Map of Mountain West Changes

I've finally gotten around to making a graphic of changes to the Mountain West Conference, as discussed in some of my earlier postings.

The MWC's changes consist of gaining Boise State, Nevada (Reno), and Fresno State from the Western Athletic Conference (shown above with underline and italics) and losing Utah (to the Pac-10) and BYU (which is becoming an independent in football and a member of the West Coast Conference in all other sports).

The WAC is now down to six schools (Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State, San Jose State, Utah State) and will need some new members to survive. Some ideas for rebuilding the WAC are offered in this article.

The ideal size for football-playing conferences is 12 (allowing for two six-team divisions and a conference championship game), so the MWC may not be done recruiting new members. One solution, which would fill in a geographically sparse portion of the MWC's footprint (potentially saving travel costs) and give the conference two additional intra-state rivalries, would be to take one more WAC team, New Mexico State, plus the University of Texas, El Paso, which currently plays in Conference USA.