Realignment continues to circulate back into the college sports news cycle and the latest move is by a Mountain West program.

San Diego State gave the Mountain West written notice this week that the school “intends to resign from the Mountain West Conference,” ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported. SDSU asked the Mountain West for a “one-month extension given unforeseen delays involving other collegiate athletic conferences beyond.”

San Diego State has long been rumored as a possible addition for the Pac-12, especially in the months after Southern Cal and UCLA made a move to the B1G conference. But Thamel added that as of now, there does not appear to be an invitation to San Diego State from a Power 5 conference.

At issue is the timing of an exit fee.

San Diego State would need to give a year notice to withdraw next June. If they wait past June 30, the exit fee that they’d owe would jump from nearly $16.5 million to nearly $34 million.

About 2 months ago, Saturday Out West’s Jon Gold interviewed SDSU Athletics Director John David Wicker about the state of the program, conference realignment and the Pac-12 rumors.

Asked about conversations with the Pac-12, Wicker said, “I’ll just leave it at we’ve had discussions with a lot of folks, both conference level athletic directors across a variety of different conferences.”

The pending Pac-12 media deal is also a key element of this process.

“The big thing is you don’t believe anything that’s written because it might have some truth to it, but it doesn’t have complete truth to it,” he said. “We have conversations with a lot of different people, athletic directors, conference-level people across the country to understand what’s going on, what’s in their world. I think the big thing right now is the Pac-12 has to figure out their media deal, and then there’s next steps beyond that.”