The Mountain West Comes Calling....

Woof.  These things come out of the blue.  I remember when I first heard that USC and UCLA were coming to the Big Ten.  I was getting off an airplane.  Like five minutes later, it was official.

The news has broken that UT and NIU were approached by the MWC to join as football-only members.

Woof.

We have been extremely lucky as MAC fans.  We have the only conference that has been able to maintain its integrity through the conference wars.  Traditions were maintained.  Rivalries were maintained.  Until the addition of UMass, relative geographic sanity prevailed.  We felt like we were an oasis of sanity.

Meanwhile, across the US, rivalries were torn apart.  The Civil War (or whatever they started to call it). Bedlam. West Virginia and Pitt.  A&M and Texas.  Oklahoma and Nebraska.  It's a loss, to be sure.  Those games are part of our annual lives.  Many of us can mark where we were in our lives when we talk about a BG-UT game.

Well, it has come for us.

The disturbing thing is that it seems like every time one of these rumors launches, it happens.  

I hope it doesn't.

The Blade had a good analysis of it here.  The upshot seems to be that the Mountain West is unstable, that their new TV contract would be way less than their current one and only a little better than the MAC's.  Travel would be ridiculous for the football team, including to Hawaii.  Travel costs would be higher.  There are trips to Hawaii.  And they would have to find a home in a non-football conference for the rest of their sports, like the Missouri Valley.

Furthermore, the article points out that UT could someday make the playoff. The article doesn't point out that if we had a 12-team playoff a decade ago, Northern Illinois would have already been in it.  If the goal is to make the playoff, you have as good a shot in the MAC as in the Mountain West.

So, I don't see where it makes sense, even financially.  I didn't think the other ones made sense for any reason other than financially.  But, there could be things I don't know.

Also, UT is in a major downturn and they have an interim President trying to turn the ship around.  Does the school need one more instability?

Also, will UT and NIU use the leverage of leaving to extract a higher share of MAC revenues, as Texas did in the Big 12.

I will also say this.  It would be an absolute tragedy for UT to leave the MAC and for our region to lose our rivalry.  (NIU has left before and would be way less missed). It would be a very, very sad day.  There has been talk in the past of UT trying to move up--and you can hardly blame them for finding that appealing--but this is throwing everything away for what appears to me to be a sideways move.

But the foreboding thought I have is that these situations have rarely worked out for people who like things the way they are.