Pac-12 Rebuilds With Six Teams Ahead Of 2026 Season
Twenty-two teams will play in new conferences when the 2026 college football season kicks off, with nearly all of the movement concentrated in the Group of Six. The Pac-12, reduced to just two football-playing members last season, has rebuilt to eight schools by pulling five programs from the Mountain West and one from the Sun Belt. The Power 4 leagues - the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC - made no changes.
The Pac-12 added Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State from the Mountain West, along with Texas State from the Sun Belt, joining holdovers Oregon State and Washington State. Gonzaga also joins the conference from the West Coast Conference for basketball purposes only, since it does not sponsor football, bringing the Pac-12's total membership to nine for that sport. The Mountain West responded by adding North Dakota State, which moves up from the FCS after winning ten national titles at that level, along with Northern Illinois from the Mid-American Conference and UTEP from Conference USA. The moves follow a domino effect: the MAC replaced Northern Illinois with Sacramento State from the Big Sky, keeping its membership at 13, while the Sun Belt swapped outgoing Texas State for Louisiana Tech from Conference USA, holding steady at 14. Conference USA, left without a replacement for Louisiana Tech and UTEP, shrinks from 12 to 10 members. The American Athletic Conference was the only Group of Six league to see no turnover, retaining all 14 of its football-playing schools, including Tulane, which reached last season's 12-team College Football Playoff as the No. 11 seed. beach football betting
The upheaval follows two years of major shifts at the top of the sport. In 2024, UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington left the Pac-12 for the Big Ten, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado joined the Big 12, and Stanford and Cal moved to the ACC - realignment that gutted the old Pac-12 down to two teams. Additional moves followed in 2025. The 2026 season will mark the third year of those Power 4 additions, as well as the third season Oklahoma and Texas spend in the SEC after their move from the Big 12, and the third year BYU, Cincinnati, UCF and Houston round out the 16-team Big 12.
With the Power 4 now stable for a second straight offseason, most of the sport's structural change is occurring below the top tier, as Group of Six leagues continue absorbing programs displaced by the Pac-12's collapse and rebuild. Conference USA's shrinking membership and the Mountain West's turnover suggest further consolidation is possible before the 2026 season begins, though no additional moves have been announced.
