Fresno State, Nevada Join Mountain West: Realignment, Round Two

It is official: The Mountain West Conference has now added the Fresno State Bulldogs and Nevada Wolf Pack as its 10th and 11th members. Brigham Young University is still an active member at this time.

After losing the Utah Utes to Pac-10 expansion and bringing in the BCS buster Boise State Broncos, the Mountain West Conference continued a busy offseason.

With a groundswell of rumors leaking out that the Church of Latter-Day Saints was within striking range of taking their football team independent, the Mountain West Conference brass kicked into overdrive.

By inviting and receiving acceptance from two former WAC teams in Fresno State University and the University of Nevada at Reno, commissioner Craig Thompson has protected his conference's future no matter if Brigham Young University's future is a shared one or not.

The Fresno State Bulldogs have long been a big dog in a small fight in the WAC, but they watched their luster fade as Boise State brought its smurf turf onto the national stage. Worried about being left in a "no man's land" in the WAC, the Bulldogs now have a conference filled with peer athletic institutions.

The Nevada Wolf Pack formed a natural pairing with the Bulldogs, geographically and athletically.

This paired invitation was confirmed by the Fresno State Athletic Director and President and all but seconded by MWC commish Craig Thompson.

Bringing in the Fresno-Nevada pair also creates natural rivalries to sell with Nevada-UNLV and Fresno State-San Diego State.

Boise State did receive a vote in the decision to invite their former WAC partners. The official invites went out Wednesday and were received back on Wednesday. Obviously, it didn't take long for these schools to make this decision.

But the successful addition of Fresno and Nevada still hinges on whether or not BYU will remain in the conference.

Being able to keep BYU in the fold could be a matter of how viable the remaining WAC membership is after the defection of two of their schools.

Louisiana Tech has long been rumored to be unhappy with the high travel costs involved in such a widespread conference, but the BCS-busting cash cow of Boise State certainly helped mitigate that concern. Without the Broncos, and now the Bulldogs and Wolf Pack, that concern could be elevated in their hierarchy of needs and wants.

BYU going independent creates a lot of scheduling concerns, and the MWC could put the final nail in that coffin by inviting the University of Hawaii to join them as a 12th team.

The revenues from a conference championship game and the added ticket sales that the Warriors generate could help offset travel costs for the MWC membership. Adding the Warriors could tip the scales in favor of the MWC for BYU, as the Mormon presence in the Hawaiian islands is tremendous.

But this still goes back to television ratings and market size. Losing BYU and the Salt Lake City market would be impossible to replace from a ratings standpoint, but taking away the potential opponents of an independent BYU would be a net gain, even if the team being added isn't a slam dunk on its own.

The Mountain West Conference does not own the Mtn. TV network. Comcast and CBS College Sports do. Commish Thompson has confirmed that those players have been major factors in this alignment scenario. The TV powers either know that BYU is near to setting up its own network and gave the green light to Thompson to fire another preemptive strike, or that adding Fresno and Nevada positions them for increased future profitability.

Commish Thompson isn't one to "wait and see" the dominoes fall. He wants to lay out the path where the dominoes fall.

He just hopes that his domino trail leads BYU to stay in the Mountain West.