Who's Conference is it?
How about we do this?
How about playing a rousing game of “Which Conference is Mine?”
Is Fresno State in the WAC or the Mountain West? Is TCU in the Big East or the MWC? Is San Jose State in the Big Sky or the WAC?
Hard to remember these days.
The only clear picture is that poor Boise State is getting the short shrift in all this conference alignment. In June, when BSU announced it was leaving the WAC for the MWC, all seemed fairly bright. The MWC was losing Utah to the Pac-10, but the Broncos still had BYU, TCU and Air Force to bolster the league. Now BYU will be going independent and TCU could soon be gone, too. A report in the New York Post, Tuesday, said the Horned Frogs are looking into joining the Big East.
What that would mean is that the three best teams in the MWC next year could well be the three best teams in the WAC this year: Boise, Fresno and Nevada.
The end game in all this is that the WAC could be headed for extinction. As the MWC loses teams, it can continue to pick up WAC teams. Hawaii, for instance, or Utah State. But the WAC has nowhere to go. Texas State, Cal-Davis and Montana have been mentioned, but really, does the WAC want to become a glorified Big Sky Conference?
WAC Commissioner Karl Benson knows the West has few colleges with enough resources to compete on a FBS level. Perhaps he could broker a merger with the MWC.
One thing seems clear right now: BYU made a good move to go independent. Scheduling will be iffy, but if it had remained with the MWC, it might have seen both Utah and TCU leave, which would have diminished the conference considerably. BYU is one of the few schools with the resources to go independent.
Meanwhile, you have to feel sorry for Boise. It is ranked third in the national polls, yet can’t seem to get where it wants to be – in a stable, rising conference. A MWC with Utah, BYU, TCU, Boise State, Nevada, Fresno State and Air Force would have been just peachy. But a MWC led by Boise, Nevada and Fresno is nothing more than the old WAC.
By this time in 2012, Boise is likely to be playing in essentially the same conference it left.
Good luck getting an automatic BCS berth from there.