Graney: Addition of UTEP is good for UNLV, Mountain West

The Miners will be great partners because of this. Their desire to be part of the league began long before five defectors recently bolted the Mountain West for the Pac-12.

UTEP wasn’t included in the 1999 split of eight Western Athletic Conference rivals that formed the Mountain West. The Miners have wanted to reunite with many of those schools since. Now, they have.

And, yes, they play football.

UTEP drew more than 41,000 to the Sun Bowl for its home opener against Southern Utah this season. Read that sentence again.

Support will grow in El Paso. Resources will be increased.

The university becomes the seventh full-time member of the Mountain West beginning in the 2026-27 school year. The league needs to add one more to be considered a conference by the NCAA.

Football rules

The major announcement about realignment on Tuesday was that Gonzaga and its mighty basketball program (along with all other sports) is leaving the West Coast Conference for the Pac-12. Nice headlines. Big press gatherings.

Any conference with Gonzaga and San Diego State is a really good basketball league. But the Zags don’t play football.

It could be argued the Mountain West getting UTEP was just as big a deal that might have flown under the radar with the Gonzaga news.

Why?

Football rules the day. Football is everything.

Now, UTEP hasn’t been good in the sport for some time. The Miners have two winning seasons in the past 18 years. They are 0-4 this season out of Conference USA, of which they have been a member for 20 years.

But it also hails from a football tradition rich state and has a metropolitan population of 868,000. In other words, it’s not Logan, Utah.

It’s the first time the Mountain West will jump into the Texas pool since 2012. It’s an important move. The potential for recruiting wins and TV eyeballs are obvious when you exist within the Lone Star state.

“Since the day I showed up here, the No. 1 question I got asked by fans and El Pasoans alike, ‘When are you going to get us in the Mountain West Conference?’” UTEP athletic director Jim Senter told reporters Tuesday. “Over and over and over. If I had $100 for every time I was asked that, we would have been in a new league a long time ago.

“I know this: It’s a good move for us because we’re going to stay in the Mountain time zone for the vast majority of our games. We’ll have less travel to teams in the Mountain West compared to the conference we’ve been in.

“We’ll have some savings in our budget. We’ll be more regional. It will be a better student-athlete experience because they aren’t traveling as far or as long. We’ll have a conference opponent (New Mexico) we can actually bus to.”

It’s a good move for the Mountain West because UTEP checks off significant boxes needed for full-time membership. The Miners need to be better in the major sports. That’s obvious.

But this will bring back many of their old rivalries. It will increase interest and, in turn, support for those programs.

Cowboy central

So where next for the Mountain West?

Northern Illinois has been mentioned. So has Toledo. There were reports Thursday about Hawaii becoming a full-time member.

Talks between Texas State and the conference stalled Tuesday night, but that doesn’t mean the league will look outside the state for another partner just yet.

While the conference’s focus appears to zero in on FBS schools, it has reportedly had discussions with FCS member and Texas-based Tarleton State.

I’m not sure how the school from Stephenville would compete right away when elevating a level of football, but it has produced some of the greatest rodeo cowboys in college history.

Giddyup to that.

Ed Graney, a Sigma Delta Chi Award winner for sports column writing, can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com. He can be heard on “The Press Box,” ESPN Radio 100.9 FM and 1100 AM, from 7 to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on X.