(November 13, 2024) - Reuploaded due to some copyright issues with the first chunk of the video and a Star Wars meme that didn't work out. Don't mess with Disney, I guess.
A while ago, I made a video predicting what the Conference USA could do to expand. While I hit on two of my predictions there, I missed on a later video about Pac-12 expansion. Now the Pac 12 is in a desperation pitch to add a fifth football member before the end of 2024 in order to still be considered a valid FBS conference per NCAA rules, and after being locked out of the Mountain West and American for the foreseeable future, they might already be at defcon-1. Teams like Memphis, UTSA, and Tulane are out of the running, at least for now, and Sacramento State's widely publicized Sac12Pac12 initiative can't buy them past the NCAA's transition rules.
That leaves them with 4 desperate candidates, in my opinion: Texas State of the Sun Belt, UTEP, who just announced a move to the Mountain West from Conference USA but is by no means bound to it, New Mexico State, and Sam Houston State. All four of these southwestern schools would stretch the conference more to the east and further away from the Pacific, which could potentially hurt the travel wallets of the now much smaller conference.
In this video, I rank those four desperation candidates and try to figure out which direction the Pac 12 should go, if they're desperate enough to want to make that decision right now.