Boise State Football: Will the Mountain West Conference Destroy It?

When Boise State finishes taking out its frustration over a loss to Nevada by dropping 100 on Utah State this Saturday, it will have completed its decade-long dominance of the Western Athletic Conference. 

And then, it will slip quietly into anonymity. 

The Broncos are now headed to the Mountain West Conference.

But in reality, this is one of those “rose by any other name” scenarios.

When they agreed to move to the MWC, the conference featured TCU and BYU, both of which are now gone.

They are replaced by Nevada, Fresno State and possibly Hawaii.

Sound familiar?

The MWC still leaves Boise State with zero "conference credibility."

Quite simply, the new MWC is the old WAC (not to be confused with the old, old WAC which is the old MWC. Makes sense, right?).

So Boise State’s attempt to upgrade conference competition has fallen from underneath it.

Are Colorado State, UNLV, New Mexico and Wyoming any better than Louisiana Tech, San Jose State, New Mexico State and Idaho?

Not in any voter’s eyes.

So the Broncos, assuming they continue to own conference foes, will still hear these all-to-familiar brush-offs: “They don’t have to play every week” and “The computers will kill them for strength of schedule.”

But that’s not the worst part…

The MWC TV deal will destroy Boise State’s national status.

There’s no denying it: BSU has been ESPN’s darling for the better part of a decade. 

The Broncos are kidding themselves if they think their national reputation and recruiting success isn’t driven heavily by that exposure.

That’s now gone.

Boise State will now play its games on The Mtn., Versus and CBS College Sports. These three stations are well outside the channel-surfing range on all providers and are available only on less-subscribed packages and often not at all in many regions and providers.

The picture, signal, camera angles and on-screen personalities are inane and amateurish. But that ultimately doesn’t matter because nobody who matters (recruits, ESPN and voters) will ever see these games. 

Out of sight, out of mind.

When you sit down on Thursday night to watch football, do you ever get to the 600 numbered channels, or do you go right to the block of ESPNs?

What will a recruit or voter do?

Sure, BYU, Utah and TCU have had success in that environment.

But those programs already had strong followings and a tradition of winning. They succeeded despite the TV deal.

But none had even close to the respect, exposure and chatter about them that BSU did.

ESPN certainly understands this.

Why do you think they jumped at the opportunity to snatch up BYU?

They know they can sell a solid football program to a national audience on weeknights.

They will spend their marketing dollars to promote that school/program/team and Boise has reaped those benefits for years now in the WAC. 

How can Boise State survive now without it?

Ryan Teeples can be followed at twitter.com/SportsGuyUtah.