BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

I would think that the PAc-6 can recruit any MW school it wants, with the curious exception of Air Force. The Pac-6 may have been withholding the UNLV invitation in the hope that they can eventually pry UNLV out separately. But the Pac-6 will find two additional members.

 

I've spent better than twenty years as a UAB fan in a conference with Memphis. The Pac dodged a bullet, between the various nonsense and the toxic fan base.

 

I wonder how opposed Air Force truly is to uncoupling football from the other sports? It isn’t like they’ve ever put much more than the bare minimum into those anyway. If Army and Navy can spend their winters in the Patriot League it shouldn’t be any disgrace for the Falcons to decamp for the Summit.

 

It seems that is their hangup. And if they want all their sports to be a package, then that's why the Pac doesn't want them and it makes total sense.

 

Nobody likes them, but here we are. If we don't hang together we will most certainly hang separately.

 

Any MWC AD who signs a binding agreement today is crazy. Wait and see if you get a Pac-12 offer.

 

UNLV staying in the MWC. I can only assume they're tied to Nevada's hip.

 

So UNLV, Air Force and San Jose State commit to the MW. Air Force was likely only wanted for football if at all, UNLV couldn't get away from Nevada, who wasn't wanted, and San Jose State probably wasn't on the table, although they have one of the biggest TV markets out there (if that matters in any of this).

Utah State says see ya. Probably the next best choice is New Mexico and then figure it out from there.

 

Had the Pac-2/6/? been in existence in 2023-24, with WSU, OSU, BSU, CSUF, SDSU, CSU, Gonzaga and Utah State as members, it would have earned 13 units in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. That's 13x $330,000 ($4,290,000) per year for the next six years, for a total of $25,740,000 from the 2024 tournament alone.

That's some serious cash. Split only nine ways, not 18 or 16 ways ike in the P4 leagues. Find one more football-playing program that is decent in MBB at least occasionally (Wyoming? New Mexico?) and you've got a pretty darn good hoops conference.

 

It still seems strange to me that when the Pac-2 announced it was adding four schools, it left two spots to fill. If other MWC schools were the target, why not ink them all at once?

The only thing that makes sense is they either wanted out-of-region schools, like Memphis or UTSA ... or they still have some hope of Cal and Stanford coming back. But that latter option makes too much sense geographically and, more importantly, costs too much $$$.

 

Or they were trying to see if they could split UNLV and Nevada or they had to leave two spots in case they needed to eventually take both together?