There’s a group chat for staffers at the Pac-12 office, the people most directly torn between the celebration of a wildly successful athletic year and the uncertainty of the conference’s overall collapse. The chat’s name is “Team Back the Pac,” and messages have been flying frantically since Thursday as staffers at tournament sites across the country have celebrated big wins together.

“We’re really, really proud,” new Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould said by phone this week. “We’re trying to continue to serve the membership between now and June 30. We’re watching these games. And as sad as it is, because all these folks on our team are not going to be part of serving these institutions moving forward, we are proud of all the collaboration and good work we’ve done in this league.”

The Pac-12 got off to a very hot start in the men’s NCAA Tournament. And despite some tough close losses in the round of 32, by Sunday night the conference’s record stood at 6-3, with No. 2 seed Arizona through to the Sweet 16 and still very much alive in this win-or-go-home tournament.

That record did not escape notice, particularly because it came in the final year of the Pac-12 as we know it. By August, 10 current members of the conference will be housed elsewhere, with USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon off to the Big Ten, the so-called Four Corners schools (Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State) headed to the Big 12, and Stanford and Cal joining the ACC.

But this month, Arizona, Washington State, Oregon and Colorado all count as Pac-12 members, which means their wins generate money for the conference they’re about to leave. Each men’s team that participates in March Madness earns a sliver of NCAA Tournament revenue called a “unit” for making the field and then one unit for each subsequent win. First Four victories count, too. Each NCAA Tournament unit is worth just over $2 million and is paid out over the course of six years.

That brings the Pac-12’s total haul so far to 10 units equaling more than $20 million. Arizona has an opportunity to add even more to the pot next weekend, starting with its Thursday night matchup with Clemson.

That revenue will come to the two Pac-12 members left behind by their peers: Washington State and Oregon State, which won a hard-fought legal battle to retain control of the Pac-12 brand and its assets late last year. Their presidents make up a two-member Pac-12 Board, and they recently replaced commissioner George Kliavkoff with Gould, a longtime league administrator who will help the two-team Pac-12 attempt to survive as best it can for the next two years as it figures out its long-term future.

NCAA bylaws allow conferences a two-year grace period to return to a minimum of eight members if schools decamp for other leagues. After that time, Oregon State and Washington State’s options essentially reduce to two main possibilities: Join a Power 4 conference or rebuild the Pac-12, most likely with all of the Mountain West schools due to language in OSU and WSU’s football scheduling agreement with the league.

“Those ongoing NCAA units from past years and future years stay with the conference,” Gould said. “The most important thing during this two-year grace period is, financially, that we’re able to support these programs at a high level so they can stay nationally competitive.”

As Washington State and Oregon State face the future, they know every dollar counts. In their new position as partial football-playing members of the Mountain West and affiliate members of the West Coast Conference in most other sports, they will not be bringing in nearly the same kind of annual revenue from media rights as they were as members of a 10-team Pac-12.

Gould fought hard to gain increased payouts for the two schools in the latest round of College Football Playoff negotiations. Oregon State and Washington State will receive $3.6 million each annually for at least the years 2026-28, a source involved in the CFP negotiations confirmed. That is a critical cash infusion, even though the pair would hope to be members of a conference by that point, as it is past the two-year grace period.

“As we are working on different conference affiliation scenarios for the future, we have to keep these programs competitive and relevant — and that takes resources,” Gould said. “Conferences don’t look the way they normally look because the lion’s share of the conference distribution historically has been from a media rights deal.”

Gould said that the conference is working on its media rights deal for WSU and OSU home football games, but it won’t be anywhere near what they’re accustomed to getting. The schools are paying the Mountain West $14 million in exchange for their pseudo-conference schedule this fall.

That’s where tournament units come into play. Gould said the 10 units (and counting) earned from the 2024 NCAA Tournament are high for the league, with recent years averaging about six units per postseason. The high-water mark came in 2021 when the Pac-12 landed 18 units, boosted by UCLA’s run from the First Four to the Final Four.

“Those units coming into the conference are super, super important to keeping those programs nationally competitive and relevant,” Gould said.

Although it’s easiest to count units by their total millions, they do not arrive in a lump sum. So, the conference’s 2024 revenue is impacted by the past six NCAA Tournaments, dating back to 2018. Next year’s revenue will be affected by all of the tournaments dating back to 2019. And so on.

“What we’re trying to do to find a sustainable, viable home for those programs, and whether that’s a rebuild, whether that’s a merger, or lots of different scenarios that could pan out, it’s important that we as an entity have assets,” Gould said. “The accumulation of units beyond the next two years, the next three, four, five, six — the more units we have, the more assets we have to bring to the table for our future strategy.”

That same line of thinking applies to the CFP revenue distributions for the two schools. It gives them value to bring to a new conference.

Tournament units only stay with the conference if it continues to exist as a legal entity. If the Pac-12 were to officially dissolve, the units would revert back to the schools that earned them. That’s another reason it’s important that WSU and OSU maintained the Pac-12 brand and its tax ID, which is used to identify a business entity. A settlement agreement between the 10 departing schools and the two remaining members, finalized on Monday, allows Oregon State and Washington State to withhold $50 million in distributions to the exiting schools and to receive an additional $15 million in combined payments from their soon-to-be-former leaguemates.

The future of the Pac-12 remains solidified for the short term and murky for the long term, but the final athletic year for the league’s current version is ending with a bang. It sent a football team to play for a national championship. Its men’s basketball teams have earned 10 units (and counting). Its women’s basketball teams entered Monday’s action 10-1 in the early stages of their tournament (which doesn’t distribute units based on performance). Gould and the rest of the Pac-12 staff have been zig-zagging around the country to support their teams in both the men’s and women’s brackets, and they’ll continue to do so next weekend.

With all that activity comes a sense of finality and loss.

“The word bittersweet embodies that,” Gould said. “It’s been so hard on a personal level for everybody on our staff. … But it’s like, ‘OK, we’re going to go out on a positive note.’ I think that’s how people are feeling. There’s just a overwhelming sense of excitement and pride about what we’ve been able to do in this conference. Obviously, that’s balanced and tempered with the sadness. But right now, people are just really excited, including me.”

(Photo: Steven Branscombe / USA Today)