A Letter to MWC Commish Craig Thompson from a Boise State Fan

Dear Commissioner Thompson,

Congratulations on a decade of tremendous athletics from your conference since its founding in 1999. No, none of your competitors in any sport has won a National Title of any kind since being members of the Mountain West, but the schools consistently yield competitive teams.

I would like to address, today, the growing issue between your conference and my school. The very large elephant in the room if you will. The issue, it seems, that you never want to discuss.

I want to know why your conference will not add Boise State University.

For the sake of this letter, I will speak in terms of the football program. As I'm sure you can agree that is the big money maker.  Although our other athletic programs are also more than qualified for a conference upgrade.

It is easy to see why we were not initially invited to join. In 1999, when you split off to do your thing, we were a brand new D-I school competing in that tiny little conference called the Big West.

In 1999, we won that conference. We won it again in 2000.

Following the 2000 season—and after your conference had taken many of its members—the Western Athletic Conference invited us to join them.

We won the conference our second season as a member. Then again the third season. Then again the fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth seasons.

This—ninth—season, we are poised to win it again.

The only season we didn't win it, 2007, we were second only behind BCS bound Hawai'i. (Yes, I saw the outcome of that Sugar Bowl.)

There is a reason we refer to it as a "Decade of Dominance."

We have only lost four conference games since 2000.

Yes, you can talk about how the competition in the WAC is inferior to that of the Mountain West.

You would be right (but don't forget Boise State is 16-1 vs. MWC schools, too). That's why we need you.

But don't you need us, too?

Starting next season, the Bowl Championship Series will air on the ESPN family of networks.

In case you haven't noticed, Boise State is an ESPN darling.

How else do you explain the seven BSU games broadcast by the network this season?

This wouldn't be the first time you have expanded, either.

In 2005 you added the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs.

Today, I am watching a popular college television show being broadcast from that campus. And that team will probably bust the BCS this year. That is big bucks in your wallet and the budgets of all the MWC schools.  

Imagine getting that money every single year. Imagine finishing a football season with four teams from your conference ranked in the top 25.

Adding the Broncos to your conference will only help you and your cause. It is a win-win situation. 

Maybe it's not too far-fetched to think that the MWC can get an automatic bid to a BCS game. I'm sure we would agree that the MWC+Boise State would be better and more competitive than the Big East, Big Ten, and ACC. Using this year as a gauge, I would say even better than the Big XII and Pac-10.

There is zero reason for you not to invite the Boise State Broncos to your conference. I will personally call WAC commissioner Karl Benson and express condolences on your behalf for robbing him of his money maker.

(No hard feelings, Mr. Benson. You understand, right?)

With all excuses moot, I—along with some other pretty intelligent people—have already gone through the trouble of preparing your post 2009-10 football season press release:

"We the commissioner and presidents of schools of the Mountain West Conference, in order to form a more perfect conglomerate, establish justice (the moral principle determining just conduct), insure conference tranquility (serenity), provide for the BCS, promote our own welfare, and secure the (monetary) blessings of automatic qualifying to ourselves and our(selves) posterity, do ordain and establish this invitation to the Boise State University Broncos to join our conference." 

I anxiously await your response.

Sincerely yours,

Robert Tucker Botkin