BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

It's only a matter of time before A&M-CC adds football as well.

And none of those three are going up.

 

And I put Jacksonville State in the wrong conference -- they're in the Ohio Valley. So never mind that. But there's been talk that Sam Houston and Lamar have designs on an upgrade, and if there's a moratorium, they may rush their plans to completion to get in.

 

What's stopping the Mountain West from adding Idaho and NMSU? Sure, it doesn't get them into any new TV markets, but it gives the league 12 teams, enough for a conference championship game.

 

The other MWC schools don't want them.

 

Plus between the CUSA merger chatter and Boise State's will-they-or-won't-they drama, they've been in no hurry to get to 12. The fact they added San Jose State and their cherished tradition of sucking and having no fans instead of Idaho and NMSU is telling. They'd probably take an upgraded Montana and Eastern Washington first, if either school decided to move up.

 

Montana, yes. Most definitely. Eastern Washington, no. I've seen high schools that still have football/baseball combo fields that have better stadiums than Eastern Washington. I also believe Montana and Montana State are joined at the hip, per the Montana legislature.

 

I think the MWC is simply waiting for Boise State and SDSU to come to their senses and return to the league, after a season or two in the abomnination that is now the Big East. Then it's 12 teams and far stronger than it would be with NMSU and Idaho.

SDSU's other sports are a better fit for the Big West and I think if they do return, if will be as a football-only member. Boise's other sports will have no place to land once the WAC ceases to exist, unless the MWC takes them back as a full member, which is no sure thing without several million to grease the wheels because Boise is universally despised throughout the MWC.

Montana would add nothing to the Mountain West. Its football program would not sustain its current success because the Division I-A transfer pool Montana uses so successfully would disappear and it's other sports are generally average at best.

Idaho would be a perfect travel partner for Eastern Washington in the Big Sky, as the schools are only about two hours apart, if that. But Idaho will do whatever it can to play D 1-A football as long as Boise still does.

 

I wouldn't take Eastern Washington for one reason:

 

Somebody needs to bitch slap Idaho and tell them to get over it. (There's a pun in there, I do believe.)

 

Who outside of thosein houses on big
rocks would give a shit?

 

I wonder if the MWC wasn't hoping to snag UTEP from CUSA and pair them with UTSA to get to 12, presuming Boise and San Diego State weren't reneging. That gets them back into Texas as well.

 

Yeah, got into that in an investigative piece I wrote. When the new Montana president Royce Engstrom came in, he basically squashed the talk of going FBS. The cost just didn't outweigh the benefits.

No one else in the Big Sky really offers anything much. Check out the football attendance numbers.

What we're seeing now is a huge gap developing between the BCS-level FBS schools and the lower-level (MAC, WAC, Sun Belt, MWC, etc.) schools. There's really not much advantage to being at that second-tier level and it's a HUGE expense.