Fresno State and Nevada will have one more year to try and take the WAC championship, in football at least. In a reported settlement, the WAC and MWC have reached an agreement that would allow the two schools’ non-football teams to join the Mountain West in 2011, but the football teams would stay for one more year. In return, the WAC has lowered the exit fee to be paid from $5 million to $1 million for each school. The delay gives WAC commissioner Karl Benson time to try and refill the ranks of his conference.
The Mountain West, meanwhile, is going to be in flux over the next few years. Utah and BYU depart after this season, but Boise State will join next year. The following year, Nevada and Fresno State will join as well, meaning that in three years the conference will go from 9 to 8 to 10 members. This, of course, assumes that the conference shuffle will stay dormant over the next few years, something that’s by no means guaranteed, with reports flying that the Big East is interested in Mountain West member TCU, among other schools. But for now, at least, one more piece of the puzzle has fallen in to place.
UPDATE BY BRENDAN: I wonder if this resolution means things will start moving faster now in terms of the WAC’s future plans. I imagine they sort of needed to wait and see how this would shake out before committing to anything. Now, I wonder specifically if they’ll make a play for the (non-football, but improving in basketball) University of Denver, as has been rumored. And if so, I wonder if that will force the WCC’s hand to hurry up and decide what it wants to do. My sense is that DU strongly prefers the WCC (as do I, for obvious reasons — annual home-and-homes with Gonzaga!!) but doesn’t want to risk getting stuck in the geographically ridiculous and not-very-good Sun Belt forever if it spurns the WAC waiting for a call from the WCC that might never come.
I have to admit I was confused for a bit when I saw you re-tweet something from the Sun Belt about basketball. It wasn’t til later in the day that I remember that Denver is in that conference. Too bad they don’t have football, or the WAC could trade them for La Tech (although La Tech doesn’t want to be in the Sun Belt)
Are there any BCS conferences interested in poor ol’ Boise State? You know, that mid major that wins a ton of games but will never, ever be allowed to play for the MNC unless all BCS conference champs have at least 1 loss and the SEC champ has 2 loses? My friend is under the impression that Boise State is just yellow and isn’t in a BCS conference because they want to play weak conference schedules and act indignant when no one cares how many wins they have. I was under the impression that Boise State is not in a BCS conference because it is somewhat isolated up there in Idaho, no one wants to split conference revenues with an additional party in exchange for access to the wonderful Boise media market (although I can’t imagine why), and because outside of football, BSU’s sports programs are like the Idaho countryside: boring, barren, and depressing. Is there ANY BCS program that you guys could see taking Boise State, or are they just SOL?
There are only two BCS conferences that would make any sort of geographic sense for Boise State.
The first and most obvious would be the Pac-10 (soon to be Pac-12) however Boise State does not meet a lot of the criteria that the rest of the Pac-10 schools apply to potential new members. It is not a research institution like the other 12 members for example. The Pac-12 is not likely to be interested in Boise from any sort of media standpoint either. Both Salt Lake and Denver were desireable media markets, Boise is not so much.
The second possibility since the Pac-10/12 is pretty much a non-starter would be the Big-12. However with the loss of Colorado and Nebraska, Boise would be even more geographically seperated from the rest of the conference, and the Big 12 has plenty of closer, just as compelling teams it could pull in such as Houston, TCU, or BYU.
As I see it Boise States best bet for BCS conference membership would be the Mountain West qualifying as an autobid conference. I think its a no brainer that the Mountain West is more BCS worthy than the Big East, and arguably more so than the ACC (look at the current rankings for example). However the loss of both Utah and BYU are going to hurt chances for that happening. Even more devestating would be the loss of TCU.
The only other scenario I can see happening would involve the super conference expansion of the Pac-12 and Big Ten, swallowing up parts of the Big 12 (Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State to Pac-16, Missouri to Big Ten, TAMU to SEC) and Boise, TCU, Airforce, etc. merging with Kanasas, Kansas State, and Baylor to form a new BCS conference. Heck thats what it appeared might actually happen earlier this year before Texas got the rest of its conference to sell out to the Longhorns.