Pac-12 expansion to add Texas State completes conference’s long Lone Star pursuit ...Middle East

It took 35 years, five swings and a near-death experience, but the Pac-12 finally is planting its flag in Texas.

As it exists today, the conference is a shell of the version that originally attempted to raid the Lone Star State. And Texas State is certainly not Texas or Texas A&M or even Texas Tech.

But a quest that began four commissioners ago was completed Monday when the Bobcats accepted an invitation from the rebuilt Pac-12 to join the conference next summer as the eighth all-sports member.

Texas State has competed in the Sun Belt for the past 12 years.

“You can’t go wrong being associated with football in the state of Texas,” said an industry source who has tracked the Pac-12’s rebuilding project since Washington State and Oregon State were left adrift two years ago.

The conference first set its sights on the state in 1990, when then-commissioner Tom Hansen made a play for Texas and Texas A&M. But politics intervened.

“Ann Richards, who was then the governor, said Baylor’s my alma mater and they’re going wherever Texas and Texas A&M go,” Hansen told the Orange County Register in 2009, near the end of his tenure in charge of what was then the Pac-10.

“Then in a less clear message, but still pretty well defined, we were told the legislators who control the oil money that goes to the Texas universities was controlled either by alumni of or representatives of the area of Texas Tech, and now there was a group of four (schools) and we were not interested in going from 10 to 14 so we said ‘thank you anyway.’”

Two decades later, Hansen’s successor, Larry Scott, stunned the college sports world with a bold pursuit of not only Texas but Oklahoma (and others) as he tried to create the first super-conference.

The plan fizzled, which didn’t stop Scott from trying again the following year. A disagreement over revenue distribution derailed the attempt.

A dozen years passed before the Pac-12 considered another Texas school — but it wasn’t the Longhorns or Aggies. During the purgatory period of 2022-23, after USC and UCLA announced their move to the Big Ten, then-commissioner George Kliavkoff put SMU in the crosshairs, along with San Diego State.

The plan never materialized. In August of ’23, Kliavkoff’s wayward strategy sparked the collapse of the 108-year-old conference, and the Mustangs eventually ended up in the ACC.

(Texas State’s acceptance Monday of the Pac-12’s invitation comes on the third anniversary of the thunderbolt from the L.A. schools.)

The Bobcats won’t do for the reconstructed Pac-12 what SMU would have done for the weakened version in ’23, much less generate a sliver of the impact the Longhorns would have provided 15 years ago.

But in some regards, their presence will serve the same purpose, just on a relative basis.

They allow the Pac-12 to expand its footprint into the Central Time Zone, which creates more flexibility for kickoff and tipoff times, and to establish a foothold in a state that cares more about football than any town, city, region or state west of the Rockies.

Texas State is located in a booming corridor between Austin and San Antonio. It has 40,000 students, a president (Kelly Damphousse) committed to investing in athletics and a head coach, GJ Kinne, who will walk into the Pac-12 as one of the highest-paid coaches in the conference. (He earns $2 million annually.)

The Bobcats are one of just 15 teams with bowl wins in each of the past two seasons. They have embarked on a $37 million renovation of their football performance center and invested $149 million into athletic facilities and infrastructure in the past three years.

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“As the Pac-12’s flagship school in Texas, we proudly embrace the opportunity and responsibility that comes with it,” Texas State athletic director Don Coryell said in a news release confirming the move into the Pac-12.

Texas State isn’t Texas, and this Pac-12 certainly isn’t that Pac-12.

But Monday’s move, orchestrated by Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould, offers real estate where football matters, money flows and potential exists.

The conference needed an eighth football school to meet the Football Bowl Subdivision certification requirements by next summer. But the expansion strategy that has played out over the past nine months was about the 2030s, as well — about acquiring the pieces that could provide the greatest long-haul value.

College football could undergo another massive restructuring early in the next decade, when a series of media rights contracts holding the sport together expire within a two-year window.

A super-league could form with the top 30 or 40 football schools. The SEC and Big Ten could expand again. The ACC and Big 12 could merge. Football could break away from the other sports.

Nobody knows what’s coming, but everyone believes something’s coming. The current state of play isn’t sustainable given the competitive, legal and financial pressures.

How the Pac-12 fits into the next era is anyone’s guess. But with the move into Texas, the conference took a small but significant step to fortifying itself for the next round of realignment chaos.

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