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And it's not going to stop here.
Throughout college football’s entire realignment and expansion process, the Mountain West has been as progressive as anyone with its thinking and its game planning. While the league's honchos might have their heads over their skis on some of their brainstorms, they're not going to stand pat and be held hostage by BYU, the loss of Utah or the threat of TCU soon leaving for the Big 12.
The Mountain West has recruited Fresno State and Nevada, a great move for the league as well as the two schools. Fresno (No. 55) and Reno (No. 108) don't have rocking television markets, but the schools have solid football programs, have been bowl regulars over the past few years and add more meat to the Mountain West's midsection that would raise the overall profile of the league. The additions also would help make up for the possible loss of BYU and could be a decent incentive to possibly keep the Cougars around.
The Mountain West continues to move forward, and it's not going to end its expansion dreams here with Houston and UTEP likely to be targeted from Conference USA and with the potential looming to create a large enough conference to have a Mountain West title game and with enough strong TV markets to boost the possibility of an automatic BCS invitation.
This move effectively ends the WAC as any sort of a factor as it becomes the Sun Belt West. The next logical move will be for Louisiana Tech to beg its way into Conference USA or into the new and improved Mountain West, and with Boise State already gone, there are few ways the WAC can go. Because of the remote geographic locations and the lack of any stars, there’s simply nothing else the league can do. The WAC next year could be Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana Tech (for now), New Mexico State, San Jose State and Utah State ... yeeeeeeeesh.
Boise State became too big and had to move on, Fresno State has wanted to be big time for years and Nevada is a decent part of the overall equation paired up with UNLV. Now, BYU has absolutely no reason to move on and there's no real reason for the Mountain West to bend over backward to keep the school.
If it does leave, BYU will be in the WAC in all the other sports (the school has various ties to Hawaii), but it's going to be a football independent and won’t have any incentive to join a dying football conference. If BYU ends up staying put, here's what the new Mountain West could look like in the very near future (making a few well-guided assumptions):
Mountain West North: Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Nevada, UNLV, Wyoming
Mountain West South: BYU, Houston, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico, San Diego State, TCU, UTEP
Try to convince the BCSers (and BYU) that a Mountain West that looks like that wouldn't be worthy of an automatic invitation.
