Texas State's unlikely climb up the college sports ladder

The Bobcats, a perennial loser at the FBS level until two years ago, are on their way to the Pac-12. It's a move that makes sense the more you look at it

For the past 10 months, since it added Utah State to its ranks, the Pac-12 had been in a race against time.

The reforming league was replenishing its membership for a long-awaited relaunch ahead of the 2026 football season, but it needed an eighth football-playing school to qualify under NCAA rules as an FBS conference. Throughout that nearly year-long stretch, questions and speculation persisted over who that would be.

Now, we have an answer.

The Pac-12 headed east for the all-important eighth piece in the league’s rebirth, with Texas State being unveiled as the conference’s newest addition on June 30, one day before its exit fee to leave the Sun Belt doubled from $5 million to $10 million.

It’s an interesting move in a number of ways. It stretches the Pac-12 into not only the central time zone, but perhaps the most talent-rich state nationally for football. It’s perhaps a sign of what sort of options were available to commissioner Teresa Gould, with the Pac-12 turning its eyes to the Sun Belt rather than schools like Memphis and Tulane from the American Athletic Conference that were widely mentioned early on as possibilities.

Most of all, though, it’s the latest and biggest step forward for a university that has rapidly ascended the college sports hierarchy. A school with a football program that was struggling at the FCS level as recently as 21 years ago is now an integral piece in a historic conference’s rebuilding efforts.

The Pac-12’s newest member was, until recently, a football afterthought

In a football-obsessed state, Texas State was long an afterthought, perpetually in the shadows of the state’s powerhouses that resided in the Southwest Conference, the Big 12 and, now, the SEC.

Even compared to its soon-to-be conference mates, the Bobcats’ football history is relatively sparse, at least at the FBS level.