Colorado State officially joined the Pac-12 conference Wednesday, and now the school and its athletics programs will look to reap the rewards and benefits of its next venture.
After 27 seasons in the Mountain West Conference, CSU has made the move to what was once a storied league with hopes of helping return it to a prestigious status. CSU will be joined in the revived league alongside former MWC mates Boise State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State, holdover Pac-12 schools Oregon State and Washington State, and newcomers Texas State and Gonzaga (as a non-football member).
While the league doesn’t hold the luster it once did when it was a Power 5 conference with the likes of UCLA, USC, Arizona, Arizona State, Oregon, Utah and Colorado, CSU and the new schools hope to get it back to where it once was before a mass exodus two years ago.
“This is a historical moment for the university and for our programs,” CSU director of athletics John Weber said at a recent news conference. “We’re headed in an absolutely outstanding direction for this university. We’re moving into a storied conference and it’s something that is meaningful to our university as a whole.
“There are some meaningful academic peers that we’re going to be paired with, and I think that’s really important for us to not lose sight of. It’s a group of folks that are really, really hungry. There’s a couple of schools in that conference that were in an autonomous league and are not now. They’re going to do everything they can to gain that status back and we are going to do everything we can to join them.”
Weber emphasized that CSU is going into the conference with a focus on continuing to build a brand for the school.
CSU has athletics momentum on its side. The women’s basketball team won the 2026 Mountain West tournament title to make the NCAA Tournament. The volleyball team did the same in 2024. The track program consistently wins titles and makes NCAA Championships and had a recent national champion in Mya Lesnar.
The men’s basketball team won the 2025 Mountain West tournament title and has made the NCAA Tournament in three of the past five seasons. The Rams made an NIT appearance last season.
“We are building very, very competitive programs here and ones that I think everyone can be really, really proud of,” Weber said. “The success is building across all our programs.”
One immediate advantage of CSU joining the Pac-12 is exposure — specifically in football and men’s basketball.
All 12 CSU football games in the fall will be featured on linear television, highlighted by a CBS broadcast against BYU on Sept. 19.
The Pac-12 has media rights deals with CBS Sports, USA Network and The CW. Highlights of those deals include the football and men’s basketball tournament championship games on CBS, along with 22 regular season football games, 50 regular season men’s basketball games and up to 10 regular season women’s basketball games each season on the USA Network.
The CW package includes the women’s basketball tournament semifinal and championship games, 13 regular season football games, 35 regular season men’s basketball games and 15 regular season women’s basketball games per season.
“All of our football games will be on linear television this fall,” Weber said. “No other conference in the country can say that. As we moved into the Pac-12, we worked really hard with our commissioner, and we worked really hard with the folks that were putting the media package together, that was something that we worked hard to achieve. What that does for us is, that builds our brand in a way that nothing else can.”
CSU’s hiring of successful head coach Jim Mora to lead its football team has already helped the school garner national attention.
Brand building is an important part of the move for CSU, and while the exposure for football and basketball will be improved, the school’s other sports will benefit as well despite not being on television.
CSU volleyball coach Emily Kohan is excited for what the move means for her program as it looks to continue its recent success, which includes the MWC regular season and tournament championships in 2024, and league regular season and tournament runner-up finishes last season.
“This change brings so much excitement to CSU volleyball and the Fort Collins community, and we are really excited to share it with all of you,” she wrote in a message on social media Wednesday. “We can’t wait to continue to build in this new era of the Pac-12.”
The conference move features new opponents and opportunities for CSU athletic programs across the board.
But it all goes back to Weber and the university’s goals of continuing to build the CSU brand and make the school and the new conference stronger as a new era begins, not only in athletics, but other areas as well such as academics and research.
“At the end of the day, athletics serves as a marketing engine and a branding engine and an engagement engine for the university,” Weber said. “Our job is that when we have an opportunity to play on the national stage, our job is to win as many of those games as we possibly can.
“The more we win, the more exposure we have, the better we build the brand for the university. It’s really important to this university that we continue to grow, that we maintain a strong enrollment base and we continue to be really strong academically in all of our research pursuits, and we’re proud to be an important part of that.”
