Mountain West’s Craig Thompson sees no need to rush expansion

A story in The Salt Lake Tribune late last week grabbed the attention of schools and media across the nation when it indicated the Mountain West would seriously consider expansion even if it didn’t lose any members to the Big 12 Conference.

On Wednesday, MW commissioner Craig Thompson said in an email that was far from the case.

He said expanding while keeping its current 11-school league (12 in football) intact would be “very unlikely until a full vetting of the topic has taken place. As the Big 12 expansion has played out publicly, a few MW members have asked the question should we stand pat with 12 members or look to expand? Those few members clearly represent the minority.”

UNLV athletic director Tina Kunzer-Murphy urged a cautious approach toward expansion, but wasn’t completely opposed to the idea.

“I think probably one of the first calls that I would make would be to our TV partners to see how that affects our distribution and things like that because I think that’s really important,” Kunzer-Murphy said. “Looking at our finances, it’s really important to see if this is going to make sense for our conference as a whole competitively. But if it enhances our footprint across the country and we get more TV eyeballs watching our games and it could affect us in a positive manner, absolutely.

“From UNLV’s perspective, I think it needs to make sense in both those areas.”

Expansion has been a major topic since the Big 12 announced in July it would look to expand. Several schools applied for membership, including UNLV, which was notified Aug. 30 it would not be accepted. Air Force and Colorado State are reportedly among the 11 finalists, though the favorites appear to be Brigham Young, Cincinnati and Houston. Thompson didn’t want to get into hypothetical situations should the Mountain West decide to expand, but he left no doubt that he thought it was important to be careful before adding schools.

“Other than making the league better, there really are no reasons” to be proactive, Thompson said. “We have television and bowl contracts through the next four years, and unless someone definitively adds to our enterprise, there is no reason to add institutions to just get to a larger number.”

The Mountain West was created in 1998 because the Western Athletic C0nference was deemed unwieldy at 16 teams. Thompson was asked if there were concerns about the Mountain West becoming too large.

“If not, there should be,” he said. “We have finite contractual and revenue sources that, unless new members add to, current members’ value in the league would be lessened.”

Kunzer-Murphy had similar concerns.

“I don’t know how many of us would like to slice up the pie and get less,” she said.

Probably not anyone.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Kunzer-Murphy said. “I don’t think so at all.”

Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow on Twitter: @markanderson65