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The Santa Fe New Mexican
New era dawns for reshaped, sprawling Mountain West Conference
- Story byThe Santa Fe New Mexican
- New era dawns for reshaped, sprawling Mountain West Conference
It's the dawn of a new era.
At the stroke of midnight Tuesday, the Mountain West Conference and Pac-12 took on adjusted identities as realignment again reared its ugly head.
Five schools that helped shape the MWC — Utah State, Colorado State, Boise State, Fresno State and San Diego State — officially vacated their membership to join the rebuilt Pac-12 alongside Washington State, Oregon State, Texas State, Dallas Baptist and Gonzaga.
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The influx pushed the Pac-12's count from two schools to 10 by Wednesday morning. Eight of those schools will be full-time members, while Gonzaga joins for all sports except football, and Dallas Baptist will be an affiliate member for baseball only.
The Mountain West responded with the official introduction of five new schools, two of which are full-time members in all sports.
Hawaii is now represented in all sports, as is UTEP. Northern Illinois, UC Davis and North Dakota State have varying degrees of membership.
The league also launched a new streaming platform, MW+, and adopted the new tagline "Build Bold," along with tweaks to the conference's logo and color palette.
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It all comes two weeks before the Mountain West holds its preseason media event for football in Las Vegas, Nev. The league announced Monday it has done away with the popular preseason poll, which is a bit of a downer for Lobos fans because, while UNM had been a perennial pick to finish last (or very close to it) over the years, expectations for the Lobos are high this year after a nine-win season that ended with a trip to the Rate Bowl.
Here's a look at what the changes mean to UNM and the Mountain West:
What the MWC getsUTEP
One of New Mexico's oldest and most historic rivals joins the Lobos as league brethren for the third time after previous relationships with the Border Conference and Western Athletic Conference.
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For the old timers, this is a match made in heaven, but there's a strong argument that the Miners were thrown a life preserver after 21 years in Conference USA.
Their football team has posted a losing record in 10 of its past 11 seasons, and men's basketball hasn't been to the NCAA Tournament since 2010.
The football team isn't far removed from a dreadful run between 2017-19 when it was 2-34 overall and 1-23 in CUSA.
The Miners do play in the spacious Sun Bowl and the school and brings a top-100 media market to a lineup that already has five schools inside the top 50 (San Jose State at 10, Grand Canyon 12, UC Davis 20, UNLV 40 and New Mexico 48), but there's no hiding the fact this isn't the polished UTEP athletics program nostalgic Lobo fans remember.
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Hawaii
The Warriors become a full-fledged member Wednesday, but they're no strangers to the league. They joined in football in 2018, but were a logical choice for expansion the minute the departing five schools announced they were leaving.
What Hawaii brings is the promise of growth. The football team will move into the new 31,000-seat Aloha Stadium in 2029. The men's basketball team made the NCAA Tournament in March and has won at least 20 games three of the last four seasons under coach Eran Ganot.
The problem is the travel. As Lobos hoops coach Eric Olen said recently, the hard part isn't getting to Honolulu. In fact, the trip there is the easy part, he said.
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"The challenge is the back end of that trip when you have to fly home and get back into that routine without a lot of rest," he said.
UC Davis
Perhaps the biggest surprise in the Mountain West expansion came with the Aggies getting an invite. They'll join the league in all sports except football, where they'll remain in the FCS.
A consistent winner at that level, their 10,743-seat stadium would need to triple in size to accommodate an FBS program. In other words, don't expect that to happen anytime soon, particularly in California, where building any kind of athletics venue is difficult even under the best of circumstances.
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The benefit belongs mostly to San Jose State, which, as UNM has with UTEP, gives it a conference rival within driving distance.
The Aggies' basketball team has posted a winning record in five of the past six seasons under coach Jim Les, but the jump from the Big West to the MWC is a sizable one. To keep up with the UNLVs, UNMs and Nevadas of their new digs, the Aggies will need to spend like never before. Until then, it might be a slow transition to competitiveness.
Northern Illinois
Do the Huskies owe Notre Dame a present for their invitation to the Mountain West? Sure seems that way.
It was just two years ago that they went into South Bend and stunned the fifth-ranked Irish. They're just 9-14 since then, leaving behind nearly 30 years of existence in the MAC to become the weirdest and wildest outlier in a Mountain West trying anything it can to find competitive new teams.
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Northern Illinois is joining in just two sports: football and women's gymnastics. On paper, it could be a good thing, but there are reasons for concern. The Huskies have been to 15 bowl games in the past 22 seasons, including a trip to the Orange Bowl in 2012. They're entering this new era under a new coach after Thomas Hammock bolted for the NFL to be the running backs coach for the Seahawks.
North Dakota State
If you're going to pilfer a team from the FCS, this is the one you want. There is no close alternative.
The Bison have won 89.9% of their games since 2011, with 10 national championships. Their track record is off-the-charts impressive, and the consensus is that they are on a meteoric rise the likes of which no one has seen since Boise State burst onto the Division I scene and became a powerhouse.
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The only question — and there aren't many — is whether the school can invest the financial resources to keep up at the FBS level. The annual budget would need to at least double, as would the recruiting footprint that now must include a national scope — and not just Upper Midwest players looking to prove people wrong.
Either way, this is a home run addition for the Mountain West. Only good things await.
What the MWC losesBoise State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Utah State, Colorado St.
Ouch.
The list of outgoing members is a gut punch, the latest in a long line of exits from a league that has the history of a power league.
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Former members BYU, Utah and TCU are now in power conferences, plus the five that are headed to the Pac-12, and MWC mainstays like Air Force, Nevada, UNLV, New Mexico and Wyoming, as well as new arrivals like Grand Canyon and North Dakota State, and the Pac-12 holdovers of Washington State and Oregon State.
The possibilities of what might have been for a league of 16 to 18 schools are downright depressing. It certainly would have supplanted an extinct Pac-12 as the preeminent college conference in the western part of the country.
All that's left is the hope that, one day, the powers that be come to their senses and merge the best of the best into a conference that makes geographical and financial sense.
