Boise State Officially Joining the Mountain West Today

Just in from Joe Schad and Bruce Feldman: Boise State will officially join the Mountain West Conference today!

For a few weeks now the MWC has been deliberating the addition of a 10th team to the conference.

Just three days ago the Mountain West had no official word or decision about the expansion, and today Boise State accepts the offer.

Leaving the Western Athletic Conference, Boise State will now face TCU (a former WAC university) in regular season play at some point.

The two schools have only met twice; both were bowl games. TCU won the 2008 Poinsettia Bowl 17-16, with Boise State winning last year’s Fiesta Bowl 17-10.

What does this all mean? The talk of Big Ten expansion and the active Pac-10 expansion has caused otherwise content conferences to re-evaluate their situations. With Boise State leaving, the WAC will be down to eight schools in the conference.

This move could have a tremendous impact on the 2010 football season if they start altering schedules. The non-conference games should stay the same, but what about the conference games?

Boise State's last seven games of the season are all conference opponents. If they do change their schedule to meet the requirements of the Mountain West, it will cause one hell of a ripple effect for every conference team they were set to face.

As for the rest of college football, the waiting game is still on. You can almost feel the anticipation in the air as we wait to hear about the next unexpected move. So much for these realignments not taking effect until 2012.

Signing off and Roll Tide,

Derek Smith