Realistically, the PAC wasn't going to be in the mix with the SEC/B1G/XII/ACC... but there are 5 conference champs who get autobids, so the goal is to pretty much always get one of those.

Here's the plan they should have pitched to do that - highlighting both regionality and national spread to bring in higher viewership and $$$



4 Divisions/Pods

• Northwest - Oregon State + Washington St + Boise St
• Southwest - San Diego St + Fresno St + UNLV
• Mountain - Colorado St + Air Force + Utah St (USU could be swapped out with Wyoming or New Mexico or Tulsa, but I think USU is best of those options)
• Texas - UTSA + Texas St + Tulane

Every year you play your pod (2 games), plus 2 of the other pods (6 games).  With the 9th game being against the similarly ranked team in the pod you didn't play, setting up a de facto tournament and veefing up the resume of your top teams, making you a near shoo-in for the last conference champion spot.

(For a full read on how this system would work, see here --> https://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=27917164)

In this case, it's great because you have two defacto rivals that you play every year, but still play the other teams at LEAST 2 of every 3 years, with the best teams playing one another even more often.

If you're the PNW or Mountain pod, you're still going to play in California 5 out of every 6 years (2 out of 3 years you'll go against the California conference and half the time you don't play that pod,you'll still travel there in your end-of-season flex game).  Similar story for Texas.

Obviously, this conference doesn't compete with even the Big 12 or ACC.... but a setup like this would make it a rarity that the best non-P4 conference champ doesn't come from the conference.  And that's the goal - we're trying to position ourselves as the best of the rest (behind the SEC and B1G) and this conference would have the same minset....to positions themselves as the clear 5th option