Pete Thamel explains challenges Pac-12 faces in poaching from Mountain West

As the Pac-12 Conference dissolves in real time on Friday, ESPN college football reporter Pete Thamel joined SportsCenter to discuss what might come next for the league. And charting a course forward in the current situation might be borderline impossible for the Pac-12.

The obvious solution to the sloughing off of teams would be to simply add more. But the most obvious pool of teams — the Mountain West conference — presents a major roadblock: It’s pricey.

“Well there’s a significant challenge to just go poach the Mountain West because if any Mountain West school is to leave before 2025, so two full seasons from now, they’d have to pay a $32 million exit fee,” Thamel said. “The Pac-12, because it doesn’t have a television deal in 2024 — it expires after this season — wouldn’t have the capital to be able to help pay those exit fees and obviously the scope and caliber of any kind of deal of the leftover schools wouldn’t be near the finances to afford that.”

And as the Pac-12 faces the prospect of being down to four schools — Cal, Stanford, Oregon State and Washington State — Thamel was adamant that there just isn’t the money to for four or five new additions from the Mountain West at $32 million a pop.

“So just the notion of grabbing five Mountain West schools doesn’t appear to be rooted in reality if only because it would cost $150 million to do so,” Thamel said.

Thamel also explained how the Pac-12 might get winnowed down to just four core schools.

Colorado formalized plans to depart the league after the 2023 season and join the Big 12. That happened late last week and set off the current wave of realignment. On Friday, Oregon and Washington finally made their moves to leave the Pac-12 and head for the Big Ten Conference as Arizona teetered on joining the Big-12. Along with Arizona, Utah and Arizona State are also reportedly in the mix to join the Big 12.

“The latest news that I’ve heard is both Utah and Arizona State have ramped up their conversations with the Big 12 and that could leave the Pac-12 suddenly with just four schools: Cal, Stanford, Oregon State and Washington State. So things are happening fast now that Oregon and Washington are on their way out. And there’s discussions with three of the four corner schools. Obviously Colorado left for the Big 12 last week. So it is a historic day with just a massive landscape shift underway,” Thamel said.