The Right Size?

[Mars]

Boise State.

Nebraska? Missouri? Kansas? Kansas State. Baylor. Iowa State.

Houston. UTEP. Fresno State. Nevada. Hawaii. SMU.


There are a lot of teams out there that the MWC could be interested in. BUT... How big should the MWC be?

Your thoughts?

[Schmoe]

12. Pick up three quality teams and let the crappy ones go to the WAC or C-USA.

[Florwood]

Sixteen seems to be the new twelve, but still so unwieldy and full of existing bottom dwellers. At this point even an expansion to twelve seems futile, since one of the goals of this latest round seems to be to put new distance between the haves and the have nots.

[BigCougsFan]

Yesterday the Big XII's commish said he's working overtime to try and keep his conference intact. IF his schools to get raided... I would be he would invite schools like BYU, Utah, TCU, and not the MWC invited their schools.

He has everything to lose if he doesn't invite any school into his conference.

Rumor has it, the SEC commish is going after Oklahoma. That would hurt the Pac if they wanted OU.

[SpiffCoug]

I'd love to get Kansas.

[gmj81]

BSU makes 10. I'd also love to grab up KU and KSU. Missouri would be a nice addition if they get left out of any expansion. But they are a little too far outside of the "MWC footprint" for my taste. The Kansas schools are pushing it as is. But if the MWC does expand past 10, then we need to push it to at least 14 IMO, in order to have a hope at renegotiating the current TV deal. And in order to assure BCS inclusion, we'd need to land some big players who have seen a lot of recent success.

Other choices could include Houston, Baylor, Tulsa, Fresno, definitely Texas Tech if they get left out in the cold of whatever expansion the rest of the Big XII South is a part of. UTEP would be a nice geographical fit but wouldn't bring a whole lot to the table.

I do worry that 14 or 16 is just too big. We've already seen it fail once. And I'm not sure even the "Big Pac" could make it work.

[Mars]

12. Pick up three quality teams and let the crappy ones go to the WAC or C-USA.

Agreed. 2 of 3 of Kansas/Kansas State/Baylor sounds pretty good to me.

[Lawboy]

Just read on orangebloods.com that once Nebraska makes it official later today, that 4 teams from the Big 12 south are ready to head to the PAC10. Hold out right now seems to be A&M. Sounds like Kansas is the back up plan--not Utah. The Texas Board of regents are meeting on Tuesday, so it SHOULD go down next Wednesday.

[gmj81]

Just listened to the teleconference with Craig Thompson on the Mtn, and he did confirm that the TV deal could be renegotiated with adding BSU. However he did say that the contract verbalized that the TV partners would look at it on a good faith basis whenever change would arise. I wouldn't expect it to be a whole lot more but it would be nice if this helped bump each team's annual take up to $1.5 million (up from the current $1.3million). It will also expand coverage into Idaho and probably even into greater parts of the MWC footprint as well as maybe even western Oregon and Washington and maybe even Montana. Who knows, but every little bit could help.

[CougarPeasant]

The mtn is already available in Boise since BSU plays a MWC team at least once a season. Versus and CBSsports were recently added to the local cable as well from what I've heard.

so I don't know how much added value there will be with BSU in the lineup.

It will just mean more bailbond and pawnshop ads for games broadcast from Boise.