The Pac-12 is inching closer toward remaining a 12-school conference following the departures of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten in the summer of 2024.
The university presidents discussed SMU and San Diego State as expansion candidates during a meeting last week and approved commissioner George Kliavkoff taking the next step in the complicated process of adding membership, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting.
Sources emphasized that the approval was informal in nature — the presidents did not vote to add specific schools — but expansion is viewed as highly likely.
Kliavkoff attended an SMU basketball game on Wednesday night as part of a campus visit, according to the Dallas Morning News.
It is not known if other schools were discussed last week during the Pac-12 presidents’ quarterly meeting, held at Arizona State.
Expansion is part of a complicated three-step process in which the Pac-12 must negotiate a new media rights contract with network partners; the schools must agree to sign their media rights over to the conference; and invitations to new members must be extended on a formal basis.
The Pac-12 has been negotiating a new media agreement since July. Kliavkoff has said that process would come first, followed by the grant-of-rights piece and then expansion.
But the three tracks were expected to unfold concurrently, sources said, with the conference informing its media partners of expansion plans during contract negotiations and prior to issuing formal invitations.
Under Pac-12 bylaws, expansion requires a three-fourths vote of the presidents, meaning eight of the 10 schools would have to approve any new members. (USC and UCLA will not participate in expansion proceedings during their final 18 months in the conference.)
SMU and San Diego State have been obvious candidates all along. Neither would be offered full revenue shares, at least initially, according to sources. Each school is attractive to the Pac-12 for a variety of reasons,
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