This Week In College Football: Conference Realignment & Media Shakedown

Happy Fourth of July and welcome to the dog days of summer.

We’ve got just under two months until college football is back for good, which is plenty of time to analyze and then over-analyze the upcoming season. It can be pretty easy to lose track of breaking news over these slow months, so we’re starting a summer series to recap what’s happening in the world of college and Penn State football.

We’ll still keep Nittany Lions recruiting news over in Blessed & Honored, but the other things will live here.

Texas State Joins The Pac-12

Tired of re-alignment yet? The PAC-12’s rise from the ashes is nearly complete, as Texas State was named the newest of the conference’s nine founding members ahead of its 2026 reboot. The Bobcats became the eighth football-playing school to join the conference, joining Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Oregon State, San Diego State, Utah State and Washington State. Gonzaga, which doesn’t have a football team, is the odd man out.

The addition of Texas State means the PAC-12 now has eight football-playing schools, the FBS-imposed minimum to compete. The Bobcats went 8-5 in the Sun Belt last year, completing back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 2008-09. The conference is beginning to set up TV/streaming rights, starting with a 2026 CBS contract that will reportedly run through 2031.

Logically, the conference would hope to add one more football member ahead of its July 2026 reboot, which would round out an eight-game conference schedule. Poaching Memphis from the AAC seems like a trendy option, but the Tigers may hold out for a juicer offer from a power conference. Well, at least I think the Pac-12 isn’t considered the fifth power conference again quite yet, right? Rice and UTSA have been rumored as options, too.

And for the Sun Belt? Reporting from ESPN’s Pete Thamel suggests Louisiana Tech or Western Kentucky are popular options to backfill the Bobcats’ spot, with Tarleton State then joining Conference USA.

Revenue Sharing Goes Live

July 1, 2025, was the first day the NCAA’s new revenue-sharing model officially went into effect. The NIL Newsstand has set up a tracker to follow which schools are opting in.

This new era, which was ushered in by the June 6 House v. NCAA settlement, allows schools to directly pay their student-athletes up to $20.5m annually. Pat Kraft already announced that Penn State will share revenue to the “maximum allowable levels” and increase its scholarship levels to the new limit. Other NIL deals outside of the $20.5m “cap” will now have to be submitted and approved by a third-party clearinghouse. A newly created College Sports Commission will oversee and enforce all the new changes.

Media Member Mix-Up

Time for some inside baseball.

Long-time college football reporter Brett McMurphy is joining On3, leaving his former post at Action Network. He’ll help with national news coverage, also appearing in podcast and video content. On3, which was founded in 2021, has quickly rivaled 247Sports for recruiting news, even poaching Steve Wiltfong, who was the recruiting director at 247.

The ownership group behind On3 also recently acquired Rivals from Yahoo in exchange for a stake in the company. Serial entrepreneur Shannon Terry is the mastermind behind all of these changes as he found Rivals (sold to Yahoo and then back to On3), 247Sports (sold to CBS), and On3.

In the local Penn State media circuit, reporter Seth Engle is stepping away from the football and athletics beat at StateCollege.com, which he took over from Ben Jones last year. He previously covered team for The Daily Collegian.

This Week In College Football: Conference Realignment & Media Shakedown

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