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.

Big 10 Announces Divisional Alignment

The Big 10 (which will have 12 teams starting in 2011-12) announced its divisional system for football. According to the official statement, "Each school will play the other five schools within its division and will also face three teams from the other division, including one cross-division matchup guaranteed on an annual basis. The guaranteed cross-division matchups are Illinois-Northwestern, Indiana-Michigan State, Ohio State-Michigan, Penn State-Nebraska, Purdue-Iowa and Wisconsin-Minnesota. Names for each Big Ten football division will be announced at a later date." I made the following graphic to illustrate the divisional memberships and permanent cross-divisional rivalries.

One potential drawback to the plan, in my view, is that traditional rivals Michigan and Ohio State could end up playing two games in a row some years, the regular-season finale and the conference championship game. Theoretically, Michigan and OSU could each clinch a spot in the championship game before their regular-season meeting, thus leading to the perception -- if not the reality -- that the teams would hold something back in the first match-up, to maximize their chances in the second game.