The Utah Effect

Well, what is the impact of Utah leaving the MWC for the Pac 10, at least in terms of the MWC?

Obviously, this hurts.  You have one of the top 4 football programs in the conference leaving, with a recent top 5 finish and two BCS wins taken away from the conference.  I think ultimately, at this point, the MWC is just concerned about getting an automatic BCS bid.  With Utah AND Boise State, things looked a lot better.  However, let's just look at the "trade" of Boise State and Utah.

1) In the four-year BCS cycle, Boise State is going to help more than Utah would have.  Boise State has 2 top 10 finishes, including a BCS win.  Utah had only 1 top 10 finish, including a BCS win.  Projecting forward this year: Boise State will start in the top 5, meaning they could go 11-1 and still qualify for a BCS bowl game.  Utah MIGHT start in the top 25, but would have to go undefeated to even have a chance for a BCS game this season.  Boise State would be much more likely to finish in the top 10.  Boise State is an improvement.  The 3 criteria the BCS uses to evaluate conferences for BCS qualification are: average ranking (Boise State 7.5, Utah 14.5), highest BCS ranking finish (Boise State 6, Utah 6), and number of teams in the final BCS standings (both of these teams have finished in the top 25 both years, with Boise State almost a certainty to do it this year, while Utah is up in the air).  Obviously the conference is stronger with both of them!

2) Boise is not a big TV market, however, it dominates the Boise market.  Salt Lake is a much bigger market, but Utah is 3rd fiddle in the market behind the Jazz and BYU.  When you talk about eyeballs that the schools bring to television sets, Utah is higher in the aggregate because of its larger alumni base, but as far as the "target market" is concerned, roughly as many people in Salt Lake watch Ute games as do in Boise for Broncos games.  For the MWC, this is about as close to a wash as you can get.  Now that the Utes are in the Pac 10, obviously, they will have more eyeballs watching them.

3) I would say the fan bases attending games are essentially equivalent.  Utah fans point to higher attendance numbers, which is true, if you subscribe to the Utes' inflated attendance numbers.  On multiple occasions I have watched an announced sellout when there were THOUSANDS of, perhaps even ten thousand plus, empty seats.  In addition to that, thousands of people attend each game without having to purchase tickets, since the university hands them out to anyone intersted on the streets and in the dorms.  I remember specifically watching a game they played against Utah State a few years back, when they announced over 20,000 people in attendance.  The stadium was MAYBE 25% full, i.e. at most 10,000 fans.  This would be essentially a wash as well for the MWC.  Now that Utah is in the Pac 10, however, they might actually sell out their games, instead of just reporting that they did.

4) Other sports: Boise State has beat Utah in the Director's Cup Standings (a measurement of the success of the entire athletic program) 2 of the last 3 years.  I would say the Boise State men's basketball program is in a better place RIGHT NOW than Utah's is, (however, that would be the ONLY time in the history of the two programs that this is true), but neither of them will/would be competitive for the foreseeable future in the MWC.  Utah has a more successful women's gymnastics team and they have baseball, which Boise State does not.  Boise State has a better wrestling team.  Does any of this really matter?  We're done here.

If the ultimate goal is an automatic BCS bid (which it HAS to be, if not, then these gurus are a bunch of idiots), then Boise State helps more than Utah does for this 4-year cycle.  Again, it would be better to have both in the conference!  If you could only have one, the MWC has the better option currently with Boise State.  There is no guarantee that either (or both of them together) would help the conference get the bid: that onus falls on New Mexico, SDSU, UNLV, CSU, and Wyoming to pick up the slack at the bottom.

What I don't see happening is the MWC expanding further unless BCS teams become available.  Houston, Fresno State, Nevada (the names often thrown around as candidates for MWC expansion) don't help.  The average ranking for teams in the MWC is the one criteria of concern for the conference (since they qualify in the other two BCS conference criteria: number of teams in top 25 and highest finish in BCS rankings), as they average about 60th (which is the 7th best conference, losing to the 6th place conference by a pretty hefty margin too).  Adding a bunch of teams in the 40's doesn't bring that number down very much (unless it is accompanied by dropping some of the sub-100 schools!).  The only way for that number to go down is for the aforementioned 5 teams to start going 3-1 or 4-0 in non-conference play, without scheduling down!  CSU and SDSU are, realistically, the only two of those 5 who could even go 3-1 this season.  Oh well.  Maybe next year.