It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Author's Note: The following is a piece I wrote for guysgirl.com.

This Saturday, Boise State hosts Air Force in its first-ever Mountain West conference home game.

By the following Saturday, there is a chance that neither school will be a member of the Mountain West.

Conference realignment has finally trickled down to the non-BCS conferences in college football, and its effects will not be pleasant.

Just a little over a year ago, the Mountain West was flying high and on the cusp of finally breaking through and joining the ranks of BCS conferences. The future had never looked more promising. Utah had run the table in 2008, blasting mighty Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and finishing the year #2 in the country. TCU was coming off a 12-1 season in which it earned its first BCS bowl invite (a 17-10 loss to Boise State) and was a stadium rail away from possibly playing for the national title. BYU had upset #3 Oklahoma to start the season, and Boise State, with its history of big victories and BCS bowl berths, had accepted an invitation to join the conference.

Since then, Utah has joined the Pac-12, BYU has gone independent, TCU is leaving for the Big 12 next year, and Boise State and Air Force are contemplating heading east. The cream of the Mountain West will be gone.

Conference realignment has dominated many of the headlines in college football the last two years, but the attention has mainly been focused on the big conferences. While that focus is understandable, little attention has been paid to the smaller schools and conferences that make up the bulk of Division I football (note: I refuse to use the new designations). The ramifications for them are much greater.

The non-BCS leagues are being torn apart, all because of realignment and the quest for more money. To counteract the departures of Utah and BYU, the Mountain West grabbed Fresno State, Nevada, and Hawai’i from the WAC. The Big East initially grabbed TCU before the Horned Frogs, Pittsburgh, and Syracuse departed for other leagues. In response, there have been reports that the Big East plans to send invitations to Houston Central Florida, and SMU from Conference USA as well as Boise State and Air Force.

What happens to these leagues if that happens? The WAC is all but irrelevant now, and the Mountain West may be on its way. The leftover schools will fall further and further behind as the disparity in college football grows wider. Fan support and resources will decrease because there is nothing to play for.


Why spend millions on new facilities or to renovate a stadium when there is no hope of a national championship or anything better than a berth in a lower-tier bowl game?

In an effort to stave-off future departures and survive, the Mountain West and Conference USA announced an alliance in football, creating a 22-team uber-conference. The irony is that the Mountain West was formed when eight schools left the 16-team WAC, feeling it was too large and cumbersome.

The hypocrisy in all this would be funny if it wasn’t so exasperating. Air Force AD Hans Mueh told The Denver Post that the move to the Big East was “in the best interest of my cadets. I need money to allow them to compete. For us, competition is a mission.”

Air Force has never won a Mountain West title in football. In fact, they have only won one conference title in any sport. If the Falcons cannot even compete in the Mountain West, how are they going to fare any better in the Big East? Plus, the rest of Air Force’s sports programs will play in the Missouri Valley Conference, which is a step down in competition.

Money cannot even really be blamed. Mueh later says that he turned down an invite to the Big 12. He admitted the geography and economics made sense, but went on to add, “I can’t do that to my kids because they’ll get beat up. I’d love the extra $12 million or whatever it would be per year from the TV money.” He would have used that money to build new soccer and baseball facilities but says he “can’t do that.”

If Air Force is in such dire need of money that it is leaving a conference it helped found, then why turn down more money from a league that is a better geographic and economic fit? How does sending student-athletes on 2,000-mile road trips help the bottom line? Besides, wouldn’t being able to build new facilities for non-revenue sports be helping the cadets compete?

If competition is a vital part of the academy’s mission and crucial to training better officers, then why leave a league in which you’ve had trouble competing for one with even tougher competition?

It makes no sense.

Unfortunately, everyone wants a seat at the BCS table, and nobody wants out. Schools like Iowa State, South Florida, and Baylor need their conferences to stay afloat so that they don’t lose relevancy. They depend on the BCS payouts they receive despite having never played in a BCS bowl. In order to do that, they need their conferences to raid smaller ones whose schools are eager to finally be allowed into the BCS buddy club.

Why are those schools any more deserving than say Tulsa, Hawai’i, San Diego State, or Northern Illinois?

What’s funny is that for years, all of these non-BCS schools were deemed unworthy of the BCS. Now, a school like SMU, that had one winning season between 1989-2008, is suddenly an acceptable BCS conference school. Meanwhile, Fresno State, a school that regularly upset BCS teams on the road and consistently made bowl games, is on the outside looking in.

This whole thing is like high school, where kids are all desperate to join the popular clique. The "cool" BCS kids used to snubbed the "nerdy" non-BCS schools, but now that they need the nerds' help to pass final exams in order to graduate, they are all chummy and inviting them to the big dance.

It’s also rather upsetting to fans of schools and leagues that have a lower profile and face the prospect of being left behind.