The Mountain West Conference (MW) is one of the collegiate athletic conferences affiliated with the NCAA Division I FBS (formerly I-A). The MW officially began operations in July 1999. Geographically, the MW covers a broad expanse of the Western United States, with member schools located in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Craig Thompson has served as Commissioner of the MW since its founding in 1999.
The charter members of the MW included the United States Air Force Academy, Brigham Young University, Colorado State University, San Diego State University, the University of New Mexico, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the University of Utah, and the University of Wyoming. Before forming the Mountain West Conference, seven of its eight charter members had been longtime members of the Western Athletic Conference. Half of these had been charter members of that conference from 1962. Overall, each school that has ever been either a full or football-only member of the MW spent at least three years in the WAC before joining the Mountain West.
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History
The creation of the MW was a delayed aftereffect of the 1996 NCAA conference realignment, which had initially been triggered two years earlier when the Big Eight Conference agreed to merge with four members of the Southwest Conference (SWC) to create the Big 12 Conference, which would begin competition in the 1996-97 school year.
The WAC, which had initially announced plans to expand beyond its then-current 10 members to at least 12, ended up with even more potential expansion prospects. Ultimately, the WAC took in three of the four SWC schools left out of the Big 12 merger--Rice University, Southern Methodist University (SMU), and Texas Christian University (TCU). Three other schools were added to bring the total membership to 16, namely Big West Conference members San Jose State University and UNLV, plus the University of Tulsa, an NCAA football independent and otherwise a member of the Missouri Valley Conference. However, the newly expanded WAC was soon wracked by tension between the established and new members. The final straw came in spring 1998, when BYU and Utah proposed a permanent split into two eight-team divisions. Previously, the WAC's 16 teams had been divided into four four-team "quadrants," two of which rotated between the Mountain and Pacific Divisions every two years. A two-division setup would have forced some schools into an unnatural alignment because of the geographic distribution of the conference. Air Force was the most strident opponent of this proposal, threatening to become an independent. Soon after the proposal by BYU and Utah, the presidents of Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, Utah, and Wyoming met at Denver International Airport to discuss their future, and they agreed to break away from the WAC to form a new conference.
They invited the WAC members New Mexico, San Diego State, and UNLV, to join them in what became the Mountain West Conference. The next move for the MW came in 2005, when the conference added TCU, who had spent the previous four seasons in Conference USA (C-USA).
On June 11, 2010, Boise State University agreed to join the conference as its tenth member. On June 17, 2010, Utah announced it would be leaving the Mountain West to join what would become the Pac-12 Conference. On August 18, 2010, amidst rumors that BYU was considering leaving the Mountain West to go independent in football and rejoin the Western Athletic Conference in all other sports, the Mountain West Conference officially extended invitations to California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) and the University of Nevada, Reno (Nevada). Both schools accepted and would become the tenth and eleventh members of the league. BYU announced on August 31, 2010 that it would leave the Mountain West Conference and go Independent in football and become a member of the West Coast Conference (WCC) in other sports starting in 2011. On November 29, 2010, TCU announced all athletic teams would move to the Big East Conference effective in 2012. (Less than a year later, on October 10, 2011, TCU announced it would not join the Big East but would join the Big 12, home to fellow former SWC members Baylor, Texas, Texas Tech, and formerly Texas A&M, in 2012 instead.) On December 10, 2010, the University of Hawai?i at M?noa accepted a bid to become the 10th member of the conference for football only. These changes would leave the Mountain West Conference with 10 teams for the 2012 football season.
During the era of football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which was replaced by the College Football Playoff (CFP) in 2014, the MW champion qualified for a BCS bowl four times after the BCS formula was tweaked to allow teams from non-BCS conferences to play in BCS bowls if ranked in the top 12. However, two of the three schools that qualified are no longer with the conference.
On October 14, 2011, the Mountain West and C-USA announced a plan for a football only alliance. On February 13, 2012, the two leagues announced that both conferences would be dissolving after the 2012-13 season to reform into one conference with at least 15 members for all sports, and a 16th team, University of Hawai?i at M?noa as a football-only member. However, when the two conferences discussed their plans with the NCAA, they were told that due to NCAA rules, they would forfeit substantial revenues. Specifically, the new conference would receive only one automatic bid to NCAA championships; at least one of the former conferences would lose future revenue distributions from the NCAA men's basketball tournament; and at least one former conference would not be able to collect exit fees from any members that departed to join the new conference. As a result, the Mountain West and C-USA backed away from a full merger. In late March of that year, the commissioners of both conferences stated that all 16 schools had entered into binding agreements to form a new "association", although the Mountain West and C-USA would have apparently remained separate legal entities. In the end, this alliance never materialized due to both conferences soon adding new teams.
On May 2, 2012, San Jose State and Utah State agreed to join the conference for the 2013-14 academic year. On December 31 of that year, Boise State announced that it had backed out of its previously announced move to the Big East for football and the Big West for other sports, and would remain in the MW.
On January 16, 2013, San Diego State accepted an offer to remain/return to the Mountain West Conference in all sports. Keeping SDSU in the conference gives the Mountain West 12 football members, allowing for a Championship Game to be held. The first championship game took place on December 7, 2013.
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Member schools
Current members
Affiliate members
Former members
Membership timeline
Full members Associate members (football only) Associate members (other)
NCAA team championships
Thru March 15, 2017
Sports
The Mountain West Conference sponsors championship competition in eight men's and ten women's NCAA sanctioned sports. Hawai'i is only an associate member for football, and Colorado College is only an associate member for women's soccer.
Men's sports
Men's varsity sports not sponsored by the Mountain West Conference which are played by MW members
Women's sports
Women's varsity sports not sponsored by the Mountain West Conference which are played by MW members
- Fencing is officially a coeducational team sport, although a few schools field only a women's team. Air Force, like most NCAA fencing schools, has a coed team with men's and women's squads.
- Rifle is technically a men's sport, but men's, women's, and coed teams all compete against each other. Air Force and Nevada both field coed teams.
- Skiing is officially a coeducational sport with teams having men's and women's squads.
Conference champions
Rivalries
Conference (football)
Non-conference (including other sports)
Football
Divisions
Beginning in 2013, the conference split into two divisions, named the "Mountain Division" and "West Division," of six teams each for football. The Mountain West also added a conference championship game, pitting the winners of the two divisions. This first championship game took place on December 7, 2013 at Bulldog Stadium in Fresno, California, the home stadium of Fresno State, the divisional winner with the higher BCS ranking. Each team plays five divisional games and three cross-divisional contests annually. The 2015 championship game featured the Air Force Academy Falcons against the San Diego State University Aztecs.
- No other MW sport is split into divisions -- including women's soccer, the only other conference sport with 12 competing schools (with Colorado College as the 12th member).
Bowl games
The Mountain West Conference has agreements with six bowls for 2014-15. In addition, the MW champion has access to the so-called "New Year's Six" bowls associated with the College Football Playoff (CFP) under either of the following conditions:
- It is one of the four highest-ranked teams overall, as determined by the CFP selection committee. In this case, it will play in one of the two bowl games that serve as CFP semifinals.
- It is not a CFP semifinalist, but is the highest-ranked conference champion from the so-called "Group of Five" conferences (American, C-USA, MAC, MW, Sun Belt), as determined by the selection committee. In this case, it will receive an "at-large" berth in one of the other four "New Year's Six" games.
In the first season of the CFP in 2014, Boise State received the "Group of Five" at-large berth, landing in and winning the Fiesta Bowl.
- If Hawai'i is bowl eligible and not MW champions or selected for a CFP bowl, they will receive a berth in the Hawai'i Bowl.
Bowl records
Bowl Challenge Cup
ESPN created the Bowl Challenge Cup in 2002 for the conference that had the best college football bowl record among Division I Football Bowl Subdivision conferences. The conference has won it four times, more than any other conference, by finishing with bowl game records of 2-1 in 2004-05, 4-1 in 2007-08, 4-1 in 2009-10, and 4-1 in 2010-11.
Men's Basketball
The Mountain West and Missouri Valley Conferences hold an annual challenge series that was renewed in the 2015-16 season after a two-year hiatus. The series began in the 2009-10 season but temporarily ended when the original contract ran out after the 2012-13 season, During the first four seasons of the series, it involved all members of the MW and an equal number of the 10 MVC teams in basketball. With the MW now having 11 basketball members to the MVC's 10, the renewed series involves all MVC teams, with one MW team sitting out.
The first game was on November 13, 2009, featuring the Bradley Braves and the BYU Cougars in Provo and it concluded on December 23 with the Wyoming Cowboys visiting the Northern Iowa Panthers in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The challenge is similar to the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, which pits men's basketball teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big Ten Conference.
NCAA tournament records
Women's Basketball
NCAA tournament records
Facilities
Elevation
The Mountain West's slogan is "Above the rest," and over half of the member institutions, plus women's soccer-only member Colorado College, are at more than 4,000 feet (1,200 metres) above sea level. This impacts endurance in sports like football, soccer, and the distance races in track & field and swimming meets, and aerodynamics in baseball, softball, tennis, golf, and the discus and javelin throws. The Mountain West's institutions have the highest average elevations in NCAA Division I sports.
Campus and football stadium elevations
Schools in italics are single-sport members. In the case of women's soccer-only member Colorado College, "Stadium Elevation" refers to the school's soccer venue.
Elevation by conference
- Elevation data obtained from the USGS Geographic Names Information System
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