Mountain West pledges to stay intact, looks to add member schools

In a meeting of 12 university presidents on Monday, the Mountain West conference pledged to stay intact and seek new members as the Pac-12 implodes.

The conference’s board of directors, including UNLV president Keith Whitfield, held a meeting to discuss what’s next. During that meeting the schools all pledged to adapt to take advantage of future opportunities, including expanding the membership of the conference.

With the Pac-12 on track to lose all but four of its schools, speculation is the MWC could add multiple schools from the once powerhouse conference. Those universities are California, Oregon State, Stanford and Washington State.

“We would be happy to be a landing place for all of them, but I think there’s a couple of other steps that have to happen in the meantime before we get to that point,” MWC Commissioner Gloria Nevarez told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We’re ready, we’ve done our due diligence about what we could do and think about. We’re ready for the opportunity.”

Whitfield was unavailable Wednesday for further comment.

The Atlantic Coast Conference reportedly is also interested in adding Stanford and Cal. Nevarez expects that decision to come down as soon as this week. From there, the dominoes could begin to fall fairly quickly for the Mountain West.

The MWC is not solely focused on what’s remaining of the Pac-12 as far as their potential additions go. The Mountain West’s membership working group, comprised of three MWC school presidents and three athletic directors, has a white board with more than 30 schools listed who would fit in with the conference.

“We have a white board of teams … if we lose type of school A or type of school B, what would we go looking for?” Nevarez said. “Or should we expand because some of the other leagues are getting so big?”

The membership working group was scheduled to meet this week, but with all the movement occurring in other conferences, it was canceled to be held at a later date, Nevarez said.

“They will meet continually, to continue to scrub schools that are out there and available,” Nevarez said.

Nevarez and New Mexico President Garnet Stokes, the chairman of the Mountain West board of directors, will lead all discussions on the future of the conference before presenting those opportunities to the board.

The Mountain West would also be open to adding a school like West Coast Conference’s Gonzaga, which is a powerhouse in basketball, but doesn’t have a football program.

“Oddly enough when I first started with the WCC as their commissioner Gonzaga was being courted by the Mountain West,” Nevarez said. “There’s definitely a history and an openness to taking non-football schools.”

Schools jumping to other conferences could also occur within the Mountain West, but schools would face a $34 million exit fee if they chose to do so after the 2023-24 sports season. UNLV Athletic Director Erick Harper told the Las Vegas Review-Journal this week that would be too steep a price to pay to abandon the MWC next year.

“If you just did a UNLV Google search, you would see their name came up so many times because they’re a wonderful institution, a great athletic department and it’s credit to them their name comes up in these conversations,” Nevarez said. “But we’ve been in constant communication, and I think that they understand what a great fit they are and what a great brand and value the Mountain West is right now.”

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X, formerly known as Twitter.