It appears that the landscape of college football is indeed set to change yet again, with further upheaval a likely result of this latest shift.
Confirming reports that have been running rampant since Tuesday evening, the Salt Lake Tribune reports that BYU is leaving the Mountain West Conference to go independent in football and heading back to the WAC in all other sports.
A source in the WAC office told the Tribune the school is still awaiting final approval for the moves from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is expected to come later today or Thursday.
A press conference had been tentatively scheduled for early next week; however, because the rumors have seen the light of day and sprouted out of control, that time frame for an official announcement “may be expedited a bit.”
What this does to the MWC remains to be seen. They’ve already lost Utah to the Pac-10 in either 2011 or 2012, but balanced that loss with the addition of Boise State in ’11. Losing both Utah and BYU, however, would likely snuff out any hope the conference held in gaining an automatic BcS bid.
The twice-jilted conference could look to add a school or schools from either the WAC or Conference USA to fill the vacancies; however, after Boise State left earlier this offseason, the WAC instituted a $5 million penalty for any conference school that left for another league. Such a stiff penalty likely rules out any WAC school jumping to another conference.
(Writer’s note: obviously, a few hours later, the $5 million penalty has proven to be no impediment at all.)
Another question that would need to be answered is whether Boise State will even follow through with their move to the MWC. An (the?) overriding impetus for the Broncos’ move was the near-guarantee that their new conference would get an automatic BcS slot; with that seemingly off the table, would the Broncos simply revert back to the WAC, which they can do with no penalty?
While BYU’s semi-official move to independence answers one question, it opens up several more that won’t be nearly as easy to solve.
