The MWC ... err ... the WAC may be dead

I strongly encourage everyone to take a look at this post at The Wiz of Odds. Thorough, to say the least.

In the immortal words of Ron Burgundy, "that escalated quickly."

Tuesday night, almost ten o'clock. I'm getting ready to watch a few episodes of Criminal Minds as I work on a few things here and there when I see this tweet from Jeff Goodman. So I begin poking through twitter, trying to see if anyone else is talking about BYU and a potential move to football independence (and, for our purposes, to the WAC), and there are some rumors and theories and ideas being thrown about. Typical twitterati. Great discussions, occasionally-reliable facts.


Like every other blogger out there, I woke up the next morning, threw a few words together, and pushed the Cougars to the back of my mind. This is expansion, and if this summer taught us anything about expansion, its that rumor tends to outweigh actual action.

Then yesterday afternoon, something happened. News leaked that it was a "done deal" for BYU to become a football independent, likely landing in the WAC for all other sports. With that news, many began writing the eulogy for the Mountain West Conference. The league was toast. Running their own cable network -- The Mountain -- wouldn't be feasible with both Utah and BYU jumping ship. There would never be enough eyeballs on TV sets with Utah (read Salt Lake City). And even with the addition of Boise State and before the "reported" exit of BYU, it was unlikely that the MWC was going to get an automatic qualifier into the BCS.

I emphasized "reported" in that last sentence for one reason -- BYU has not yet made this move official. As of late last night, BYU was still a member of the MWC.

Why?

Because the MWC decided to put up a fight. Instead of rolling over and dying, the MWC dipped into the WAC and pulled out both Nevada and Fresno State, joining Boise State in making the jump in 2011. So after a few hours of thinking the MWC could implode without BYU, now it seems as if the WAC is on life support. After this season, the conference will have just six teams. BYU may want football independence, but they will also want the rest of their athletics teams to be in a conference.

So what happens next? Does BYU stay independent in football and join the WCC? The Big Sky? The WAC, and hope the league adds a few members? Does the MWC scoop up any of Conference USA? Does Conference USA scoop up any members of the WAC?

Who knows, but in the last 36 hours, there has been a lot more action during Realignment 2.0 than Expansionocalypse.

So don't journey too far from twitter, folks. You never know what conference is going to die today.