With the Lobos getting the weekend off, it feels as good as a time as any to revisit a topic that’s been going through my mind a lot recently: conference realignment. After half of the teams in the Mountain West batted their eyelashes at the Big 12 – and were all turned down – it feels like the conference is in a weird place right now and needs to do something to survive. Especially given that none of the Power 5 conferences are likely to be looking for new members and the gap between the haves and the have-nots seems like it’s growing every day. The Mountain West is pretty solidly one of the best of the rest, but the truth is, it feels hard to imagine the conference ever joining the ranks of the elite in football, which is where most of the attention is focused these days.
That said, even if they aren’t at the same level as the Power 5, the Mountain West is still in an envious position to some. For example, Wichita State reportedly approached the conference about joining last year and both NMSU and UTEP would do just about anything to be a member. Because football is what drives decisions these days, none of those options have any attraction to the conference, as both UTEP and NMSU are some of the worst teams in the FCS right now and Wichita State doesn’t even have a team right now.
However, I can’t help but wonder if football is the wrong thing for the Mountain West to focus on. After all, there aren’t any other teams out there that the conference could add to raise the profile of the conference and even the top teams in the conference struggle to earn a spot in the top-25, much less a New Year’s bowl game. And with the way the money in college football is funneled into the pockets of the Power 5, those problems might only get worse as time goes on.
So why not focus on something different? Why not focus on basketball? More specifically, why can’t the Mountain West become the western version of the Big East?
This thought has really been going through my mind ever since the reports about Wichita State came out last year. Quite frankly, denying them didn’t make all that much sense to me. They’re a team that realizes that they need to get out of the conference they’re in, they bring a quality program with a national profile, and they actually wanted to join the conference. Who cares if they don’t have football? Just by adding them, the Mountain West suddenly seems like one of the better basketball conferences again, and that feels like a bigger win than just about anything we’ve seen out of the conference in a while.
But why stop there? If we’re going to be a premier basketball conference, why not go for broke and try to make the best western basketball conference that we can?
So here’s my wild, likely unrealistic proposal of teams to add, making only a couple of assumptions. Mainly just that the teams have to make some geographic sense, leave the conference with 16 teams (which makes the tourney and divisions easy to figure out), and that they can’t come from a Power 5 conference. So yeah, I’d like to poach Arizona too, but that feels even beyond unrealistic.
Wichita State: Already covered earlier, but I fully endorse the idea of them joining. In fact, even though I’d rather them not add football, if they really wanted to join as football members as well, then I’m okay with it.
Gonzaga: I know, this is where it starts sounding crazy (and on only the second team mentioned, at that!) However, I think that it actually makes sense for both parties. For one, Gonzaga gets most of its funding from the TV games that it plays in its non-conference schedule and from the NCAA Tournament, so they could end up getting more money by being in the Mountain West, especially given that the conference would likely get a better TV deal with them involved. Plus, right now, in conference play, Gonzaga only gets a couple opportunities for decent wins, which can hurt them in the eyes of the selection committee (especially if they don’t go undefeated in non-conference play) and can hurt them in terms of just preparing for the NCAA Tournament, as they might not have been tested in several months if the rest of their conference is down. Which would be especially true with the next couple of teams I poach…
St. Mary’s: The Gaels might not have the same national profile as Gonzaga, but they’re still a great program in their own right with as much, if not more, history and recent success as anyone in the Mountain West. Like Gonzaga, they’d probably get more money from this Super Mountain West I’m creating and they’d end up with more opportunities to pick up solid wins throughout the season.
BYU: Yeah, that’s right. I’m bringing the Cougars back. They left in the first place because they wanted to go independent in football and the MW wanted all or nothing out of them, but now that I’m getting rid of that rule, they should come back to where they belong. They have a great program, a national brand, and a history and rivalries with teams already in the conference. I mean, come on. Who doesn’t want to hate them again?
UTEP: And this is where things drop off, but it still seems like the best option available to get this Super Mountain West to 16 teams. UTEP fits the profile of a Mountain West school in a lot of ways and it feels like it has the most potential of the remaining teams to get to the level we’d want out of them. They do have a deep basketball history (they won the championship in 1966, even), are located in a city where they’re the only game in town, and have some history with several of the teams in the conference.
Other teams considered for that 5th spot: NMSU (academics would probably be an issue), Grand Canyon (have potential, but the for-profit university thing would be a tough sell), AAC teams (they may not view it as an upgrade), and any team from the Big West (wouldn’t bring much to the conference).
So there you have it, my new Mountain West featuring the following divisions:
| Mountain | West |
| New Mexico | San Diego St. |
| Colorado St. | Fresno St. |
| Air Force | San Jose St. |
| Wyoming | Nevada |
| Utah St. | UNLV |
| BYU | Boise St. |
| Wichita St. | St. Mary’s |
| UTEP | Gonzaga |
That looks pretty good to me! After all, we’d end up with matchups like UNLV vs. Gonzaga, BYU vs. SDSU, UNM vs. Wichita St., and a bunch of others that would seem to have national appeal and make a TV deal more attractive. Plus, one has to think that not only would the conference consistently get several bids to the NCAA Tournament, recruiting would see an uptick as well. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats, right? And quite frankly, this tide seems much easier to rise than the football one.