Even as Cal and Stanford announced the intention to leave the PAC-12 in 2024, the saga around conference realignment continues as Oregon State and Washington State have yet to find a conference to go to next season. 

A new solution for the two schools and the existence of the PAC-12 has come to light. According to a Sept. 19 Yahoo Sports article, PAC-12 and Mountain West officials have kicked around the idea of merging the Mountain West and PAC-12 with a system that involves a relegation and promotion for teams competing in the conference. 

Relegation is a popular system used most notably by European soccer leagues, such as the English Premier League.

In a relegation system, teams who finish last in the top league are brought down to a lower division while teams who finish first in a lower league are promoted to the league above them. 

The new conference would work in basically two divisions with the first tier of teams playing in the PAC-12 division and the second tier playing in the Mountain West division. The plan included adding both North Dakota State and South Dakota State to have 16 football-playing teams. 

The winner of the PAC-12 division would get an automatic bid for the expanded college football playoff. The 8th place finisher of the PAC-12 would get relegated to the Mountain West, while the sixth and seventh place finishers would play against the first and second place winners of the Mountain West to play for a spot in the PAC-12 division. 

In theory, the new format does a lot of good for both conferences, but there are some downsides that could prevent the plan from happening. 

Why is relegation a good idea?

If there’s one thing all college athletic departments can agree on, it’s that cash is king. 

A relegation system would certainly make things interesting and make more fans tune into games that they wouldn’t normally watch. More eyeballs on screens equals more money in the school’s pockets. 

Imagine an end-of-the-season slate of games that features the PAC-12 Championship to decide who goes to the College Football Playoff, along with two games to decide which teams get to play another season against elite competition and which get relegated to the lowly Mountain West. The ratings on those games surely would be better than whatever the PAC-12 Network brings in.

Another positive to a relegation system is that the PAC-12 survives. As bad as the leadership is for the PAC-12, the conference has done a good job maintaining a business structure that can rake in $20 to $30 million a year, split between the teams in the conference. 

Mountain West teams could benefit greatly from the established relationships that the PAC-12 has with ESPN and FOX. According to a July 21 Yahoo Sports article, Mountain West schools currently make anywhere from $3.25 to $4 million dollars a year from the current media deal.

From a storytelling standpoint, relegation could make for some of the best storylines in college sports. The thought of Oregon State, a long-time staple program on the West Coast, losing to a team like North Dakota State is bonkers.

The media coverage for a Cinderella story would make the league even more interesting. 

The fear of relegation and the payoff of promotion makes teams actually care about their football programs. The sense of urgency for coaches and athletic directors would be at an all-time high. No one wants to be the team that got relegated to the lower division, meaning the pressure for coaches to succeed becomes even greater. 

Why relegation is a bad idea?

The big problem with relegation in Europe is that once a team is relegated, it’s very hard for said team to gain back relevance even when it gets back to the top of the league. 

I can point to soccer teams like Sunderland A.F.C who have been stuck in the Champions League (secondary English soccer league) since 2016. Sunderland was considered at one time one of the more iconic English Premier League teams, winning six titles and a runner-up five other times. But after getting relegated, the team has failed to reach the Premier League and has lost money and players to bigger clubs. 

The same could happen if the Mountain West and PAC-12 resort to the same relegation system. A team like the University of New Mexico can easily lose relevance with a couple of bad seasons in the second tier division. 

Teams who continually  lose could be bad for a very long time. It could be much harder than it already is to get recruits to come to bottom-feeder type schools who don’t have a tradition of winning. 

One of the reasons why the American model of sports business is so appealing is because of the chance for teams to get better after a few bad seasons. 

The current state of college football makes it so that it only takes one or two great seasons to get a program back on a winning track. There might be a few seasons of low points, but making a few Bowl games gets a losing team back to winning ways. 

Relegation could make college rebuilds much longer and much more painful.

What happens to San José State in a relegation system?

I can see the Spartans both benefiting and getting hurt in a system like this. 

For starters, the league would have to decide what teams start in what division in the first year of a relegation system, and honestly, SJSU’s chances of joining the PAC-12 division are slim.

Oregon State, Washington State, Boise State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Air Force and Nevada are almost guaranteed to be in the PAC-12 division based on brand power and recent success. The eighth spot could go to SJSU, but I’d argue UNLV, Colorado State and North Dakota State have a better history of winning or are in a prime location that is marketable to TV networks.

The benefit of SJSU being in a relegation league is that the school would make five times more money than it makes now. According to an Aug. 28 Athletic article, San José State’s athletic department breaks even on its profits from school sports. 

More money means more resources for the athletic department to spend on getting players to come to San José. 
And if the Spartans win, they could potentially climb out of the shadow of Cal and Stanford. A Cinderella run that leads to SJSU getting into the College Football Playoff is a huge story even if the Spartans lose to a bigger school like Alabama or USC. 

So far, the relegation idea is just one idea to save the PAC-12 with nothing set in stone, but the fact that the idea is getting discussed is interesting. If the plan does indeed go through, the PAC-12 and Mountain West could change the landscape of college sports forever.