Editor’s Note: This is a column and does not reflect the views or opinions of the Daily Barometer.
Nearly a year after beginning the search, the Pac-12 conference will make its grand return with its ninth official team joining, but what does this all mean for the Beavers?
Hailing from San Marcos, Texas, the Texas State Bobcats round out the conference as the final football-playing team needed to solidify the return of the Pac.
This comes at the perfect time, as a new deal with CBS now guarantees the television rights for several Pac-12 football and men’s basketball games to be aired on CBS and conjointly on their streaming platform, Paramount Plus.
The conference will officially make its grand return in the fall of 2026.
With nine total teams (only eight of whom can participate in football), the new conference will consist of Oregon State, Washington State, Colorado State, Boise State, Utah State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Gonzaga (non-football), and Texas State.
Now, what does this mean for OSU?
For starters, the Pac-12 will return in conference play, along with conference championship games. The more in-conference wins OSU has, the more the Beavs’ case for playoffs in many sports will be legitimized.
A Pac-12 title win would do the same.
Case in point: football. If the Beavs won several in-conference matchups and brought home a conference title, they would have a greater chance of making a bowl game and the larger, formatted college football playoffs.
If the Beavs won a Power Five conference championship and maintained a positive win record against D1 programs, a spot in the postseason might be possible.
Road games also now have new meaning.
Returning to big school stadiums for the first time in three years sounds like a short turnaround, but one could wonder whether or not the Beavs have gotten comfortable in their current position.
This past year, OSU sports programs primarily played schools out of other non-Power Five conferences, sometimes on an independent schedule. So how will going into harsher environments with similarly packed stadiums to that of Goss affect them?
As it is, this year alone saw most teams struggle on the road with men’s baseball being OSU’s only “Big Four” team to have a positive win record on the road. The men’s and women’s basketball teams, along with the football team, all finished with losing records on the road.
This will be a point to keep an eye on if the Beavs must make trips into conference matchups at Boise, Boulder, or now San Marcos.
However, in this modern college sports landscape, money has to be on everyone’s mind, as well as how Name, Image and Likeness will affect the new Pac.
NIL, which allows players to profit off of their likeness being used, has become the new norm. Nowadays, one can assume that with more serious conference play on the horizon, OSU recruiting will also become more serious.
Possibly, even a few top recruits now land on OSU’s radar and are pursued more aggressively. And of course, the school needs to find or accumulate more money to pay these said top recruits, which could become a headline in and of itself.
With the Pac-12 set to return in 2026, Oregon State has a lot of questions to answer until then, but they’ll surely be ready to meet them ahead of the return.
