It may not happen this week or it may not happen later this year. But sometime in the not-too-distant future, probably within two years, the Mountain West Conference, with flagship members BYU and Utah, will be making changes.
It's bound to happen. Most of the major collegiate conferences have been getting larger and for the MWC to keep up with Joneses, it probably has to expand also.
For the past five years, an eight-team MWC has worked well, retaining more revenue for its members and keeping the league stronger, with fewer bad programs to drag it down.
However, the decision last month by the Atlantic Coast Conference to expand from nine to 12 schools, may set off a domino effect that will hit the MWC before we know it.
If the ACC grabs Miami, Syracuse and Boston College from the Big East, then the Big East will be forced to make changes. Perhaps the Big East will try to grab some teams from Conference USA to make itself stronger.
Then one of those two leagues would be left weaker, leaving the MWC on the edge of the nation's "Big Six" conferences that control most of the money in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The MWC would then have to decide whether adding more teams, say a Boise State or Fresno State, would enhance the conference and its chances of moving up the BCS ladder.
As was reported in a Deseret News article last week, the Mountain West Conference officials and school presidents don't foresee a vote on expansion coming in this week's annual meetings, which run for the next three days in Carlsbad, Calif., although the topic will be discussed.
MWC Commissioner Craig Thompson said there's no sense of urgency in the conference, but he also said his league must be "reactive" as well as "pro-active."
University of Utah president Bernie Machen, who is the chairman of this week's meetings, said he "can't imagine going to 12" schools on the heels of the disbanded 16-team WAC of five years ago, but says many possibilities will be discussed this week.
"We're watching it very closely," he said.
The idea of conference expansion and league changes isn't a new one. It's been going on for most of the past 100 years since schools across the country started organizing into leagues.
Over the past century, Utah and BYU have been together in the same league all but a few years and during that time, the leagues they've been in have seen close to two dozen changes.
The first known league for local colleges was a loosely organized outfit called the Utah Intercollegiate Athletic Association, which consisted of Brigham Young, Utah, Utah State Agricultural College, All Hallows College of Salt Lake, Latter-Day Saints College and Brigham Young College of Logan.
The first known intercollegiate contest between the Utah and BYU was a baseball game on May 18, 1895. The game ended in a brawl over a disputed umpire's call, setting the tone for future games between the two schools.
In 1910, the University of Utah joined five Colorado schools in the Rocky Mountain Conference, a league that still exists to this day. The other schools were Colorado College, Colorado University, Colorado Agricultural College, Colorado School of Mines and Denver University.
Over the next 14 years, six more schools joined, including Utah Agricultural College (Utah State) in 1914, Montana State in 1917, Brigham Young University in 1918, Wyoming in 1921 and two more Colorado schools in 1924.
That league stayed intact until 1937, but as the years went along it wasn't a great arrangement for the non-Colorado schools, who had their own four-team division. Back then, the three major sports were football, basketball and track and field and travel was difficult.
Throughout the 1930s, attempts were made by the larger schools to realign in a new league, which finally came about in much the same manner as the MWC did five years ago when certain school presidents secretly met to form their own league.
With all of the presidents meeting in a Salt Lake City hotel, the presidents of the larger schools held their own meeting, much to the chagrin of the others. Here's how Western State president Paul Wright, described what happened:
"The split was bound to happen, the way it was handled was underhanded. We were all sitting around the lobby and one by one, the big schools left. We began to wonder when were going to have the meeting, but it had already started — without us."
The seven "big schools," BYU, Utah, Utah State, Colorado, Wyoming, Denver and Colorado A&M (Colorado State), decided to form their own conference, the Mountain States Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Two highlights in the conference's infancy were the NCAA basketball titles by Wyoming in 1943 and Utah in 1944 and an NIT title by Colorado in 1940.
In 1947, the league shortened its name to Mountain States Conference and was also referred to as the "Skyline." That same year, Colorado decided to move on to greener pastures and joined the Big Six, the precursor to the Big Eight and today's Big 12.
The league stayed at six teams for five years before deciding to expand in 1952, when it added Montana and New Mexico. The Skyline existed as an eight-team league until 1962 when another change was made.
This time four schools from the Skyline, BYU, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, hooked up with two schools breaking away from the Border Conference, Arizona and Arizona State.
One of the ringleaders in forming the new conference was Dr. Edwin Kimball, the athletic director at BYU. A few years earlier he had met with some fellow A.D.s and they proposed a conference that included BYU, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington State, Arizona and Arizona State.
In looking at a new conference several criteria were set including (1) large facilities; (2) location in or near a large population center; (3) large student body; (4) easy access by means of large jet aircraft; (5) fan support; (6) winning athletic tradition; and (7) commitment to maintaining a varied and extensive athletic program.
The two Oregon schools and Washington State decided to stay with the other Pacific Coast schools, leaving the proposed league with five schools.
Even though Wyoming didn't meet many of the criteria, except for the last two, it was included in the new league primarily because of a friendship between the presidents of New Mexico and Arizona with the president of Wyoming and also because of the reputation of Wyoming A.D. Red Jacoby.
There are many theories about why Utah State wasn't included, the main one being that the Aggies didn't get the same support from Utah and BYU that Wyoming did from New Mexico and Arizona. It's also true that Utah State didn't meet most of the criteria listed above and was less competitive than Wyoming in the Skyline Conference, winning just five total titles in 24 years.
The WAC expanded in 1967 to include Colorado State, which had been left out five years earlier and Texas-El Paso, which was coming off an NCAA basketball championship.
The eight-team WAC lasted another decade before Arizona and Arizona State bolted for the Pac-8, making it the Pac-10.
With just a six-team league again, the WAC expanded annually for three years, adding San Diego State in 1978, Hawaii in 1979 and Air Force in 1980. It stayed a nine-team league before adding Fresno State in 1991 and six more in 1995.
Amid all those many changes over the years, only one school has been with Utah and BYU most of the way—the University of Wyoming. Since the formation of the WAC in 1962, only one other school, the University of New Mexico, has been in the same league with Utah and BYU for the past 40 years
Finally came the present Mountain West Conference, which was announced five years ago last week after school presidents met in the Denver Airport to finalize plans.
(Some of the above material came from a dissertation written by Giles E. Parker at Brigham Young University in 1976)