In the 48 hours since the Mountain West Conference executed a perfect end-run around the rumors that BYU was heading for football independence, there’s been precious little hard news coming out regarding what BYU’s conference intentions will be going forward.
While that’s still the case, there’s a hint of BYU’s future intentions wafting in the summer breeze.
Following a conversation with Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, ESPN.com‘s Joe Schad tweeted that “the MWC is feeling better today about the possibility BYU stays after very good recent dialogue” with the school.
Part of that dialogue has apparently involved television issues, which is reportedly one of the reasons why BYU was/is looking to strike out on their own. It’s been reported that MWC members received in the neighborhood of $1.5 million annually from TV deals involving football, a paltry number in an era where conferences receive hundreds of millions of dollars in any given calendar year.
To add insult to financial injury, in-state rival Utah made a break from the MWC for the Pac-10 this offseason, a move that will allow the Utes to realize a financial windfall of $15 million or more annually. Simply put, BYU cannot afford to lag behind financially at the risk of losing ground on the recruiting front.
BYU has built their own state-of-the-art TV studio — available in hi-def! — and part of the conference showing “a willingness to work through some TV issues” with BYU could revolve around that facility, perhaps giving BYU some flexibility to utilize the money poured into that entity — and the profit that could potentially come out of it — in concert with current MWC TV partners Comcast and the CBS College Sports Network, in addition to the conference’s own network.
Regardless of what’s actually being discussed right now, the fact that there are even discussions taking place, let alone being labeled as “good” by the head of the league, points to it now slowly inching toward likely that BYU will remain in the conference they helped create following the mass WAC exodus earlier this decade.
Even three days ago, such a thought would’ve been beyond absurd. That’s how fast things can change in this day and age, which is exactly why we should hold off on writing BYU’s name in pen on anything MWC-related beyond the 2010 season.
