League of extraordinary football

Thursday, Aug. 28, 2003 | 8:48 a.m.

Same tradition, different name.

That's the word Mountain West Conference officials have been trying to get out since 1998, when the schools that formed the nucleus of the old Western Athletic Conference -- Air Force, Brigham Young, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, Utah and Wyoming -- decided to secede from the overgrown WAC, inviting UNLV along for the ride and forming a league of their own.

Mountain West teams, in most cases, have continued to play the type of wide-open football for which the old WAC was known. But they don't always get credit for it as the name change has created confusion among fans and perhaps more important, the college football media.

A nice TV package with ESPN has helped educate the public, but when a reputed publication such as Sports Illustrated can't get it straight -- in its college football preview issue, SI identified Colorado State's Bradlee Van Pelt as "the WAC's best quarterback" -- it's obvious there still is work to be done.

"We've got great TV exposure," said Mountain West associate commissioner Bob Burda, noting the Thursday, Friday and Saturday night games on ESPN that often feature Mountain West teams in prime time, "but there's no quick recipe.

"We're only in our fifth year. You look around the country at some of the other conferences ... the SEC has been around for 70 years and the ACC just marked its 50th anniversary. Those leagues are steeped in tradition, but it hasn't happened overnight."

But it can improve overnight. Case in point was Oct. 19, when the ESPN Game Day crew spent the day on the Air Force campus in Colorado Springs before the Falcons' showdown with Notre Dame.

The Fighting Irish won the battle of unbeatens, 21-14, but the game did a lot to put the Mountain West on the national college football radar screen -- especially when analyst Lee Corso ended the Game Day telecast by donning the head of the Falcons mascot and predicting an Air Force victory.

There was more positive exposure a couple of weeks ago when ESPN.com's Ivan Maisel ranked the Mountain West football coaches No. 6 among the 11 NCAA conferences and ahead of the universally respected Pac-10.

"You could take Air Force's Fisher DeBerry, Colorado State's Sonny Lubick, UNLV's John Robinson and five girls from the Wyoming chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma and have a league filled with great coaches," Maisel wrote.

But it's not ESPN the Mountain West has to impress. It's college football fans and the guys who help form college football's pecking order, the national media, that it must convince.

For instance, Colorado State, which since LaVell Edwards retired at BYU has become the class of the Mountain West under Lubick, did not rank among the Top 25 in Sports Illustrated's annual listing of the nation's 117 teams. The Rams were slotted 27th, followed by New Mexico (44), Air Force (47), BYU (62), Utah (76), San Diego State (88), UNLV (93) and Wyoming (98).

While competitive losses to national powers, such as Air Force's to Notre Dame and Utah's 10-7 loss at Michigan last year, certainly don't hurt the Mountain West's viability, widespread respect probably won't come until MWC teams win a couple of those games.

There will be several more chances this year as MWC teams continue to beef up their nonconference schedules in an attempt to introduce themsleves to a dubious public. Breakthrough opportunities include BYU at Southern Cal, Stanford and Notre Dame, San Diego State at defending national champion Ohio State and UCLA, UNLV at Wisconsin, and Utah at Texas A&M and home to Oregon.

Colorado State opens the season against Big 12 brother Colorado on a neutral field, but the Rams have more than held their own against the Buffaloes, having won three of the past four games in their bitter feud.

A few more wins of that ilk would certainly go a long way toward enhancing the Mountain West's reputation and its viability as a Bowl Championship Series participant, if and when the BCS decides to expand.

But until then, the MWC must be content to fall back on the deep and widespread football tradition of its members: