rights, splitting with the University of Washington and Oregon following UCLA and USC into the Big Ten. Utah, Arizona, Arizona State and Colorado went to the Big 12. Stanford and California found solace in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

It left WSU and OSU, after a legal victory and settlement, with millions of dollars and assets with which to rebuild the conference. The Pac-12 still needs to add at least two schools by 2026 to be officially recognized by the NCAA and also unify the league for broadcasting. It’s fair to say that today’s move is all about markets.

“Denver, the Central Valley (in California), San Diego, Boise aren’t bad either. I think of the schools that were left, you could make an argument that UNLV should have been there,” Bob Thompson, the former president of Fox Sports Networks, said of the Pac-12 expansion.

Stanford and Cal would be obvious options if they hadn’t already signed long-term deals with the ACC. “That would be very difficult, especially in the first year of a rights grant that runs through 2036. I can’t imagine they’re willing to fight that fight at this point.”

Schulz said he’s been asked about that and, “I have no control over what Stanford and CAL decide to do in the long run. What we can do is build the absolute best conference we can, and then at some point when there are further realignments or schools moving, we’d like to be seen as a great destination on the West Coast.”

He was asked if the conference could look at adding non-football members. Gonzaga has openly flirted with the idea of ​​leaving the West Coast Conference.

Schulz said: “We’ve certainly talked about that, and again, with our new members that’s going to be one of the conversations we have to have: how do you look at what a member should be, and should they have football?”

The question remains what WSU will do in 2025 without a football league agreement with the Mountain West, as it did this season.

Schulz said: “We actually have an alternative schedule that we had worked out, and we expect to be able to announce that relatively soon. I think we feel very good about what that’s going to look like over the next two years.”

Jack Thompson, the WSU star affectionately known as “The Throwin’ Samoan,” served as an adviser to the school after the Pac-12 collapse during his active career.

“I’m excited, to be perfectly honest with you,” he said via ZOOM from Pullman. “I think this is the best situation for us. I’m excited for those four schools to turn around and come our way. I’m excited. I call them the waverers.”

He also said it’s important for WSU to win the Apple Cup against UW on Saturday, and for Oregon State to do the same against Oregon.

“I think the best thing we can do right now, us at Oregon State, is to keep winning. The more we win, the more leverage we have, period. That’s what our two schools need to focus on.”