Mountain West Connection

Boise State Gets Phone Call From the Big West Conference

2012-05-16T22:09:00Z

Boise State president Bob Kustra got the phone call he was desperately hoping for yesterday. The call was from Big West commissioner Dennis Farrell about the possibility of Boise State joining the Big West Conference. It’s far from a done deal, but Farrell said the Big West is following up the call by sending the Broncos an assessment tool the conference hands out to any potential new members.

The move comes as a surprise after the league turned down Boise State’s request this past December. That attempt was prompted by the Broncos accepting an invite to the Big East for football-only and needing to find a home for its other sports programs. Boise State ended up back in the Western Athletic Conference, whose survival is now in serious jeopardy after being shredded by the latest round of conference expansion.

"We're looking at this from a broad landscape right now," Farrell told ESPN. But that is a significant change of heart from last month when Pacific decided to leave the Big West for the WCC, and the Big West was content to remain at 10 members. That was before Boise State and the WAC got into trouble and asked both the Big East Conference and San Diego State for help in placing their Olympic sports. SDSU is a school the BWC has sought as a member for a long time so any recommendation San Diego State Athletic Director Jim Sterk has acknowledged making is going to be listened to very carefully.

The Big West is basically a California-based bus league whose members are within a close geographical footprint, with the exception of Hawaii. There is no doubt that if Boise State is offered a chair at the table the cost issue is something that would have to be worked out. In order to get that chair Boise State will need 8 of 10 conference schools to approve their membership. Those schools are Cal State Fullerton, UC Santa Barbara, Long Beach State, Cal Poly, Cal State Northridge, UC Davis, UC Riverside, UC Irvine, San Diego State and Hawaii.

A huge question is how Hawaii will vote. It is no secret they were upset with Boise State leaving for the Big East when they made the jump to the MWC, and feel much the same as Boise State felt when BYU left the conference. Moreover, the MWC commissioner has not made a secret that he would like Boise State and San Diego to stay and get the MWC to a 12-team league. Hawaii could be the blocking vote to force Boise and SDSU back into the conference. For that reason alone Hawaii will certainly be getting a lot of pressure from the other MWC presidents urging them to vote no.

Farrell also said something else yesterday that should give the MWC pause. He said that if Boise State is added then the Big West Conference would probably expand to 12 members. That additional Big West member could be Denver, Seattle or Cal-State Bakersfield. But it could also be another member they have coveted and located within their footprint: Fresno State.

Speculating, it would not come as a surprise to hear that the Big West has been in direct contact with the Big East with the idea of reversing its December decision to consider Boise State for membership for a price: the Big West adds Fresno State as well, thus forcing the Big East to invite the Bulldogs as their 14th member. It would make sense for both conferences, but could that be a long shot scenario? Yeah, sure, maybe. But in the quickly shifting dynamics of conference expansion nothing should surprise you.

Right now the Big East is almost as vulnerable as Boise State. It desperately needs both Boise State and San Diego State to join the league in football for 2013, to help its image if nothing else. The conference can ill afford the perception of instability on the eve of media negotiations after the rash of recent defections of such teams as Pitt, Syracuse, and West Virginia. Even Louisville is looking to leave. Further, with college football moving away from an automatic qualification status for the BCS in two years, the Big East could be in danger of losing two more key, high profile members in Boise State and SDSU.

The Big West is the only one who really doesn’t need anything out of this and could basically be in control of the future of the Big East. It’s easy to speculate what is going on behind the scenes and Boise State will not comment. There is no timetable for a decision, but Boise State faces a July 1st deadline to withdraw from the Mountain West so they will move fast on the Big West paperwork---and working the phones behind the lines.

Like Farrell said after the Big West board of directors and chancellors meeting: "The ball is in Boise State's court at this point."

How College Football Teams Are Arranged With Relegation

2012-05-16T20:15:54Z

Over at SB Nation is relegation week for college football, and today's latest post has separated all of college football down to the NAIA level. There are seven tiers set up with teams currently in the conference they are, so Boise State and San Diego State are still in the Mountain West, and any independents such as BYU or Notre Dame are put into a league.

It is set up to be a geographical fit and due to the size of the info the tiers and map will be after the jump.


Tier 1	Pac-12
	Arizona	Colorado	Stanford	Utah
	Arizona State	Oregon	UCLA	Washington
	California	Oregon State	USC	Washington St.
Tier 2	Mountain West
	Air Force	Fresno State	New Mexico	Wyoming
	Boise State	Hawaii	San Diego State
	Colorado State	Nevada	UNLV
Tier 3	WAC		Big Sky
	Idaho	Utah State	E. Washington	N. Colorado
	Louisiana Tech	UT-San Antonio	Idaho State	Portland State
	New Mexico St.		Montana	Sacramento St.
	San Jose State		Montana State	Weber State
	Texas State		N. Arizona
Tier 4	Great West
	Cal Poly	South Dakota	UC Davis
	North Dakota	Southern Utah
Tier 5	Rocky Mountain		Great Northwest
	Adams State	CSU-Pueblo	Azusa Pacific	Western Oregon
	Black Hills	Fort Lewis	Central Washington
	Chadron State	NM Highlands	Dixie State
	Colorado Mesa	W. New Mexico	Humboldt State
	Colorado Mines	Western State	Simon Fraser
Tier 6	Northwest		SCIAC
	Lewis & Clark	Puget Sound	Cal Lutheran	Occidental
	Linfield	Whitworth	Chapman	Pomona-Pitzer
	Pacific	Williamette	Claremont-Mudd	Redlands
	Pacific Lutheran		La Verne	Whittier
Tier 7	Frontier			Dakota
	Carroll College	*George Fox	MT St.-N. Lights	*Dakota State
	*College of Idaho	*Menlo	Rocky Mt. College	Jamestown
	Dickinson St.	Montana Tech		Mayville St.
	Eastern Oregon	Montana Western		Valley City St.

This Western setup is by far the most difficult among the top three tiers compared to the others since the WAC is a tier three league and is the only current FBS league to be that low. Also, there are the most current FBS teams in this Western set up. Plus the Big Sky has some extremely talented teams at the FCS level with both Montana schools who are traditionally great, and overall the Big Sky is one of the toughest FCS leagues.

As for how teams move up and move down, that has not been put mentioned in this project but it should be discussed before the weeks end. There is some disparity because some tiers have such as the Big 10 tier which has eight leagues in tier six while the same sixth tier out west has only two leagues.

I was and may go to WhatIfSports.com to does some simulations, but they do not include FCS schools so that would skew the results. However, the odds that Montana Tech even moves up from tier seven to even tier four, so it might be appropriate to disregard them.

I am not familiar on how relegation works with soccer, but in college football it would make sense to bump up two teams and drop two teams each year. To add even more drama the second- and third-best best/worst teams in their tier would play for the right to drop or move up. The best team moves up while the worst team moves down, but adding this extra game during conference championship week would add so much more drama with those teams on the cusp of moving up or moving down.

Take the Mountain West from last year as an example -- using last years members and not the tiers mentioned -- as it would have been Boise State vs. Wyoming for the right to move up into the Pac-12 as they were the No. 2 and No. 3 teams and then at the bottom it would have been Colorado State vs. UNLV to fight it out to avoid being dropped down.

That would be exciting.

One thing that would need to change would be that each tier needs to play by the same scholarship rules, and when teams move up they should be given some financial help so that they are truly on the same playing field.

This project is so cool to do during the offseason and there are a million ways to look at it, and I may try to do some projections with the leagues as they are for the 2012 season to provide some historical context. If you have any ideas how to do that I am all game. I may look at Football Outsiders as a guide with their indepth ranking systems, AccuScore and WhatIfSports.

For more Mountain West Connection Follow @JeremyMauss

Former Four-Star Recruit Demar Dorsey To Play At Hawai'i In 2012

2012-05-16T19:32:42Z

Former Four-Star Recruit Demar Dorsey To Play At Hawai'i In 2012

"Dorsey originally committed to the Gators, and was quite showy about his love for Gainesville during the Under Armour All America Game. He then decommitted from the Gators, visited West Virginia, USC, Florida State and Michigan, told sources he would commit to Florida State, and then committed to the Michigan Wolverines.

That didn't work out too well for Dorsey, as Michigan, despite accepting his commitment, denied his admittance. It may have had something to do with Dorsey's three felony charges. He then attempted to go to Louisville, but Louisville would not admit him due to his grades."

He will see if this works way out in Hawaii and away from the spotlight.

2013 NCAA Basketball Odds: UNLV Is A 40-1 Shot At Title

2012-05-15T20:05:30Z

Now that recruiting for the 2012 class is over and that the early entrants for the NBA Draft is complete the odds for who will cut down the nets in 2013 have been released by Bovada, and UNLV comes in at 40/1 to win the title.

Here are the early odds:

Indiana 7/1
Louisville 8/1
Kentucky 10/1
Duke 15/1
Florida 15/1
North Carolina 15/1
UCLA 15/1
Kansas 18/1
Michigan 20/1
North Carolina State 20/1
Ohio State 20/1
Syracuse 20/1
Michigan State 22/1
Arizona 25/1
Baylor 25/1
Memphis 25/1
Creighton 30/1
St. John's 30/1
Missouri 35/1
Texas 35/1
Florida State 40/1
Georgetown 40/1
Pittsburgh 40/1
Stanford 40/1
UNLV 40/1

Seeing UNLV at 40/1 is a little bit low in my opinion since they have the No. 30 rated 2012 recruiting class by Rivals, but that is before the addition of Anthony Bennett who is rated as the No. 7 overall prospect. In the early preseason polls ESPN has UNLV on the cusp of being ranked, this also done before Bennett signed, and then they are ranked at No. 10 in SB Nation's preseason poll (again also before Bennett signed):

Who they're losing: F Chace Stanback, G Oscar Bellfield, F Brice Massamba, G Kendall Wallace

Who they're bringing back: F Mike Moser, F Anthony Marshall, G Justin Hawkins, F Carlos Lopez, F Quintrell Thomas

Who they're adding: F Khem Birch, G Katin Reinhardt, C Demetris Morant, G DaQuan Cook, F Anthony Bennett.

Double-double machine Mike Moser, who was probably the best player in college basketball over the season's first month, has opted to stick around for another year and is the main reason the Rebs figure to garner some serious preseason love. He, Anthony Marshall and Pitt transfer Khem Birch compose a trio of forwards that can match up with any in the country, but the issue for Dave Rice will be finding consistency from his backcourt. The addition of incoming freshman sharp-shooter Katin Reinhardt should assist in offsetting the loss of second leading scorer Chase Stanback.

UNLV has a real shot to make some noise in the NCAA tournament with their mix of returning talent and incoming freshman. At 40/1 to win the NCAA title that is a pretty good bet to take for those who like to wager on such things, because once UNLV starts rolling through the schedule these odds will probably increase.

College Football Relegation Week!!!

2012-05-15T15:07:38Z

College Football Relegation Week!!!

Looks like the guys at SB Nation are trying to fill the dreadful months of college football with relegation talk within the sport. The link is to all the relegation coverage so check back often for updates.

My quick take is that it could work wonders if certain conferences are aligned regionally, and just keep the name of the conferences for non-football sports. So, the Mountain West could have a team like Boise State move up to the Pac-12 for football but all their other sports would always be housed in the MWC.

I'll add more later.

2012 Boise State Football: A Look at the Quarterbacks Seeking to Fill Kellen Moore's Shoes

2012-05-15T12:00:17Z

Bronco Nation is looking for one big answer going forward. No, not which conference will it play in next year, nor even if the world will survive beyond the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21st. Those would be too easy to answer. The bigger question on nearly every Bronco fan’s mind is which one of the four quarterbacks on the Broncos roster will be selected to fill record setting quarterback Kellen Moore’s shoes?

Not helping the discussion is that following last month’s Spring Game, Broncos head coach Chris Petersen was non-committal. They all did well, he said, and all are showing signs of improvement, thus leaving the clear impression that the QB race for the starting position is far from over. He’s just being picky.

Luckily for Petersen, he has a stable full of good, dual-threat quarterbacks to pick from. Well, four, anyway. One of those is junior QB Joe Southwick, 6-1, 198 lbs, the backup for Moore the past two years. By most accounts he could be the expected starter after a good year last season. He was 23 of 30 for 198 yards in passing, averaging 6.60 yards with a TD and an INT. He had a rating of 136.4 coming into spring ball.

This season Southwick was picked to head the first squad during the Blue and Orange Spring Game, where he guided the offense on two touchdown drives. One of those included an 18-yard TD pass on fourth down. Southwick finished the game 14-of-19 for 145 yards with the TD, and scrambled for 8 more yards. It was planned that he would get the most snaps.

Strengths: of the four, he has the most college experience, an able player, and knows the playbook. He has also shown he is a good leader and has the respect of the men in the huddle.

Weaknesses: his longest ball last season was 20 yards and brings into question his arm strength. Or it could be nothing; in 2010 he tossed the pigskin for a 78-yarder.

Sophomore QB Grant Hedrick, 6-1, 191 lbs, was the third QB in rotation last season. With limited action as the third stringer he was 2-of-3 for 19 yards passing, each averaging 6.33 yards. That closed out his first college passing season with a 119.9 rating. But Hedrick was impressive with his running and scrambling abilities. He ran 8 times for 70 yards, including a 23 yard TD run against Fresno State. Unfortunately, about half way through the season while down in Las Vegas he was injured on a sideline run when a big, mean Rebel gave him a hit that sidelined him for the next three games.

Last month Hedrick was Southwick’s backup during the Spring Game so he had another chance to shine. Instead, his 2012 debut was overshadowed by a mediocre performance and might have had the toughest outing of the four quarterbacks on the Bronco squad. Hedrick finished 2-of-6 in the passing department for 5 yards, and tossed an interception. He also added a minus 7 yards on two rushes.

Strengths: an accurate passer that combines with his speed on the field. In 2009, he ran a 4.5 at the Nike Football Training Camp in Palo Alto, California so there is no question of his ability.

Weaknesses: the injury at Las Vegas might bring into question his toughness. If he is going to run with the ball he needs to be able to take a hit.

Of all four quarterbacks, true freshman QB Nick Patti, 5-11, 190 lbs, is probably the most like Moore according to sources. He is also proud of the fact that he is known as one of the “OKG’s---our kind of guys, “ a label he got from head coach Chris Petersen. The young passer out of Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando, Florida comes to Boise State with an impressive resume of his own. He has good speed (a 4.49-second 40-yard dash) and promises to be a dual threat on the field. He won the 8A (largest division) Player of the Year award this year in Florida and was one of only 24 quarterbacks who attended the prestigious Elite 11 camp last summer.

Patti graduated high school early so he could get to BSU in time for spring ball and he has not disappointed. He looked impressive in front of the Bronco fan base and was clearly a crowd favorite. He led the 2nd team with a drive that culminated in a touchdown, scoring on a 35-yard touchdown. He finished the game 4-of-8 for 60 yards passing and the TD. He also picked up 15 running yards. “(Patti) might be the most impressive guy in the quarterback race right now,” Petersen said later , “just from being around such a short time and just throwing as much as we did (at him).”

Strengths: he is a highly accurate passer and possesses something Kellen Moore didn’t: speed and the ability to run.

Weaknesses: probably his two most important deficits are his lack of football experience at the college level and his smaller size in comparison to other college quarterbacks---or as Coach Pete puts it, he’s an OKG.

QB Jimmy Laughrea, 6-2, 197 lbs., a pro-style quarterback out of Rocklin, California, is starting his second year at Boise State following a redshirt season learning the Broncos playbook. When he was recruited for the 2011 class, Laughrea ranked No. 18 on Rivals.com's list of top dual-threat QBs and earned a 5.7 ranking overall. That ranking followed his high school senior year where he tossed 22 TDs en route to claiming the Sierra Foothill League Offensive MVP honors.

During the spring game Laughrea shared leadership of the second team with Patti. In the limited play he was 3-of-7 for 13 yards in passing, and had 3 yards scrambling. That is not really enough for a satisfactory evaluation at this level of play, but coach Petersen has not ruled him out and---in fact---is very impressed with his arm strength.

Strengths: like the other Boise State QB’s, he’s a dual threat. And by all accounts he has one of the strongest arms on the Broncos squad and more than capable of heaving a deep bomb down field. He also makes good decisions, and is quick to decide whether to run or pass the ball.

Weaknesses: a lack of experience at the college level and somewhat rusty play action after a year spent warming the Broncos bench.

Everyone at Bronco Nation has their favorite they want to be in the saddle on August 31st when the Broncos travel to Michigan State to take on the 13th ranked Spartans and for the most part there is no consensus of opinion. As for Coach Pete, he has not ruled anyone out as the starter and has said no decisions will be made until fall practice. Southwick, with experience as Moore’s backup, will enter fall camp as the front-runner after his strong showing in the spring game, but Patti also showed the stuff he is made of and could certainly challenge him for the starting spot. Then there is Hedrick, who will be out to prove himself all over again in fall camp, and Laughrea, whose arm strength has caught Petersen’s attention. Don't forget to add this thought into the mix: Petersen picked Kellen Moore as his starter when Moore was a true freshman.

So who will be the one selected to fill Moore's shoes? Your guess is as good as mine.

SDSU helping Boise State find league solution

2012-05-15T01:30:20Z

SDSU helping Boise State find league solution

San Diego State is helping Boise State find a stable conference home for its non-football sports, possibly in the Big West for 2013 and beyond.

Insight Bowl is changing it's name: A Create-Your-Own-Bowl-Game Adventure

2012-05-14T19:45:23Z

The Insight Bowl is getting a new name due to their sponsorship with Insight Enterprises ending. So here's your chance to have a little fun with a new name and corresponding sponsorship. I've given a few examples here so you can get started:

The Big Mack Bowl sponsored by Texas HC Mack Brown (note, the Big XII rep will always be Texas)

The Sedona Bowl sponsored by the city of Sedona

The Pirate Bowl sponsored by Mike Leach and Disney

The Animal Bowl sponsored by PetSmart

The Fly Whenever You Want bowl sponsored by US Airways (note, this bowl will be played in the US Airways center: Arena Football Rules)

The Peter Piper Pizza Bowl (special halftime guest Yanni)

The Sky Mall Bowl (this would have my favorite gift sets for the players)

The Coldstone Bowl (note: instead of using footballs, players must play with football ice cream cakes)

Let's see how many wacky and clever names come up...the winner will get bragging rights (and if you like you can submit your idea to that sponsor and see if they take you seriously!).

Cleverness and silliness are encouraged, however if you have a serious bowl name/sponsor throw it in!