Pac-12 adds Texas State as its 8th football school

SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) — Texas State is joining the Pac-12, giving the rebuilding conference the eighth football-playing school it needed to maintain its status as an FBS conference. The Pac-12 and Texas State announced Monday that the Bobcats from the Sun Belt Conference will join holdovers Oregon State and Washington State, along with private school Gonzaga and Mountain West-departing schools Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State as the nine foundational members of the reconfigured Pac-12 that will officially launch next summer. Since Gonzaga doesn't field a football team, the Pac-12 needed one more to remain eligible as a Football Bowl Subdivision league. Only Oregon State and Washington State had remained in the Pac-12 after the departures of 10 teams to the three other power conferences: the ACC, Big Ten and Big 12. Texas State regents Monday approved a $5 million buyout to leave the Sun Belt. The amount of that exit fee was set to double Tuesday. The Bobcats will become an all-sports member of the Pac-12 on July 1, 2026, after being in the Sun Belt since 2013, a year after their FBS debut in their only season in the Western Athletic Conference. They were 8-5 each of the past two seasons since G.J. Kinne took over as coach, and won the First Responders Bowl both years. They had never been to a bowl game before with only one other winning season in FBS, going 7-5 in 2014 under coach Dennis Franchione. Texas State's campus in San Marcos is only about 35 miles south of the University of Texas in Austin. It will be the farthest from the West Coast the Pac-12 has had an all-sports member. Arkansas-Little Rock is now an affiliate member for wrestling. When the 10 former Pac-12 teams officially departed last year, that created coast-to-coast conferences. Oregon, Washington, Southern California and UCLA went to the Big Ten; Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah joined the Big 12; and Stanford and California became ACC members. The Pac-12 last week struck a media-rights deal with CBS to broadcast a minimum of four football and men's basketball games per season on its main network and provide a cable and streaming presence for the league from 2026-31. Texas State is a national research university with more than 40,000 students, and is among the 25 largest undergraduate enrollments among public universities in the United States. Kelly Damphousse, the president of Texas State, called joining the Pac-12 more than an athletic move. "It is a declaration of our rising national profile, our commitment to excellence, and our readiness to compete and collaborate with some of the most respected institutions in the country," Damphousse said. "Our acceptance into the Pac-12 affirms the strength of our academic vision, our commitment to providing access to a Texas State degree, the momentum of our athletic programs, and the ambition that defines this institution."