Sources confirm to @ESPNAndyKatz that BYU is indeed “closing in on football independence”: http://es.pn/c6tp03. Boise, TCU, MWC #PANIC
Sources confirm to @ESPNAndyKatz that BYU is indeed “closing in on football independence”: http://es.pn/c6tp03. Boise, TCU, MWC #PANIC
Crazy! I figured there might be some MW/WAC shake up after the whole Pac-10 to Pac-16 scenario played out, but I didn’t anticipate in a million years that BYU would go independent.
Brendan, you allready hinted at this, but rather than merging and spliting the conference football wise, why not be the first super conference?
You have two 8 team divisions and a conference championship game at the end.
An East/West split is easy:
WEST
Boise State
Idaho
Nevada
UNLV
Hawaii
Fresno State
San Jose State
San Diego State
EAST
Wyoming
Colorado State
Air Force
New Mexico
New Mexico State
TCU
UTEP/Louisianna Tech/BYU
Utah State
If they do this before BYU lands anywhere they could all end up screwing the Cougars by giving them no place to land for their other sports.
Of course we could also see the Mountain West turn asunder with part going west to join (or re-join) the WAC and part going east to join Conference USA.
Also, maybe this causes the Big 12 to rethink things a bit and make a play for TCU? Or do the Texas schools not want another in state team at their level.
I’ve promoted the super-conference idea in the past, but the problem is, without either BYU or Utah, I don’t think there’s enough heft at the top to offset all the dead weight at the bottom. Perception-wise, the 16-team conference you’ve outlined would be seen as Last Year’s Fiesta Bowl and the Fourteen Dwarves. That’s why I think they’d be better off ditching some of the lower-tier teams and consolidating as an 8-, 9-, or 10- team conference without the New Mexico State, Utah States, Idahos and San Jose States. That way, although your top tier isn’t as great as you’d have hoped because Utah and BYU are gone, your middle and bottom tiers improve significantly, which is probably better in the long run than having a really top-heavy conference that continues to be dragged down by the preponderance of terrible teams — the chief problem that has faced both the Mountain West and, especially, the WAC in recent years.
Barring my almost certainly unworkable I-A / I-AA divisional split, I’d say this would be a pretty good 10-team conference:
Boise State
TCU
Air Force
Nevada
Fresno State
UNLV
*2 of New Mexico / San Diego State / San Jose State
**2 of Houston / SMU / Tulsa / UTEP
* = included primarily for TV market (rather than competitive) purposes
** = poached from Conference USA
Apparently there has been a push to try and get the three Cal schools together in one conference for awhile now, so if we are to go with your proposal (which is a good one)
BSU, TCU, AF, Nevada, UNLV, Fresno State, San Jose State, San Diego State + 2 others.
Trouble is we’re now talking about shipping half of one conference off to join the other (and vice versa). Not to mention kicking out current members (like Wyoming and CSU). I suppose the interested schools could just start a NEW conference and the remaining schools would then band together out of necessitty, but I don’t see the lesser schools being super enthusiastic about grouping together and losing the revenue that the better schools bring in.
How about this:
Mountain West (2011 style)
Air Force
Boise State (from WAC)
Fresno State (from WAC)
Nevada (from WAC)
UNLV
SDSU
TCU
Wyoming
UTEP (from C-USA)
Houston (from C-USA)
WAC (2011)
Colorado State (from MW)
New Mexico (from MW)
Hawaii
Idaho
New Mexico State
San Jose State
Utah State
Portland State (from Big Sky)
Montana (from Big Sky)
Conf-USA (2011)
SMU
Rice
Tulsa
Memphis
So. Miss
Tulane
UAB
Marshall
E Carolina
C Florida
Lousianna Tech (from WAC)
+ some team from Sun Belt to get back to 12
Wait, what? I must not be fully awake yet. I thought there was a gentlemen’s agreement that college football fans weren’t going to be given any more cause for heart attacks before the season actually started.
I suppose I should read some stuff and find out what’s going on.