Mountain West basketball: How to revive the Mountain West

The once-great Mountain West basketball conference has fallen on hard times.

It’s hard to not like Mountain West basketball. It contains some historic programs and a couple fantastic venues. The problem is that history has not produced in recent years. The conference is in danger of dropping into perennial one-bid territory.

How can the conference get back to its former glory?

The Mountain West was hit hard at the last round of expansion. They lost TCU, Utah and BYU, while bringing in Boise State, Fresno State, Nevada, San Jose State and Utah State. TCU provided a line into Texas, while the Utah schools gave the conference a stranglehold on the Beehive State. The newer teams still don’t have the brand strength of the departed squads, but that might change as Nevada and the others continue to improve against the existing MWC competition.

Aggressive expansion is the most obvious way to acquire new competition and branding opportunities.

Gonzaga and Wichita State are fantastic basketball-only options and would give the conference another perennial NCAA Tournament caliber team along with San Diego State. The neighboring Big Sky Conference has a few intriguing members like Eastern Washington or Weber State to expand or reinforce the existing geographic footprint. I would also look at sniping away C-USA’s UTEP to get back into the Texas market.

Another idea to try and rebuild the brand is get on television more with a conference challenge (they currently have one with the Missouri Valley, but it hasn’t attracted a lot of national viewership). The Big Ten/ACC and Big 12/SEC challenges have done good things for those leagues and the MWC could try to do the same with the Pac-12. The fact that the two conferences neighbor each other would add a nice competitive edge.

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These are just a few ideas to try and rebuild the Mountain West Conference. There is tons of potential in a group whose footprint extends from southern California to Colorado and from Idaho to New Mexico. Moves are always open, but a lot of success in college basketball comes down to time and luck. The hope is that Commissioner Craig Thompson can make the Mountain West a power again as the college sports landscape continues to shift.