Boise State could be headed to the Mountain West Conference
Lost in all of the recent Big Ten/SEC/Pac-10/Big XII conference expansion noise, is Boise State and the Mountain West Conference’s (MWC) courting of the Broncos. Boise State could be the first school to bolt for greener pastures if they accept the rumored MWC invite next month during conference president meetings. While everyone is focusing on the four power college football conferences and their potential expansions, a situation is brewing out west that could be the first shot fired in the looming college football conference battle.
The Mountain West Conference is lobbying extremely hard to become the next conference to receive the coveted automatic BCS bowl game bid. BCS executive director Bill Hancock announced during meetings last month in Phoenix that BCS executives were leaning toward granting the Mountain West Conference the seventh berth beginning in 2012. However, the MWC’s BCS berth will be contingent on meeting criteria based on certain formulas which include game attendance and win percentage inputs. By bringing Boise State into the MWC, the conference would receive an enormous boost in the determining formulas that would help the conference tremendously because of Boise’s reputation and winning percentages.
Mountain West officials want to present the BCS committee the best possible package with the hopes of obtaining a BCS berth, so it would only make sense that they bring Boise State into the fold. The Mountain West Conference has until July 1 to extend a formal invitation and all signs are pointing to them doing so when conference presidents meet next month. This has been a very active college football off-season, the landscape of college football could soon be changing dramatically.
