Fortune favors the bold — here's the benefit of the Mountain West eliminating divisions in 2023

DENVER — It’s time to shake things up. 

The gap between the haves and the have-nots is growing by the year and with the idea of an expanded College Football Playoff appearing dead in the water, the Mountain West Conference needs to do whatever it can to remain relevant in the national landscape. 

There are always going to be certain limitations — the current version of the league is the sixth-best in the FBS — and even that is debatable until the top three programs in the American Athletic Conference officially leave for the Big-12 in the next year or two. 

While the conference won’t ever be in the same tier as the SEC, Big 10, etc, the aspirations definitely need to be higher than the Jimmy Kimmel Bowl. We’ve now had a team from the group of five qualify for the CFB Playoff. And it was not that long ago when the MWC sent teams to the Sugar Bowl (2009), Rose Bowl (2011) and Fiesta Bowl (2014). Obviously things have changed drastically in college football over the last decade, but that’s why a conference like the Mountain West cannot afford to sit stagnant. 

One way that the conference could potentially turn some heads would be to branch back into Texas and poach a school like SMU, who at minimum would be bringing more to the table than San Jose State ever has. Dallas is easily accessible, there would be recruiting benefits from having an institution in Texas, and SMU is at least in the vicinity of the spotlight. We all know that folks on the East Coast don’t pay attention to anyone West of the Red River but having a team in Texas, particularly if it were competitive, could help elevate the conference’s national profile. Not to mention that it would essentially be the final fatal blow to the AAC. 

Alas, expansion unfortunately does not seem to be a desire for the league members, as reports have stated they have no interest in divvying up more of their pie, which is already substantially smaller than many of their CFB counterparts to begin with. And it seems even more unlikely that the league would try to strong arm someone out, like SJSU, and bring in a replacement. So unless something drastic changes, odds are the conference is going to remain with the current 12 football members. 

So what can the MWC do? 

Finding a few new bowl partners would certainly be nice. I can’t say that it would be particularly thrilling to see my alma mater play in an untelevised Arizona Bowl sponsored by Barstool Sports. Not sure the Idaho Potato Bowl is exciting anyone these days either. 

A more impactful move, though, considering the goal should be to someday get a team from the Mountain West in contention for a spot in the CFB Playoff, would just be eliminating divisions and just putting the top two teams in the standings in the league title game. MWC commissioner Craig Thompson brought up the idea at MWC Media Days last July and according to Brett McMurphy, the league is likely to do it for the 2023 season. 

Mountain West “likely” to eliminate divisions for 2023 football season, sources told @ActionNetworkHQ https://t.co/ByeVi20Fza

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) May 4, 2022

If you’re wondering what the benefits of this could be, there are a lot of factors to consider. Here is why I think that it would make sense for the Mountain West, though. 

Guaranteeing that it’s the top two teams playing in the championship makes the game more compelling from a viewsership standpoint, but more importantly it’s more likely to have a greater impact on the CFB Playoff rankings. Ideally you want the Mountain West champion to benefit in perception from winning the game, similarly to the way winning the Big 12 title would provide a boost for Oklahoma or even TCU. Again, everything is on a different scale than those major leagues, but honestly, would folks on a national level have been that much more interested in Oregon vs. Utah than Fresno State vs. San Diego State, or Boise State vs. Air Force? 

The aforementioned are just random examples but the point is that you want the conference championship game to be as nationally relevant as possible. Voters need to be tuned in, and in order for that to happen, there needs to be more intrigue in the league than there has been since 2015 or so. 

Of course, the interest is not just going to appear out of thin air when December rolls around. The MWC needs to capture the attention of the CFB universe from the get-go, which means scheduling up. Nobody cares about watching CSU host South Dakota State or Wyoming host Ball State. Not every game has to be a trip to Michigan but a general rule of avoiding FCS teams, outside of maybe local programs, feels like a good one to follow. Winnable power five games are the most desirable route, like when Oregon State came to town in 2017, but the current nature of scheduling years in advance makes that tougher to project. 

Although still an imperfect process, what’s a little easier to project is how competitive the respective teams within the conference are expected to be in the upcoming season. There will always be squads that surprise like Utah State last year, but most predicted SDSU, Fresno State and Nevada to all be in the mix like they were. 

Another added bonus of eliminating divisions would be that the MWC could have more flexibility with the scheduling each year and make sure that the best teams are playing high profile conference games throughout the season. Strength of schedule plays a big factor for teams from the G5 earning enough respect to surpass schools from the P5, so if the MWC was ever expecting someone to have a special year like Cincinnati in 2021, it would be smart to have them play some of the other projected top teams in the conference. Most years beating Boise State is going to move the needle a whole lot more than taking down UNLV would.

Outside of protecting a couple of rivalries — which the MWC could do even with an open scheduling format — there really is no big benefit for the league to keep divisions. There would likely need to be some type of system that ensures everyone rotates trips to Hawaii. But at this point I’d even be in favor of trying something unique like each school has two annual conference matchups and the rest are just picked each year in hopes of making an intriguing schedule. Ie. CSU could play Air Force and Wyoming, the rest would be to be determined on a year-to-year basis. 

Ultimately this stuff is a hell of a lot more complicated than anyone makes it out to be and that includes myself. Scheduling is a headache in any capacity, and honestly, eliminating divisions may not be enough to move the needle. As we’ve already established, the gap between the power five and group of five seems to be widening with no end in sight. But with the pressure on, I’d certainly rather see the conference take a stab at being bold. At the end of the day it feels better to go down swinging than it does to stand at the plate frozen. 

As long as the waiver that McMurphy references passes, which allows conferences without divisions to still hold a conference championship game, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be the right move for the Mountain West in the near future.