In the time since the Broncos made said decision to leave the "Little Sisters of the Poor" (AKA Gordon Gee's description of Boise's conference mates) behind, the strongest members of the MWC (BYU, Utah, and TCU) have all jumped ship.
Utah accepted an invite in mid-June to join the Pac-10. Shortly thereafter, BYU decided to become an independent in football—with all their other sports joining the West Coast Conference. Now, today, TCU has accepted an invitation to join the Big East conference.
The latter action has to have the powers that be at Boise State scratching their collective heads—essentially, the MWC just became the WAC.
Boise is no longer adding it's strong record and television appeal to a major, non-BCS, conference in the hopes of making it legitimate but, rather, joining a conference that will now be looking to them for any form of legitimacy—talk about getting the short end.
While you can hardly blame Utah, BYU, or TCU for trying to get their shot at an automatic qualifying (AQ) bid in a BCS conference, you have to feel a little sorry for Boise State because they just seem to keep missing out on acceptance.
Seriously, what can they possibly do now? They will be in no better a position in 2011 than they were in 2010.
Of course the MWC will add more teams, but with BYU and Utah now gone, and TCU exiting in 2012, how many advertisers will be chomping at the bit to see MWC games on national television—in primetime? Better still, what does this mean for the Mountain West's network? Boise might be a media darling, but they aren't a huge draw all by themselves—and no one is going to be lining up to see them play Colorado State, New Mexico, or Wyoming.
Boise State can't seem to catch a break. They're either damned if they do, or damned if they don't and they have to be feeling a bit piled on by this point. Perhaps they've been right all along—no teams want to play them.
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