It’s conference realignment… in wrestling, that shook up the league landscape on Wednesday morning. The Pac-12 Conference announced membership for four new schools, with Air Force, Northern Colorado, North Dakota State and South Dakota State leaving the Big 12, and coinciding with the new Pac-12’s launch.
With the announcement, the Pac-12 will have nine teams competing in wrestling beginning with the 2026-27 campaign. Total wrestling membership for the league now meets the minimum requirement of six members for the sport in order to retain NCAA automatic qualification for its annual league champions.
Given the travel options, this makes sense, and likely saves these programs money in the process as well, as the non-revenue sports need to pinch all the pennies they can in today’s college sports landscape. The nine programs also will give the Pac-12 its largest wrestling membership since also having nine schools in the 2008-09 season.
Big 12 Implications
None of the teams leaving the Big 12 finished in the Top 5 of the league standings. Oklahoma State won the conference, followed by Iowa State, Arizona State, Missouri and West Virginia. South Dakota State finished 6th, North Dakota State finished 9th, Air Force finished 11th and Northern Colorado came in last, in 13th place.
None of the individual champions at any weight class came from these schools, with Oklahoma State, Arizona State, Missouri and Iowa State cleaning up with all the individual winners.
The Cowboys remain the class of Big 12 wrestling. Oklahoma State won three individual national titles and finished runner-up as a team at the 2026 NCAA Wrestling Championships, becoming first program in NCAA history to have three freshman national champions in Jax Forrest (133 pounds), Sergio Vega (141 pounds) and Landon Robideau (159 pounds). The trio of crowns also gave the Big 12 Conference its most individual national championships since 2015.
OSU’s runner-up finish to Penn State in the team standings marked the highest finish by a Big 12 program at the NCAA Championships since the Cowboys were runner-up in 2016.
