Latest news with #GJKinne
Yahoo
30-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Texas State in the Pac-12: The Sports Office
Texas State has joined the revamped Pac-12 Conference. Can the Bobcats become an instant threat in the new look football conference? Who is Texas State's next great rival? Will this help them in recruiting and keep head coach G.J. Kinne in San Marcos a little longer? Dennis and Julian break it down and also welcome on Mike "Hardball" Hardge to give his thoughts.
Forbes
01-07-2025
- Sport
- Forbes
Conference Realignment - Texas State Football Joins Pac-12 Movement
DALLAS, TX - January 03: Texas State Bobcats coach GJ Kinne lifts the trophy while celebrating with ... More running back Torrance Burgess Jr. (22) after winning the SERVPRO First Responder Bowl between the North Texas Mean Green and Texas State Bobcats on Friday, January 03, 2025 at Gerald J. Ford Stadium in Dallas,TX. (Photo by Austin McAfee/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) A few FBS programs made their conference realignment transitions official on July 1 with more college football movement coming, especially in the Pac-12. Heading into the 2025 season, Delaware and Missouri State are making the jump from FCS to FBS where they'll compete in Conference USA. This brings the 2025 FBS membership to 136 teams. Additionally, UMass is abandoning its independent status for the MAC where it resided from 2012-15. This latest round of conference realignment does not bring nearly as much buzz as the previous summer that saw Texas join the SEC as the highlight of major Power 4 movement. The rebuild of the Pac-12 is the focal point of this next edition of realignment as it puts the finishing touches on its membership. Pac-12 Realignment The Pac-12 has been a significant realignment loser after 10 teams exited the conference before the 2024 college football season. It watched Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Colorado, Oregon, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Utah and Washington leave for other conferences. The Pac-12 will continue to consist of Oregon State and Washington State through this upcoming season, but the conference made another move to reach the eight-team minimum to qualify as an FBS conference in 2026. Texas State officially announced it's leaving the Sun Belt for the Pac-12, which will be the sixth program to join the conference before the 2026 college football season. The Bobcats will be in the Sun Belt for the final year this fall before joining Washington State, Oregon State, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State in the next edition of the Pac-12. Gonzaga is a ninth member but does not have a football program. It seems like the Pac-12 is set with its 2026 eight-team football conference for now, but realignment news can move quickly. Conference Realignment Tracker In case you're not keeping score so here's a quick look at the FBS movement that's coming over the next two seasons: This has not been made official, but On3's Brett McMurphy reported Louisiana Tech is expected to leave Conference USA for the Sun Belt. This would bring the Bulldogs to the same conference as Louisiana and Louisiana-Monroe.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Texas State officially joins rebuilt Pac-12 as eighth football member
The Pac-12 has found its eighth football member. Texas State is set to join the conference ahead of the 2026 football season as the Pac-12 continues to rebuild following its mass defections in the summer of 2024. Advertisement The Bobcats have been at the top level of college football for just 13 seasons. After a season in the WAC, Texas State joined the Sun Belt and has been in the conference for the past dozen years. After back-to-back 4-8 seasons in 2021 and 2022, the school hired former Tulsa quarterback G.J. Kinne and it has made a bowl game in each of the past two seasons. Kinne's teams went 8-5 in both 2023 and 2024 and have ended the seasons with wins in the First Responder Bowl. Those were the first postseason games for the program. Texas State's move to the Pac-12 had been reported on for some time and had a financial deadline of sorts on July 1. Starting next month, the school's Sun Belt exit fee would have jumped from $5 million to $10 million. The Pac-12 is set to play in 2025 with just Washington State and Oregon State for a second season after the two programs failed to find homes in the ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten before the 2024 season. After 2025, the conference will add five schools from the Mountain West in addition to Texas State. Advertisement Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State are joining the Pac-12 in 2026, while Gonzaga will be a non-football member in the conference. An eight-team league gives each team in the Pac-12 seven conference games before needing to play another opponent twice. A nine or 10-team league would work out even better; teams could play eight or nine conference games without having to play someone else twice.
New York Times
27-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Why the Pac-12 is adding Texas State, how it rebuilt and next steps in realignment
The Pac-12 Conference has extended an offer to Texas State to join the league in July 2026, and barring any late changes, the school is expected to officially accept the invitation on Monday, according to multiple people briefed on the Pac-12's decision. The Austin Sports Journal first reported the news. Advertisement The Bobcats will become the conference's eighth football-playing full member and finally give the rebuilt league the minimum number of members to continue as an NCAA conference. After years of collapse and uncertainty, the Pac will be back. The move will come almost three years to the day that USC and UCLA announced their move to the Big Ten, which started a chain of events that led 10 of 12 Pac-12 members to depart for the Big Ten, Big 12 or ACC. It left just Oregon State and Washington State holding the mantle of a century-old league. Instead of folding and joining a Group of 5 conference, they chose to rebuild, adding five schools from the Mountain West, non-football member Gonzaga from the West Coast Conference and soon Texas State from the Sun Belt Conference. Texas State is in San Marcos, a booming college town nestled between Austin and San Antonio. Its football program moved up to FBS in 2012, and the Bobcats are coming off their first two bowl seasons in program history and have a rising coach in G.J. Kinne. They've also won three of the last four Vic Bubas Cups, awarded to the top-performing school in the Sun Belt across all sports. It was important for Pac-12 stakeholders to get into Texas, something former commissioners had tried. Under Larry Scott, the Pac-12 once almost became the Pac-16, with Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech. Texas State isn't that, but the state brings a valuable recruiting area and a third time zone. It's also a fast-growing school, now with more than 40,000 students. Monday, the Pac-12 announced CBS would be its primary TV partner, part of a full media rights package that is not yet finished but is expected to include up to four broadcast partners. CBS will air at least three football and men's basketball games on the main CBS network channel, along with the conference championship game in both sports. CBS Sports Network will also air Pac-12 content. Advertisement As the old Pac-12 crumbled and scattered to other conferences, many industry observers expected Oregon State and Washington State to fold into the Mountain West. The pair even made a football scheduling agreement with the MWC for the 2024 season. But when the sides couldn't come to terms on a 2025 schedule, the Pac-2 went on the offensive. Four Mountain West schools announced last September they would jump to the rebuilding Pac-12 with OSU and WSU, shedding the MWC schools they felt didn't invest as much and trying to better position themselves for the next round of conference realignment. 'This is about the next five years,' one school official told The Athletic. The group turned to schools in the American Athletic Conference like Memphis, Tulane, South Florida and UTSA, hoping to create a top conference outside the Power 4. But questions and concerns about the Pac-12's financial projections, along with the cost of leaving the AAC and its ESPN TV deal, led those schools to stay put. The Pac-12 turned back to Mountain West options and convinced Utah State to join, but UNLV and Air Force stuck with the MWC, thanks to tens of millions in financial guarantees from the league for staying. The Pac-12 added basketball powerhouse Gonzaga, a non-football school, but remained one football school short of the eight members required by July 2026. So the league put its staggered expansion on pause and focused on securing its media rights deal, getting concrete numbers to take back to prospective members. That happened this spring and into the summer. Along the way, the Pac-12 sued the MWC over poaching fees that were part of the 2024 schedule agreement. Some of the departing schools also sued the MWC over exit fees. Around $150 million is owed to the MWC over those moves, per the contracts. However, the sides have been in mediation for more than a month. They could agree on a smaller settlement, or it could continue in court. Those prospective funds were used to convince UNLV and Air Force to stay in the MWC. Advertisement 'They want to walk back what they legally agreed to,' the MWC said in a statement last year. 'There has to be a consequence to these types of actions.' While 'Power 4' is not an official term, the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC are 'autonomy' conferences, a group that can make some of its own rules. That group voted last year to remove the two-member Pac-12 from autonomy ranks, and it's not expected to get voted back in. That means the new Pac-12 gives us a 'Group of 6' outside the Power 4, beginning next year. The auto-bid discussion around a potential 4-4-2-2-1 College Football Playoff format change would group the Pac-12 with the current G5 for a single bid, if that format happens. On the football field, the Pac-12 will look to be similar to the AAC. Five of the future eight Pac-12 members made a bowl game last year, and Boise State reached the College Football Playoff as a conference champion. The AAC had nine bowl teams, and Navy beat Oklahoma in its bowl. Those leagues are likely to battle for a CFP spot in most years, given their depth, but the Sun Belt continues to improve each year as well, and teams such as UNLV in the Mountain West and Liberty in Conference USA could also get in the mix. Or a team could emerge from an evenly matched MAC like Western Michigan did in 2016. In men's basketball, the Pac-12 should be a strong conference. Four of the nine teams made last year's NCAA Tournament, Gonzaga is an annual powerhouse and San Diego State played in the national championship game two seasons ago. The Pac-12 says its makeup of teams would have the fourth-best average NET rating over the last five years, ahead of the Big East and ACC. The eight schools that were on board before the Texas State invitation signed a grant of rights last year, which runs through June 2031, according to membership terms made last year and obtained by The Athletic. Those terms indicate media rights will be shared equally across all full members. Schools will also keep 50 percent of any earned NCAA basketball tournament units for themselves and share the remaining 50 percent equally. Group of 6 schools will each receive around $1.8 million annually from the CFP, even for those moving from the MWC to the Pac-12, with no participation bonus for making the field. But before it begins play, the Pac-12 must finish the rest of its TV deal. Though the value of potential TV deals was a driving factor in its conversations with prospective members, the actual final number is still not known because the other parts of the deal are not complete. The Pac-12's media rights also impact the Mountain West, whose TV deal that currently includes CBS and Fox expires in mid-2026. The MWC responded to its membership losses by making Hawaii an all-sports member, adding UTEP in all sports, UC Davis and Grand Canyon in sports except football, and Northern Illinois as a football-only member. That league's TV negotiations are also ongoing. Texas State's impending move doesn't quite finish the conference realignment that began four years ago with Texas' and Oklahoma's move to the SEC. To fill the Bobcats' spot, the Sun Belt is expected to move quickly and is focused on Louisiana Tech or Western Kentucky from CUSA, a person briefed on the Sun Belt's thinking said. Louisiana Tech is a better geographic fit despite its recent football struggles and would give the SBC three teams in the state. CUSA will expand to 12 members this year, with Delaware and Missouri State coming up from the Football Championship Subdivision. If CUSA drops to 10 by losing UTEP and someone else, it most likely will stick with an even 10 schools for the time being, rather than attempt to add another FCS school, a person familiar with the league's thinking said. The MAC is also set to add UMass this year and lose NIU next year, putting it at 12 schools for 2026. Advertisement The Pac-12 might not be done, either. The idea of affiliate members like Saint Mary's basketball or Dallas Baptist baseball has been discussed, according to people involved in the talks. While this round of conference realignment nears its end, we might be only a few years away from the next round, when Power 4 media rights deals begin to come up. Schools that joined the new Pac-12 have acknowledged this move isn't about setting up the next 20 years. It was about positioning themselves for five years from now and whatever the next change in college sports looks like. We have a Big Ten with 18 teams and an ACC on both coasts. The Pac-12 is not what it used to be, but it's still alive. For the schools set to join it, that still means something.
Miami Herald
14-05-2025
- Sport
- Miami Herald
Texas State Preview 2025: GJ Kinne's Bobcats About to Keep Winning
No offense to Texas State University, but it's a minor miracle that GJ Kinne remains in San 36-year-old is making significantly less than a top college quarterback - under a million a year - and all he's accomplished is a 12-2 record with Incarnate Word, finishing No. 3 in the FCS in 2022, before coming to Texas State and elevating the program several Bobcats have only been in the FBS since 2012, achieving three winning seasons over 13 years. Kinne is responsible for two of those seasons with 16 wins at a place that managed just 16 victories in the six years before his arrival. The defense improved dramatically last season, the offense remained roughly the same, and … there was a shocking lack of the Bobcats have to beat all of the teams they're supposed year, they lost to a Georgia State squad that went 3-9 and to an Old Dominion squad that didn't go bowling. Win those types of games, and a Sun Belt title will be in time to get greedy and ask for a little bit more in Year Three under Kinne. Texas State Bobcats Preview 2025: Offense X CFN, Fiu | CFN Facebook | Bluesky Fiu, CFN Texas State Bobcats Preview 2025: Offense - There's been no problem fining quarterbacks in the portal who want to lead the attack. This year, the Bobcats have three options ready to give it a McCoy (Oregon State) has the most upside if he can cut down on the picks, Nate Yarnell saw plenty of work last year at Pitt, and Holden Geriner is an interesting option from Dawn is a dangerous threat on the outside - he caught six touchdown throws as part of the rotation - and transfers Mavin Anderson (Cal) and Tyrin Smith (UTEP and then Cincinnati) have the experience to fit in immediately. - Losing all-around running back star Ismail Mahdi to Arizona hurts. Lincoln Pare is back after finishing second on the team with 554 yards and with a team-high eight scores, and Torrance Burgess added over six yards per carry on his chances.- The offensive front might be making some big changes, but it's more than solid. It's also relatively homegrown around the tackle Dorion Strawn and 327-pound guard Tellek Lockette. Texas State Bobcats Preview 2025: Defense - The defense was good, but when it missed, it missed big. Few teams in college football were better at coming up with tackles for loss, the pass rush was great, and the run defense was terrific at times. But when the run D was bad, it was a struggle going 1-4 when allowing 170 yards or more.- Top pass rusher Kalil Alexander is back along with fellow end Jo'Lauson Landry. These two are great on the outside, and the tackles will be okay if Syracuse transfer Michael Nwokoacha can hold up right away. The back seven is loaded up with transfers around safety Ryan Nolan, the team's second-leading tackler. The cornerbacks are a bit green, but Khamari Terrell (Oregon) will linebacking corps is all about the transfers, starting with TCU's Terrence Cooks - be shocked if he's not one of the team's leading tacklers. Texas State Bobcats Key to the Season Score a whole lot of defense was and should be better, but Texas State will still need the offense to keep its foot on the gas. In two seasons under GJ Kinne, the Bobcats are 15-2 when they score more than 31 points and 1-8 when they don't. Expect every game to be a shootout again. Texas State Bobcats Key Player Gevani McCoy, QB McCloud was terrific last season hitting 70% of his passes with 30 touchdown throws. He was a good runner and scored seven times, but he wasn't as dangerous on the ground as McCoy will McCoy isn't a sure thing to grab the gig, but he can move - he ran for 328 yards and five scores in his limited time with the Beavers last year - and showed flashes with the passing game. Texas State Bobcats Top Transfer, Biggest Transfer Loss Top Transfer In: Tyrin Smith, WR fifth-year senior had a fantastic 2022 at UTEP - 71 catches for 1,039 yards and five scores - but he missed most of the following year and most of last year at Cincinnati. The veteran has a shot to be a No. 1 target if he can stay Transfer Out: Joshua Eaton, CB starting as a three-year reserve at Oklahoma, Eaton turned into a strong playmaking corner for Texas State over the last two seasons. He has yet to pick off a pass, but he made 49 tackles with 13 broken-up passes for the Bobcats. Now he'll be part of the Michigan State secondary. Texas State Bobcats Key Game at Arkansas State, Oct. 4James Madison will be a problem, and going to Louisiana will be dangerous, but starting out the Sun Belt season on the road against the Red Wolves will be the big test case. Pull this off, and the Bobcats will be players in the conference chase. Lose, even early on, and it'll be an uphill battle in the strong West division.- 2025 Texas State Bobcats Schedule Breakdown Texas State Bobcats Top 10 Players 1. Kalil Alexander, EDGE Sr.2. Ryan Nolan, S Jr.3. Lincoln Pare, RB Sr.4. Chris Dawn, WR Jr.5. Gevani McCoy, QB Sr.6. Jo'Lauson Landry, EDGE Soph.7. Nate Yarnell, QB Sr.8. Tyrin Smith, WR Sr.9. Dorion Strawn, OT Sr.10. Kamren Washington, DT Jr. Texas State Bobcats 2024 Fun Stats - 1st Quarter Scoring: Texas State 161, Opponents 62- Sacks: Texas State 36 for 281 yards, Opponents 19 for 99 yards- Passing Touchdowns: Texas State 31, Opponents 13 Texas State Bobcats 2025 Season Prediction, Win Total, What Will Happen The team will be just fine with all the new parts and changes across the starting 22, but the schedule will be far, far more of a trip to Arizona State is bad enough, but having to go to UTSA, Arkansas State, and Louisiana will be challenging. But just like the last two seasons, the Bobcats will crank up enough offense to win most shootouts, but there will be just enough duds - watch out for the trip to Southern Miss - to keep this from being a Sun Belt title The Texas State Bobcats Win Total At … 7.5Likely Wins: Eastern Michigan, Nicholls50/50 Games: at Arkansas State, James Madison, at Louisiana, at Marshall, South Alabama, at Southern Miss, Troy, ULM, at UTSALikely Losses: at Arizona State © 2025 The Arena Group Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
