Mountain West Should Have Always Been a BCS Conference

In 1998 when eight founding teams from the Western Athletic Conference decided to established the newest conference in college sports it was a significant day for sports in the western United States. 

The conference has slowly but surely built upon that establishment. 

However, at the same time the conference has suffered from being treated as just below the best. They are called a Mid-Major in basketball, a non-BCS team in Football.  They are ridiculed for their television contract which does not include ESPN.

Yet some of these teams have amazing achievements against these odds. Utah in the BCS twice, BYU at one time won a national championship (prior to the current structure).

UNLV's men's basketball team was a national champion in 1990, and a powerhouse team for years prior to that.

But all of these successes have been hurt by the advent of the BCS.

One wonders if MWC would have been better served creating their conference a year or two earlier so they could have a voice at the BCS table. With the BCS, the MWC has become a second class citizen.

Consider that no MWC team has ever been placed in the top 10 in football in the first polls. The NCAA tournament selection committee have only placed two at-large teams from the MWC. Utah in the fifth seed this year is the highest ever.

The teams play in good sized stadiums, Utah and BYU being the two biggest. They have had well known players, Steve Young (BYU), Jim McMahon (BYU), WR Steve Smith (Utah), and a number of other notables.

In 1998 after protracted negotiations, the Bowl Championship Series was established.  The MWC, not being represented at the negotiation table, with no real voice, fell off to mid-major life.

Because the BCS had already been established it forced the MWC to build on its own. In the process the MWC has frustrated the older conferences, in part because they seek to shake up the controls. They have also created a layer of animosity with Disney-run ESPN.

Meanwhile, the conference added Texas Christian (TCU) in 2005. Last November, the Mountain West sought to add its 10th and probably final team as they tried—though denied—to add Boise State.

In the end the MWC is creating a major conference. Consider that most of the conferences are good in one sport but not the others—Big East cannot play football, SEC it appears cannot win basketball—the MWC competes in both.

The MWC would be well served in its fight to have BYU and Utah make some noise in the NCAA tournament. If San Diego State can go far into the National Invitational Tournament, they might just make more people take notice.

The one thing the NCAA tournament does is at least allow the MWC to compete with the big boys head to head—unlike the BCS which continues to hold a hammer over teams like Utah.