BSU is Looking Too Far Out
In the Department of Chutzpah, we present Boise State president Dr. Bob Kustra, whose football team has yet to play a game in the Mountain West, yet is already talking Pac-10.
Kustra told KTVB’s Viewpoint program, Sunday, that in a decade or so he hopes BSU gets in the Pac-10, which by then will at least be the Pac-12.
You can hardly blame Kustra for thinking about it. After all, when he joined the MWC in June, Utah and BYU were there. Next season — BSU’s first in the conference — the Utes and Cougars will be gone. But thinking about it and talking about it are two different things.
Kustra deserves some credit for admitting BSU will need to drastically improve its academic profile to be considered by the Pac-10. And he’s not talking about leaving the MWC today.
“It might be ten years before the Pac 10 looks at us from an academic standpoint,” he said.
Still, there’s something annoying about a school that is looking for its next move before it has even settled into the last one, like a person who starts looking for another job on the first day of his new job.
There’s no denying the Broncos have made impressive progress on the field. In the last 20 years BSU has gone from the Big Sky Conference, to the Big West, to the WAC and now to the Mountain West. But there is such a thing as being too ambitious. It can’t be comforting for MWC commissioner Craig Thompson to know that a university that was only admitted three months ago is already talking about moving.
All of which makes tonight’s Bronco-Virginia Tech game interesting. If BSU wins, it will remain on track for its long-term plan, though it’s doubtful that even in 10 years that BSU would be up to the Pac-10s academic standards. Either way, for now Kustra would do well to stand down and concentrate on the job at hand — impressing the new conference. He can talk about the Pac-10 behind closed doors.