Tuesday, July 1, 2003 | 9:54 a.m.
Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson wasn't surprised on Monday by news that Miami had officially decided to bolt the Big East Conference for the Atlantic Coast Conference. In fact, you got the feeling he almost welcomed it.
Sure, the Mountain West Conference has only eight teams. But as of today, that's two more football teams than a badly wounded Big East. And Thompson is hoping that could open the door at least a crack for his young conference's BCS bowl prospects when the current TV contract expires after the 2005 season.
"I find it kind of ironic that the six BCS conferences were meeting in Chicago today when this all went down," Thompson said from Mountain West headquarters in Colorado Springs. "I think this does help our cause because it creates a different marketplace.
"It absolutely erodes the Big East. They lost their two marquee football programs. It will be interesting to see just what kind of effect that will have when the BCS discusses its next TV contract with ABC over the next 10 to 12 months."
Thompson said the additions Miami and Virginia Tech to what is now an 11-team Atlantic Coast Conference will not speed up the MWC's plans to study its own expansion possibilities. The issue is next scheduled to be addressed at the conference's Board of Directors meetings next June.
"I don't think it does," he said. "We're still going to take a couple of months to set the criteria on whether we should expand or not. We looked at this next year as time for evaluation. Virginia Tech and Miami going to the ACC in 2004 doesn't mean everybody must make a move right now."
Some things Thompson and the rest of the Mountain West will be monitoring in the next few months:
Or does ABC look elsewhere, say west to the Mountain West or the WAC, when it puts together its next TV deal?
Or does it force a playoff game or two from those conferences with the winner garnering one of the coveted $13 million BCS spots?
Although there have been whispers that the Mountain West does have an emergency plan in place just in case all heck should break loose with expansion in the next couple of months, Thompson maintains the conference is still far from making any quick decisions.
"We're so far behind that we're not even talking about individual names or anything," he said. "Based on (Monday's) events I'm not sure which way things will go. Some might say we might need to expand to 12 teams so we can have a football playoff game. But other schools who were around here during the 16-team WAC days might take a different approach when it comes to adding teams."
UNLV senior associate athletic director Jerry Koloskie said just to add a team or teams doesn't necessarily mean that's what best for the conference.
"The Mountain West Conference currently has eight strong teams," he said. "If we add teams and it doesn't help our BCS credentials or meet our academic standards, why add teams?
"I know from our perspective I think our conference is staying on top of the issue just in case. I know the Mountain West Conference presidents and athletic directors all have a pulse on what is going on. It's kind of early to tell what exactly the effect that (the ACC expansion) will have. I don't think anybody was surprised about what happened. But I think we have to be in position to react just in case."
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