Interesting.

Does anybody have any doubt that if it weren't for "the mtn" deal the letters WAC would be repalced or at least accompanied by the letters MWC?

The mnt west is left with the MTN. Great national exposure.

Karl Benson > Craig Thompson

"telecasts on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays"

The possibility of having to play Tuesdays and Wednesdays was the deal killer for the MWC. The added exposure is just not worth it.

Who wants to jack up their whole football season by having to play on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Late Thursday or Friday night games are bad enough.

Tuesday/Wednesday games ensure that a large chunk of your home crowd WON'T be at the game.

Yes, but WHAT DAY OF THE WEEK will those football games be played?

BYU and UTAH should have stayed in the WAC

Big Deal....we have "The Mntn.!!!" Wow....we get to hunt for where the next game will be shown and also we get to lobby for getting special services to broadcast coverage....Take that WAC and ESPN...

I would doubt that. The article specifically states that it is a reward for performance and notes the two BCS games and the CWS championship. While I don't disagree that the MWC is perhaps overall a better conference from top to bottom, they do not have a similar performance record to "play their way" into the contract.

So is it time for BYU and Utah to rejoin the WAC? The MWC is becoming the Mountain Worst Conference.

BYU and Utah? Why so bitter? Dont you get enough exposure on the mtn? Well, better luck next time.

The MTN television coverage is a joke. The last thing I want to watch on my 92" home theater projection screen is lousy looking standard Def football games served up by the MTN network. It looks like for this season there will only be 2 possibilities to watch their games in Hi-Def. Are there even any plans for the MTN to move into Hi-Def?

That's a good deal for the WAC, while the MWC toils in obscurity on the the mtn. Still, for Karl Benson to call the WAC a premier conference is stretching it. From top to bottom it is no better than the MWC. Remember, the WAC has the likes of Idaho, New Mexico State, and yes, Utah State. Idaho should not even be a Division I school, and NMSU and USU, except for basketball, are not competitive with even the MWC's worst teams.

Visit Sagarin, ESPN's conference rankings, etc, and you'll see that the MWC (this year) is SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than the WAC. No surprise there.
Interesting that $$$ terms of the WAC/ESPN deal weren't disclosed, but it still won't come near what the MTN pays out unless the "significant increase" is 4-5x what they are annually receiving...doubtful. And as saokblue pointed out, what about Tuesday and Wednesday night games? Poor fan draw, and for teams like BYU and Utah who have 60,000 and 40,000 fans at a game the lost revenue on empty seats outweighs a 9 or 10pm EST kickoff on ESPN2 which most of the contry won't see anyways (which speaking as someone living on the east coast, the media coverage of west coast/rocky mountain sports is sparse as much because of the 2-3 hr time difference as anything).
Good for the WAC. But not really something for the MWC to be envious of.

Nice to see something Utah and BYU fans can agree upon.

Tuesday and Wednesday football games? The WAC can have that. Every Ute home game but one starts between 4 and 7 pm, with the other at noon. One game on Thursday night, the rest on Saturdays. That is awesome!!

Yes, The Mtn is horrible, especially if you have HDTV. But the start times for our games is awesome, and that is the most important thing to me. Remember the 10 am starts for football during the ESPN contract? How about 4 pm at Wyoming in November? Ridiculous. How about those 10 pm basketball games that nobody watched- not even the fans of the teams who were playing?

Sure, ESPN is great, but not with those horrible start times and Tuesday and Wednesday football games.

This is what happens when a conference has a competent commissioner working on its behalf. The MWC may still have the stronger deal when directly compared to the WAC's new arrangement, but the fact remains, the WAC has a commissioner who is working to move the conference upward.

The MWC, meanwhile, is in the death grip of the supremely incompetent and incapable Craig Thompson, who has dragged the conference out of the fringe of the national spotlight and into the dark cellar of greedy broadcasters who are just as bad at what they do as Thompson is at what he does.

This should serve as a wake-up call to the AD's and university presidents at MWC schools to think about what the conference could be if placed in capable hands.

The WAC deserves it...flatout! Utah and BYU pad their respective programs with "local yocal stiffs" for coaches who get out recruited by teams like Snow College and you end up in obscurity where you belong. Bronco and Kyle are losers....in a couple more weeks neither of the yewts or Cougs will be in the top 25!

ESPN also signed a $2.0 billion dollar deal to televise all SEC games beginning next year that are not televised on CBS. Guess who will get kicked to the Tuesday and Wednesday night games? Certainly not the SEC. Also, why no disclosure of the financial deal? If it is such a great deal why did the WAC hold out for a year? Must be pathetic. The MWC did the right thing by creating their own network channel. The mtn. has a lot of improvements to make including moving to HD but already this year Utah has been on ABC and BYU will be on the Fox Sports Net. Some games for Utah and BYU will be on VS which is HD. This deal the WAC got from ESPN does not impress me.

National pubs including The Sporting News have done articles about the talk being that Boise wants into the MWC after this year. I don't know anyone who wants into the Wac. Make no mistake, the Wac is still the little sister... and they know it. Keep trying Wac-ers.

About a month ago, the Honolulu Advertiser reported that the money increase was from $900,000 per year to somewhere around $4 to $5 million. I don't care what the MWC makes. Stictly from a WAC standpoint, increasing the money from that much, AT LEAST doubling what we currently have in football, and quadrupling what we have in men's basketball is well worth it. Better money, better exposure than before.

This is an article about the WAC. Please don't ruin it by talking about the Mountain West.

the WAC and the WAC can have ESPN. The MTN deal may not be perfect and we all know about the distribution problems. That said, I'll take the MTN over ESPN any day. The main reason is I don't like going to football games on days other than Saturday.

WHO CARES!!!!!!!!......any show that Commissioner Benson is involved in turns out only to be a side show anyways. He's a key reason why the original teams left....and while we're on the subject....... page 47 of Sporting News is predicting this to be Boise State's last year in the WAC...... which when really interpreted means a lot more than meets the eye....especially with the fact that the city of Boise and the University own the rights to the Humanitarian Bowl ......Hmmmmmm what could that possibly mean for for the Las Vegas Bowl?????????

The mtn is a rediculous television network, BYU and Utah need to get out of it. Utah should join the WAC and BYU should go independent. That way they both get better coverage.

Little do all of you fools know, we're exactly where we want to be. While we're on this channel that nobody gets (and those who get it can't stand to watch it because the quality epitomizes crap) when we get teams that win lots of games in a row, they will be ranked higher because nobody sees anything other than the score. Done, and done. We can mask any game with a few cosmetic scoreboard points and we'll be just fine. Watch this principle go to work for the cougars this year. It will work, it WILL work.

Before anyone declares this as a success for the WAC consider that the MTN actually pays better and has more exposure in terms of household exposure...now that the Satellite company has picked it up. I can now see every BYU game on TV at my house. You can't say that about one single WAC team. The positive spin that the WAC and ESPN are putting out is basically to send a message to conferences like the MWC. ESPN has a monopoly on college football and the coverage they produce. They are simply no going to tolerate another conference having their own network. A little more time and continuing to win is all the MWC needs to prove they have a better conference. Remember that Nevada cancelled their contract with BYU because they didn't want to be beat by a team from the MWC. The MWC is definitely a better conference than the WAC.

I remember living in utah and watching Kjazz for all the games, but since I have lived in wyoming, california, and Idaho. The CSTV (CBS-sports), Versus and MTN cover more games than I use to get on the utes, at a national level. Utah may have had one ESPN and one possible ABC or CBS if playing a big team during that year. I now can get most of the games. So not on a local level, but from viewing at a national level, The CBS-sports channels, which includes the MTN is better coverage.

I'm glad that we got out of the WAC and joined the MWC. It really worked out well. Our games are shown on The Mountain and Versus, two cable operations that will someday rival the exposure given to athletes on ESPN. They have wonderful expert announcers and color analysts and their "up close and personal" segments are second to none. And even though as a Dish Network subscriber I couldn't watch the BYU game last, all was not lost when I got to watch Tennesse Tech vs. Southern Illinois. These teams and conferences need exposure too and I was more than glad to sacrifice watching my alma mater for this quality football experience.

Oh yeah, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you for a great price.

Everything has to turn in a some contest between utes and zoobs and mwc and the WAC.

Why can't the mwc homers be happy with what they've got without having to bag on the WAC?

Boise leaving? So what? To each their own.

Too much short man's disease going around these parts coming from fans who's teams are ranked in the top 25...I don't understand...

Go Aggies! Beat the mtn. network! Or something like that...

This proves one thing. We always think the grass is greener on the other side. Too bad we didn't stay were we were.

When Utah busted the BCS the WAC had Boise St who was undefeated and Fresno had only lost to Boise St then the next year Boise cracks the BCS then the next year Hawaii cracks the BCS and Fresno is picked as one of the 3 top BCS busters this year so in reality when you look at it they have done better the last few years at getting the national attention and that Oklahoma/Boise St game has to be one of the greatest and most exciting games in the history of college football. The MWC may be better from top to bottom than the WAC but the WAC's top teams have done better on a national level so I would say that they deserve it an not only because of football. The basketball teams have been better than the MWC and also they have a baseball team that just won the national championship. When was the last time that happened for the MWC. The WAC deserves this and I congratulate them for making it happen. GREAT JOB!!!!

"The MTN television coverage is a joke. The last thing I want to watch on my 92" home theater projection screen is lousy looking standard Def football games served up by the MTN network."

92" home theater projection screen on standard def? Wow I feel really sorry for you. Try being a student and watching games on a 27 inch screen. I guess it really is hard to please some people.

I might be in the minority here, but I love night games. Imagine sitting at work on Tuesday knowing that you have a great football game to watch that night...I'd prefer that any day compared to sweltering outside on Saturday at 1PM in the hot sun.

Night games seem more exciting and when you are the only team playing on a Wednesday night you get a lot more people watching than you would on Saturday when they have 10 different games to choose from.

Interesting how ESPN is starting to shell out more money to conferences like the SEC and WAC to prevent them from starting their own conference networks. If ESPN starts losing more conferences they won't have anything to telecast.

Mtn, step up and perform for crying out loud!

The real advantage to the WAC deal: those of us who love the WAC, MWC and PAC-10, but live in the dreaded "east" get to see a lot more of the folks back home on ESPN than on any other network. I've seen a lot more Boise State (my alma mater) than BYU or PAC-10, and I love the coverage.

Go ESPN. Thanks for thinking outside the "mountains"!

Karl Benson has built a powerful WAC. First, he took an existing WAC and made it into a 16-team megaconference which spanned from Hawaii to Texas. When BYU, Utah, and the rest of the MWC band of brothers left, Commissioner Benson lured Nevada, Boise St., and Idaho to join the powerful WAC.

The nation shuddered in fear to see the likes of San Jose St., New Mexico St., UTEP, and Rice. The Texas schools bolted to join the Conference-USA while TCU jumpted to the MWC, forcing the mighty WAC to invite Utah St.

Moral of the story: Boise St. and Fresno St. are the only decent teams left in the WAC. Hawaii had a nice run but it is over. Nevada has already slipped as did Louisiana-Tech. ESPN signed the WAC because it wanted football games on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to compete against the reality programs. Good luck.

The MWC doesn't do everything right, either. Thompson tried to avoid the middle of the week game and goofed with the Mtn. He'll climb out of the hole eventually as BYU, Utah, TCU, Air Force, Wyoming and New Mexico are much better teams to watch.

Yep, the WAC is moving forward and the MWC is a joke. We sure made a good deal.

Well it's football season again and we are back to the story of Boise State and how good the MWC is compared to the WAC. Boys, sit down and take a look at why BYU will not schedule Boise State. They don't want to try and play the Broncos as they have not been able to beat them. Why would you want to let a team like that into the MWC? You would have to take 2nd place as your championship. Until you can give me a better answer consider yourself lucky that you do not have the put them (Boise State) on your schedule as your BCS hopes would soon fade.

Those who think Boise St. is leaving the WAC to join another conference obviously have never been to Boise, seen it's campus, or investigated it's academic rigor.

As an Idaho native, Boise St. offers the weakest academic programs in the state. U of Idaho has a rigorous program. Idaho St. has a good program. BSU--well, they play sports very well. Albertson's College of Idaho is the Ivy League equivalent.

Boise State's stadium is not big enough...despite the fact they fill it. Their teams play well, but they do not rake in the bucks in revenue.

Let's be serious. If the PAC-10 ever decides to expand, Utah will be at the top of a short list. Better academics, better TV market, better facilities, better teams. If the Big-12 loses Colorado to the PAC-10, TCU will be the likely pick. BYU is an attractive pick to either due to their facilities, fan base, and quality of programs.

Boise State? Well, their blue turf is pretty.

Come on Karl. WAC can't hold a candle to the MWC. Premier conference in the country?

Nevada is happy with the WAC. They like being the center hub of the conference and places like Fresno, Las Cruces, Moscow, and Ruston (LA) make Reno look like a decent town...until the sun comes up. What a hole!

I'll bet other conferences are drooling to get the TV market in Reno. And the prestige of getting a diploma from UNR? Well, it can't be put into words. Nothing like getting a diploma from UNR only to find yourself working in mines the rest of your life. What a prospect!

At least fix the MTN and pay for some real camera men and producers to broadcast the game without missing plays or loosing the ball! and when is Dish signing on? for the love!

Reno 911, you sir are an idiot! Your just bitter because your stuck in Provo. Them wiffs off Utah Lake must be making you a bit frisky to bring up such comments. Take a deep breath and before you open up that big yap of yours and grip about Reno or the WAC please articulate and provide some specifics. I happen to love Reno and many of the small college towns you have mentioned. Bitter bitter and more bitter because your stuck in the MTN with no prospects of a move to play with the big boys. Sorry your school gambled on a new conference and a new TV deal and well guess what, the WAC doesn't look so bad now. See Ya!

whatever guy...4 year contract starting in what, 09, 2010? BYU's shaking in their boots...sheesh.

It will truly be a grand day when a school leaves the MWC to join the WAC. It is just a matter of time but we all see it comming.

Just give it a couple of years. Eventually the mtn will be high def. I would just settle for cameras made after 1980 right now, but at least we see the games. And all the WAC is guaranteed is that one game of each team will be on ESPN U.

The mtn west could also have a game picked up by CBS if the teams were any good.

Seven on, seven off--not to bad. The average salary of a miner in Nevada far exceeds the average income of the Utah household. Try not to make this to personal but boy you have some work to do when calling out the silver state. I could throw some idiot mormon comment into this but I am just fine with WAC and Nevada being the 'hub' of this conference. I am fine where we are, sounds like you are not so much. I perceive a little WAC jealousy, which is a good thing.

There never should have been an expansion to the 16-team WAC. If that would have never happened, there would still be Fresno State and Hawaii in the WAC, and the other good teams of BYU and Utah would still be in it too. Then maybe they could have accepted Boise State and TCU into it. When the whole BCS thing started out in the first place in the late 1990s, had the WAC been what it was, maybe it would have been invited into the BCS party and ESPN would actually be broadcasting good games like those of the old WAC, not the joke of the new WAC.

There are too many haters here. Why can't people just like their team (and conference) instead of hating everyone else? This is especially disappointing in the case of BYU fans, who in my experience are the worst at this, because they profess to be above this hatred because they are a religious institution. The fact is that all schools/conferences are different. Why do fans have to claim to be superior? I love sports and competition, but what happened to sportsmanship among fans? There is always someone better and worse off than your school/conference. While each school/conference should try and improve their situation (as the WAC did here) there is no reason to bash on them because of it. If you do you look foolish and petty. Your ego is too connected to the successes and (often unrecognized) failures of your school, and in turn, your conference. Why can't fans realize that the MWC needs the WAC and the WAC needs the MWC. You don't see your school's administration or conference office spewing hate? Appreciate the differences and enjoy the competition, but lose the hate!

Interesting: This story has nothing to do with the MWC, the Mtn., BYU or Utah. Yet the comments are filled with talk of those entities.

I guess the jealousy/envy/pride/haughtiness/whatever has taken control of the minds in Provo and up on the hill.