Mountain West is negotiating a deal to get football games on CBS

That is correct, Commissioner Craig Thompson is in negotiatons to try to get Mountain West football games to be on CBS, not Versus, The Mtn, or CBS College Sports, but on network television. This would be a national game and not regional like ABC does. Never wanting to rub it in, but I did mention this topic back when CSTV was bought by CBS, and again when the name changed to CBS College Sports Television. Commissioner Thompson mentioned this in his annual state of the conference in Las Vegas today on Tuesday.

Putting games on CBS would be HUGE for the league and from listening to the interviews this is still most likely 2 years away, because the South Eastern Conference television deal ends in 2009 and the SEC is looking to form their own television network just like the Big 10 and the Mountain West. The SEC most likely would not leave CBS but those negotiations would take priority. The only details available now would be that if Mountain West games were to be on CBS the games would be noon eastern, and that was a reason why Commissioner Thompson spurned ESPN because of early start times. However, this case would be different because it would be on a national audience, on network television, and most importantly easy to find on the dial.

SEC games currently air at 3:30 pm eastern and that would give the MWC a three and a half hour block for that game. Fans should not worry about those early games, because Fox Sports routinely airs Big XII games at 11am central time which also include 10 am for games played at Colorado University. This would only affect a few teams, mainly Utah, BYU, TCU, then perhaps what opponents are playing at Mountain West teams home or who is going to be good that year. Another, effect this could have would be in scheduling better home non conference games, also this would help recruting because these select games would be easy to see.

The last question should be about compensation, because the current deal is still in place for a few more years so this could be a side deal that would conclude the same time as the original deal. The down side could be that no additional deal is made because CBS all ready owns the broadcast rights, but either way this would be a very positive deal for the league.