Oct. 15 did not just mark the day as Boise State enters Mountain West conference play for the first time, but two monumental movements in regards to the Broncos and college football.
The Big East has sent conditional invitations to Houston and Southern Methodist University in all sports and Boise State and Air Force in football only, according to ESPN.com, a source directly tied in with Big East Conference shifting. The Big East also sent an all-sport invitation to University of Central Florida, an invitation they plan on accepting.
The Big East also told the four potentially incoming schools if they were to accept the invitation to join, the remaining schools would agree to increase the exit fee from $5 million to $10 million to show stability and commitment to the incoming schools. However, the schools are only willing to hike up the fees if the four schools accept the invitations.
This would restore the Big East’s basketball conference to 17, with the leave of Syracuse and Pittsburgh and addition of SMU, Houston and UCF. The football conference would also go back to 11 with Boise State and Air Force.
On the other hand, the Mountain West and Conference USA agreed to a 22-team merger for football, hoping to increase their chances of getting an automatic qualifier bid. The league will have a two-division alignment and will play a championship game, Conference USA commissioner Britton Banowsky said during a conference call announcing the move on Friday, according to ESPN.com.
Banowsky and Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson said Boise State, Air Force and UCF voted on the alliance, and that all three schools had approved the move, which provides an interesting turn on the domino effect of conference realignment. Boise State, Air Force and UCF had told their respective commissioners of talks with the Big East, while Houston and SMU have not.
What will outweigh the other: an establish AQ conference who could possibly lose their AQ bid from the loss of departing teams or a non-AQ superconference aiming at getting the bid and ultimately hoping their prized school, Boise State, likes it enough to stick around.
It’s going to come down to the wire, naturally, and a decision will probably not be made until later next week.