Pac-12 merging with MWC becomes a new possibility if George Kliavkoff loses more schools in the conference re-alignments: Reports

The Pac-12 could be merging with the Mountain West Conference, according to reports.

The Pac-12 has recently lost USC, UCLA and Colorado, and reports indicate that Utah and other schools are also close to leaving. With that, the future of the Pacific-12 is murky at best, but now it appears Commissioner George Kliavkoff has a new idea.

According to MHver3 on Twitter, the Pac-12 could merge with the MWC should the conference lose more schools like Utah.

"Got some info this morning from our friends at SDSU who have been blowing up BY’s phone the past 2 days: GK reached out last night to Nevarez to open dialogue about the possibilities of a MWC/PAC merger in the event PAC loses multiple schools," the tweet reads.

On paper, a merger between the Pac-12 and MWC does make sense, especially if schools like Utah, Arizona and ASU leave. Although the Pacific-12 would no longer be a premier conference, it still would be able to remain a conference and bring in revenue.

The MWC, meanwhile, has 12 teams with it, like Boise State, Air Force, Wyoming, Utah State, Colorado State, New Mexico, Fresno State, San Jose State, San Diego State, UNLV, Hawaii and Nevada.

Adding those schools to the Pac-12 would be significant for them, but it still is unknown if the merger will actually go through.

---

George Klivakoff was looking to expand Pac-12

Although the Pac-12 has lost several key schools, commissioner George Kliavkoff has said they want to expand.

The plan was for the Pacific-12 to get its media rights deal done before the conference looks to expand, according to Kliavkoff.

"Regarding potential expansion, while we have already done the due diligence on expansion candidates many months ago and significantly narrowed our focus to a handful of schools, our sequence remains unchanged," Kliavkoff said back in July.

"First, we will conclude our media rights deals, then our schools will sign our Grant of Rights, which has already been negotiated, and only then will we decide on potential expansion," he added.

Currently, according to reports, the Pac-12 proposed a streaming deal with Apple as its main media rights deal. However, the pay the schools would receive is not even close to what other conferences get, which is why Utah and other schools could look to be leaving the conference.