{"id":171010,"date":"2025-06-30T18:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T18:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/171010\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T18:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T18:50:10","slug":"texas-state-joins-pac-12-gives-conference-8-football-members-for-fbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/171010\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas State Joins Pac-12, Gives Conference 8 Football Members for FBS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Pac-12 Conference<\/a> is adding Texas State<\/a> University to its membership beginning in 2026, the league announced Monday.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the newest full member, Texas State gives the Pac-12 eight all-sports schools with football teams, the minimal requirement to remain in the Bowl Subdivision. Gonzaga does not have football but is also going to be a ninth all-sports member of the conference.<\/p>\n

\n\tOregon State and Washington State had been the lone schools in the Pac-12 since 2024, after 10 schools defected to the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC ahead of the 2024-25 academic year. Now, the Bobcats will join OSU and WSU, as well as Boise State, Utah State, San Diego State, Fresno State, Colorado State and Gonzaga as the seven additional schools in a \u201crebuilt\u201d Pac-12.<\/p>\n

\n\tTexas State\u2019s application was unanimously approved by all eight current and future members of the conference.<\/p>\n

\n\tReports had been swirling around Texas State for months, and the Pac-12 formally invited the school to join the conference on Sunday. Texas State had a deadline to consider\u2014the exit fee to leave the Sun Belt Conference doubles from $5 million to $10 million on July 1. This morning, the school\u2019s board approved the financial transaction for the $5 million exit fee to the Sun Belt.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe public research university in San Marcos, about a 40-minute drive southwest of Austin, has over 40,000 students. The school touts that \u201cis the only university to graduate both a U.S. President and a king.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPresident Lyndon B. Johnson graduated in 1930. The king, however, is not a literal one. George Strait, the \u201cKing of Country Music,\u201d graduated from Texas State in 1979.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2024-25, the Bobcats won conference titles in softball (regular season) and volleyball (tournament), as well as women\u2019s indoor track and field and men\u2019s outdoor track and field. It won the Vic Bubas Cup as the conference\u2019s top performing athletic department in three of the last four years.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe school has made significant investments into its football program, which elevated to FBS in 2012. It signed a 15-year, $23 million naming rights deal with University Federal Credit Union for the Jim Wacker Field at UFCU Stadium, the 27,000-plus seat venue formerly known as Bobcat Stadium. The school also spent $37 million to renovate the Johnny and Nathali Weisman Football Performance Center, the training facilities connected to the stadium.<\/p>\n

\n\tLed by head coach GJ Kinne, the Bobcats had bowl game wins in 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe addition of Texas State comes a week after the Pac-12 and Paramount agreed to a five-year media rights extension, making CBS the conference\u2019s anchor media partner<\/a> through 2031. That deal is an add-on of a \u201cstopgap<\/a>\u201d media agreement with the CW, CBS Sports and ESPN for the 2025-26 academic year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pac-12 Conference is adding Texas State University to its membership beginning in 2026, the league announced Monday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48,6092,4140],"class_list":{"0":"post-171010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-pac-12-conference","12":"tag-texas-state"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114773821084738613","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}