The last time we checked in the conference formerly known as the Pacific-12, it was December, and we suggested the league go after Notre Dame … because why not?! Well, that still hasn’t happened, although we remain hopeful. However, the news broke earlier this week that the Texas State Bobcats, located in San Marcos, are the eighth football school to join the re-constituted Pac-12 Conference. It’s official: it’s back!

The league had a two-year window to rebuild itself as an FBS conference, and it has done so now with the Bobcats signing on out of the Sun Belt Conference. As recently as 2010, this was an FCS school, and now it’s in the big time, so to speak, as a member of a league that will argue for an autobid into the new, expanded College Football Playoff, although we have a hard time seeing that happen, for a few reasons (see below).

In addition to Gonzaga in all other sports, the “Nine Pac” includes Boise State, Fresno State, Colorado State, Oregon State, San Diego State, Texas State, Utah State, and Washington State. Most of these schools have had significant success at one time or another this century in football, including the Broncos who played in the first expanded CFP last season. This mostly represents a collection of mid majors, really, however.

We think this Pac-9 should continue soliciting more schools to join it for football and beyond, including Notre Dame, still, even as a distant long-/non-shot option. But why not bring back California and Stanford at this point? We don’t know the price points for exiting the ACC, and we don’t care. The Golden Bears and the Cardinal belong back on the Best Coast where they belong, and now there is a league for them to do it.

Let’s just say the Pac-X lured Cal, Notre Dame, and Stanford into the equation: it would be a formidable league at that point, once again, for sure. And if not those three schools, what other schools can the conference continue courting? Army and Navy, for starters, even though the league did not grab the Air Force Academy when it should have, in raiding the Mountain West Conference. That was a miss, for now.

The Pac-X also should get another Texas school to provide a rivalry for its newest member, in the form of either Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) or North Texas. The geographical realities for all the members should include a natural rivalry: Fresno and San Diego, for example, or Colorado and Utah, too. Army and Navy would fit in nicely with that sort of bunching, as would another Texas school—and someone for Boise.

Which school would be a good match for a regional rivalry with Boise? Well, Nevada-Reno would have fit nicely there, perhaps, but that didn’t happen, as neither did UNLV. Money and time will make some of this happen somehow, but maybe Notre Dame is that answer, especially if Cal and Stanford could return to the fold. We see a Pac-16 somehow in the next five years, with a return to prominence on the national stage.

If college sports survive that long, of course …