Aztecs Staying in Mountain West Conference Instead of Leaving for Pac 12 (For Now)

San Diego State has until 11:00 pm Pacific time to officially inform the Mountain West Conference they are leaving for another, presumably Power 5, conference or their nearly $17 million exit fee doubles. It looks like that deadline is going to pass with the Aztecs going nowhere.

According to sources, SDSU is informing the MWC that they intend to stay, at least for the time being, because they don't have an official invitation from another athletic conference. On June 13, SDSU president Adela de la Torre sent a letter to the Mountain West outlining their intention to leave for what many believe is the Pac 12 Conference. Although the school says it was not a formal exit letter the conference took it as such, removing de la Torre from their Board of Directors and withholding an expected $6 million media rights payout fee that was believed to go towards the exit fee.

The Aztecs were likely expecting an invitation from the Pac 12 to be one of the schools to replace USC and UCLA when they leave for the Big 10 after the 2023-24 athletic season. But, that conference is still working on its new media rights deal so expansion efforts are essentially frozen.

The Pac 12 had another meeting on Friday to discuss the media rights options but now don't expect to have anything resolved until their conference meetings in late July, at the earliest.

Now, this does not mean the Aztecs are without a doubt staying in the Mountain West for the long-term, if at all. Since the conference accepted what they see as a resignation letter there would have to be a vote to allow SDSU back in. That should be a mere formality since the Aztecs own the most successful athletics program in the league. The MWC did the same thing a decade ago when San Diego State tried to leave for the Big East Conference before it dissolved as a football entity.

There are several possibilities moving forward:

• Stay in the Mountain West for the forseeable future
• Stay in the Mountain West for another couple of years and try to leave again
• Wait until the Pac 12 figures out its media rights deal and extends an invitation then ante up the $34 million exit fee top leave after next year, something A.D. John David Wicker has said is too big a price to pay
• Accept an invitation from another conference before the 11:00 pm deadline expires

That last one is the wild card here. The Big 12 is adding four new schools (UCF, BYU, Houston, and Cincinnati) on Friday. They have talked repeatedly about their interest in further expansion. If the Pac 12 continues to drag its feet the Big 12 could pounce, poaching the Aztecs along with several current Pac 12 schools like Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and Arizona State, essentially decimating the Pac 12 to the point it would not longer be able to exist.

While that is a longshot, in the current landscape of NCAA realignment nothing is impossible.