Craig Thompson wears many hats as Mountain West Conference commissioner.
He is a salesman, administrator and manager.
But will the leader of Boise State’s new conference wave a blue and orange cap in the air like Western Athletic Commissioner Karl Benson did so frequently and ferociously?
Thompson must walk a fine line. He must look out for the best interest of his league, first and foremost, while also not play favorites.
It’s a line that Benson often straddled. He is a Boise State graduate, a former Broncos baseball player and Broncos baseball coach. Yet, he was the head of a league that included his former school. Benson did not resist promoting the Broncos football teams — or Hawaii’s — when they had credentials worthy of BCS bowl consideration. The WAC hired public relations firms for Boise State and Hawaii to remind poll voters of the success of those teams.
“I think the WAC, they’ve been awesome to us,” Boise State quarterback Kellen Moore said. “I think Boise State and the fans of Boise State never need to forget what the WAC provided us and gave us an opportunity to do. Karl Benson was awesome, he provided us with a lot of support and provided us with those opportunities, whether it was on ESPN, whether it was just marque games.”
Thompson and the Mountain West already have positioned their new shiny toy up for success, even if it could be at the cost of the only other current league member to qualify for two BCS conference games — TCU.
When the Horned Frogs announced last summer that they were joining the Big East in 2012, the Mountain West changed the site of Boise State’s game at TCU from Fort Worth, Texas to Boise.
And that’s the fine line that Thompson and the Mountain West walk this season. The conference needs Boise State to produce immediate success in its first Mountain West season. The league also needs TCU to dazzle in its final MWC season.
“I’m not doing it for them, I’m doing it for us,” TCU coach Gary Patterson said. “If it helps everybody else, then it’s great.”
The league has been arguing for years to become an automatic qualifier in the BCS. If BYU, Utah and TCU would have remained in the league, that argument would have grown stronger with the addition of Boise State. Together those four teams would have had a collective six BCS appearances and their collective records and rankings in the conference could have added up. Hawaii, a Mountain West football-only member come 2012, is the only other non-automatic qualifying school to reach one of college football’s five big money games.
Patterson said there’s too much change in the Mountain West to give a definitive “yes” that the league should still be considered for automatic qualifying status.
“If you would have left Utah, BYU, Boise, ourselves, added two more like those two (Fresno State and Nevada), then you have just as strong of conference as ...”
As the Big East? As the ACC?
We’ll never know.
The attempt to send a conference champion to a BCS game at the end of each season will be an ongoing issue — and struggle for the Mountain West.
“Yeah, we’re losing people that have played (in BCS games), but we’re gaining people that have played,” Thompson said.
Fighting for an automatic qualifying spot is not a battle that coaches will take on. Boise State’s Chris Petersen, for instance, won’t lose any sleep worrying about it either way.
“I don’t care about AQ, non-AQ,” Petersen said. “I don’t have anything to do with that. We just go and play who they tell us to play, and I think if we win and take care of our business that’s our contribution to this whole conversation.”
Thompson’s contribution could be much different. He will continue to fight for the betterment of his conference, and that will include trying to gain an automatic berth for its football champion in a BCS bowl game.
TCU has proven the last two seasons it was worthy to play in such a game.
Boise State played in BCS bowl games in 2007 and 2010 and remains a fixture as one of the country’s top programs.
Thompson knows he has two wild cards left in his deck this season and is ready to play them any whichever way he can.
But will that mean he will don a new hat?
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