The Pac-12 is back in business. Well, sort of.

It is not the same as it was when USC was its leading football power, Phil Knight was a major promoter, and Stanford’s Olympic prowess was under one roof. The rebuilt Pac-12 is considered a power conference not only because of its brand name, as its status was technically diminished last year by both the NCAA and the College Football Playoff.

But after 13 months as the flagship of a new college sports ecosystem that casts aside its smaller brands, what the Pac-12 accomplished Thursday morning is a triumph. For once, Oregon State and Washington State were the aggressors. This time, they weren’t the last schools on a sinking ship. They had suitors wanting to join. them.

Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State and Fresno State will join the Pac-12 Conference on July 1, 2026. The quartet of schools celebrated the news and what they see as their own promotion.

There is much debate about whether this is actually worth the exorbitant cost. The total price for the Pac-12 to poach these four members and drive them out of the Mountain West is around $111 million. Here’s the math:

– Each Mountain West school must pay a $17 million exit fee if it leaves the conference at least one calendar year after declaring its withdrawal, for a total of $68 million.

– The Pac-12 owes the Mountain West an additional $43 million for admitting four schools from its conference. When the two leagues signed a one-year football scheduling agreement (for fall 2024), it included special provisions that specified the fees the Pac-12 would have to pay to lure members from the Mountain West. There would have been no fees if the Pac-12 had acquired the entire league in a reverse merger, but everything else came at a price.

Now the Pac-12 has deep pockets. The league has amassed money through its settlement with the 10 departing Pac-12 members, its revenue distributions from the CFP and NCAA tournaments, its bowl contract and the infrastructure of the Pac-12 Network. The conference will help the four new schools finance this move, sources said.

Sources say the four schools will give up their shares of Mountain West revenue allocations for this year and next year, which is not insignificant, as part of the league’s charter. That adds to the cost of such a move — which looks pretty much like a rebuilt Mountain West without its basement kids. Is it worth more than $100 million to do it this way? Just to destabilize a peer conference?

The simple answer is that college football is a cutthroat business, and the two Pac-12 schools are doing to the Mountain West what was done to them when Oregon and Washington moved to the Big Ten and the Four Corners schools (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah) moved to the Big 12. It’s better to grow than shrink, and it’s best to be able to control your own future. And it must feel nice to announce that news two days before Oregon State and Washington State play their in-state rivals, the schools that won the Pac-12 last August.

But the larger answer is that this is how the food chain in college sports works, as much as it hurts to throw this at the proud Mountain West. The key to survival isn’t grabbing a chair before the music starts. It’s portraying yourself as more deserving of the chair than everyone else while the music is still playing. Those involved in the new Pac-12 believe there are big advantages to being a smaller league with sports programs that create value. No, they don’t create the value that Notre Dame or Michigan would. But those involved in the process know where they stand in the pecking order — and they believe they can create a league that can regularly compete for a spot in the College Football Playoff. With the new 12-team format, the champion of the new Pac-12 simply has to be the fifth-highest conference champion. The way to get there is simple: Beat the Group of 5 league champions.

A source involved in the process of adding new members said all six schools view their futures as a “blank slate.” They are like-minded schools that all believe they can create more value together (in part because they won’t have to split their future revenues as much) and can bring in more money with a new media rights deal than the American Athletic Conference currently does. (The original members currently bring in $8 million to $10 million a year, which is tops in the Group of 5.)

The conference must add at least two more members by July 2026 to reach at least eight in order for the NCAA to recognize it as a Division I conference. Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould and the Pac-12’s two presidents said they evaluated academic and athletic performance, media and brand evaluation, commitment to athletic success, geography and logistics, and culture and student-athlete welfare as they weighed which four schools to add in this wave. Geography may play less of a role going forward, sources said, which could provide an opportunity to both strengthen the Pac-12 and weaken one of its biggest rivals (the AAC).

But Thursday wasn’t just about what or who comes next. It was a day of celebration and relief, all because the Pac-12 had bounced back. It may not be nearly as strong as its namesake was three years ago, but Oregon State and Washington State know how hard it was to even dream of such a future. They made it happen.

And now the league, which was considered dead just over a year ago, is alive – and active.