Mountain West additions of Utah State, San Jose State part of larger move

By Taylor Bern

Friday, May 4, 2012 | noon

The addition of Utah State and San Jose State was Phase One of the Mountain West Conference’s ongoing restructuring, Commissioner Craig Thompson said in a conference call Friday.

The two schools will officially join the league on July 1, 2013, a result of several meetings, conference calls and discussions about how to best move forward in an uncertain landscape. Both schools will pay an entrance fee that Thompson declined to disclose.

Thompson said the announcement was a “strategic placement,” as Conference USA also announced expansion Friday, adding five schools that will make the move next summer.

The two conferences have been working together for several months on a possible merger or partnership that would benefit both sides. Thompson said Friday was the first step to continuing in that direction.

“It was important at this time to stabilize our memberships and get to a point of the members that would be involved going forward,” Thompson said.

From here, there are still almost limitless options as the realignment picture continues to change. “Everything’s going to be evolutionary,” Thompson said.

The leagues still have to address scheduling, TV exposure and revenue, championship games, semifinal games and what a partnership would actually look like.

As for football championship games, C-USA will be able to hold one in 2013 because its additions will keep the league at 12 members (13 once Charlotte moves to FBS in 2015). The Mountain West is currently at 10 football teams for 2013, but that’s still subject to change, Thompson said.

Idaho and New Mexico State made presentations to the league. San Diego State and Boise State are set to leave next summer, and while Thompson was adamant that those schools wouldn’t be able to keep their Olympic sports in the league while the football programs leave for the Big East, he said he’s not opposed to letting them rejoin the conference for all sports.

“I think there is room at the table,” Thompson said.

The main reason for that possibility is the current restructuring of the BCS, which is still being hammered out but will get rid of the automatic-qualifier clause for the big conferences. That was always a point of contention for smaller conferences, particularly one that felt like it belonged with multiple BCS bowl victories (Utah twice and TCU).

“It’s been brutal for a league like the Mountain West Conference,” Thompson said. “… We were characterized and labeled as something different. That is a huge win just to change that culture.”

Without the AQ status, joining the Big East doesn’t mean as much as it did at the time the Broncos and Aztecs made their decisions. That doesn’t mean they won’t go through with it, but it does say something that the Mountain West still has two open spots before it can play a championship game in football. Plus the SDSU and Boise State representatives, as current members of the league, have been present at all of the ongoing meetings.

The original agreement between the Mountain West and C-USA was a contract between 16 institutions to explore a different conference model. The contract expires at the end of June, but that’s nothing more than a placeholder date. The involved schools, which now total 23 — the total number of schools currently signed on for the 2013-14 seasons — can just rewrite the contract and continue their negotiations as everyone tries to figure out how this thing will come together.

Compared to that, Friday was the easy part. The Mountain West added two schools with natural regional rivals, and one in Utah State that has had great recent success in both football and men’s basketball.

What happens from here — or Phase Two in Thompson speak — is where it starts to get complicated.

Taylor Bern can be reached at 948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.