Utah State University became the most recent Mountain West Conference team to defect in an effort to rebuild the Pac-12 Conference. The Pac-X (which is what we will call it until a final number is confirmed for the 2026-2027 athletic calendar) now has seven schools, all the with the word “State” in their formal names: Boise, Colorado, Fresno, Oregon, San Diego, Utah, and Washington state universities. But this is not over.

Far from it, actually, as the conference needs one more football school to meet the NCAA requirement of eight minimum. The MWC seems to have firmed up its remaining membership (seven schools), so it too will be in search of an eighth team for 2026-2027 legitimacy. This would seem to set up a scrub war over scrappy schools like … drumroll, please … Texas State, and if you can name that campus mascot, you win a big prize.

[It’s the Bobcats, and they have just one bowl appearance in their entire history at the FBS level. Not a typo.]

That is what we’re reduced to now, as many other potential targets have confirmed they’re staying in their present situations. Whatever school the Pac-X brings into the fold as the eighth team, the conference should immediately expand itself for basketball by adding schools like Gonzaga and St. Mary’s (CA) as non-football members. We’re serious. This makes a lot of sense, in terms of a geographical footprint with verve.

There are 134 schools playing football at the FBS level, and only one of them needs to join the Pac-X instead of the Mountain West: we’re fine with the Texas State idea, but it’s not a “score” for the rebuilding conference. We think the conference should be aggressive and go for a school like Nebraska: fallen from its former glories and good enough to be a top dog again in a new conference. It would bring more TV money, too.

The Cornhuskers might not want to leave the lucrative situation in the B1G, though, even though they can’t seem to compete at all for conference titles there at all. Yet Nebraska used to be flagship anchor for the Big 8/Big XII, and it’s fallen off the map in football since moving to the B1G. Perhaps the chance to rebuild that brand while rebuilding the Pac-X brand would be appealing to the Cornhuskers. Never hurts to ask, right?

Then throw in the two coastal basketball schools, and the Pac-X would have a nice resurgence in good time.