Thompson wants league games available on tablets, smartphones

Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson hopes to establish a digital presence for the league so games will be available on smartphones and tablet computers.

CBS owns the conference's digital rights, and Thompson would like to acquire those rights to earn extra revenue now that The Mtn. and its $4 million annual income are gone. The league will receive $12 million from CBS this year, far shy of what major conferences make.

"We're in about 5 (percent) to 7 percent of U.S. homes," Thompson said Wednesday at the Mountain West football media days at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. "We're not going to garner an annual $200 million TV contract. What we're going to do is become very creative."

Another issue is what to do with games that aren't picked up by CBS. Should they be sold as a package or should schools sell the games individually? Thompson said presidents were split, but he seemed to side with bundling the games.

"As we found with these $250 million rights fees per year, those conferences have it all," Thompson said. "That's how you really drive the revenue."

Though Thompson said The Mtn. was an excellent idea, the execution of launching the network devoted exclusively to conference sports was greatly flawed. Co-owners CBS and Comcast shut it down May 31.

"Neither one wanted to make the financial investment to make it into what it could have become," Thompson said. "It was a textbook example of how not to do a network in that you have two equal, 50 percent owners."

■ LEFT OUT OF THE CLUB - Thompson wasn't happy the Mountain West was turned down for an automatic Bowl Championship Series waiver.

"We deserve it," he said. "We earned it. The black-and-white rules said we should have received it. It had been granted similarly in the past.

"We'll move forward, and we were able to access those games without it in the past. There's nothing to stop us from doing it again."

■ WORKING HARD - UNLV senior guard Doug Zismann said several personal weightlifting highs were established recently.

"We've had guys with absolutely huge gains this year in the weight room," Zismann said. "That's where the confidence comes from. We can improve, and it's been shown in the weight room. We're going to try to make that transition into on-the-field success."

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