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Conference realignment shook up the world of college sports on the power four side two years ago, and it’s set to do the same for the mid-major realm in two weeks time. While the new Pac-12 features multiple programs with recent notoriety, the same could not be said for those in the new Mountain West. Rebuilding the conference with other mid-major schools all across the spectrum and a call-up to FCS powerhouse North Dakota State was only the first part of the equation, and the returning schools’ efforts in 2025-26 did not help the situation at all.
How Bad Will the Prestige Impact Be?
To say that the future Pac-12 schools dominated the 25-26 season is an understatement. Combining the regular season and conference tournament championships, the five schools leaving the Mountain West (Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Utah State) won over the last year, the Pac-12 won 20 titles. Throw in temporary member Washington State in the mix, and you get 21 of the 31 Mountain West championship teams leaving for a different home.
Below is a breakdown of each program’s title wins this past year, separated by where each school will be in 2026-27.
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This trend isn’t something new for the Mountain West. The five aforementioned schools have been running the conference since the 2023-24 season, earning the majority of the Mountain West championships each season for the past three years. San Diego State has been the kings and queens of the conference in that time, winning the most championships over the last five seasons (27) and even had the most championships in a season three times in that span (2021-22 through 2023-24).
On top of the inner-conference battles, the Mountain West is losing programs that gave it national attention. In football and men’s basketball specifically, the five departing schools accounted for 25 of the conference’s 47 bowl appearances since 2021 (53.1 percent) and 18 of its 23 March Madness appearances (78.2 percent). Boise State and San Diego State are at the top of that list, as one made the College Football Playoff as the 3-seed in the inaugural tournament in 2024 and the other was the most prominent Cinderella story in March Madness in recent memory, making it to the championship game in 2023.
Simply put, the 2026-27 athletic year will be an uphill battle for the returning and future Mountain West members. With 21 titles up for grabs, there will be a lot of battles to replace the programs that gave the conference notoriety time and time again, especially on the national stage.
The Solution(s)
Despite the shadow that the conference currently lives in and most likely will for the entirety of the next athletic year, there is a path where the Mountain West can not only get its conference prestige back to where it was before the five state schools decided to leave, but be better than it was before.
1) Top teams need to stop letting themselves be cannibalized
I put out a tweet after the New Mexico vs Nevada men’s basketball game on Feb. 24 that Nevada and GCU essentially made the Mountain West a one-bid conference this year depending on how the final two weeks of the season worked out. They both took down a combination of Utah State, New Mexico and San Diego State in the course of a week. While I wish I wasn’t correct, that did pan out to be true, which was exactly what the conference did not need.
However, this does not happen in just men’s basketball. In softball, Nevada was in prime position to contend for the top seed in the conference and potentially an at-large bid if they closed out the season on a good note and get at least one or two wins in the conference tournament. But what did the Wolf Pack do? They get swept by UNLV – dropping them to third and out of any chance for an at-large bid, then made it all the way to the conference tournament championship and got swept by GCU in a double-header, only producing one good inning across 14. That still stings to this day…
Taking a turn to the gridiron, Boise State was an excellent example of this. After taking a bad loss to South Florida to start the year, the Broncos were coasting, going 6-1 through the next seven games, only taking a loss to then No. 21 Notre Dame. But then, Boise State lost back-to-back games against Fresno State (7-30) and San Diego State (7-17), leaving room for other programs to challenge for the throne. If it wasn’t for ridiculous tiebreaker rules, the Broncos would’ve most likely not been the football conference champion.
Returning schools like UNLV (FB, MBB, WBB), Air Force (FB, BSB), Nevada (MBB, BSB, SB) and New Mexico (FB, MBB, BSB, SB) need to make sure they don’t fall for the same routine. New programs like North Dakota State in football and UC Davis, Hawaii and the early-arriving GCU in basketball, baseball and softball will help bolster the roster once again with time in various amounts. But especially in the next couple of years, the kings/queens of each sport need to make sure they are building their resumes and stop taking bad losses every time they’re on a hot streak.
2) Continue to develop facilities everywhere
In order to grow and compete with higher-tier teams both in and out of conference, a mid-major program needs to be able to develop their players. Not every school is like any of the major power four programs, and nearly all current mid-majors will always be below schools like Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama and other blue bloods in terms of new age technology. But, having the proper facilities to get athletes to their destination is always a necessity and needs to be updated as soon as possible. Thankfully, the members of the new Mountain West are already on top of that.
There have been some major infrastructure/facilities upgrades over the last three years across many of the Mountain West schools both returning and new, with many on the horizon. Here’s a list of some of the most major ones.
- Nevada
- Put up field lights for the softball team to play night games
- Nearly done with the eight figure Nevada Fieldhouse project that will give the organization an indoor training facility
- San Jose State
- Built the Habbas Law Spartan Athletic Center to give football and both soccer programs an office/training home
- Air Force
- In the middle of securing funds and fulfilling a multi-step football stadium renovation, which includes upgrading player facilities, fan areas and pumping in a whole lot of technology
- Starting a renovation project to make a whole new baseball stadium with both team and fan area upgrades
- Hawaii
- Completed a renovation that expanded the seating at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex from 9,300 to about 15,200
Going even further back was the opening of the Fertitta Football Complex at UNLV in 2019, which took the Southern Nevada program’s facilities to a whole new level and has contributed to a slough of other improvements like moving to Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders.
It’s not easy to compete with higher-tier schools in the current age of college sports, especially when they can offer one player enough money to fund an entire program. But that’s where development comes into play. Nevada football head coach Jeff Choate said it best in his famous 2025 early signing day press conference, where after his trending line about current Los Angeles Charger, former Oregon Duck and Nevada Wolf Pack lineman Isiah World, he lists off multiple players who either developed enough to also get a bag somewhere else or got high all-MW honors and even went to the draft.
That’s where facilities come in, and as long as the schools of the Mountain West continue to develop their homes, they should begin to see the upsides of their efforts even more than they have already.
3) Rake in the credits and NIL money
As I alluded to in the last paragraph, money rules the college sports world, especially in the big three sports of football, basketball (both men’s and women’s) and baseball/softball (more so for the first two, but still present everywhere). It’s no secret that one player at a power four school can make upwards of $2 million just from their school.
Texas quarterback Arch Manning’s NIL valuation is roughly at $5.5 million, but that also includes multiple deals with companies like Red Bull and Uber. Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood, a true-freshman last year, was evaluated at $3 million, with some speculating that he could reach the $10 million mark by himself in his final year. To put that number into comparison, the average mid-major school has about $1-10 million according to Sam Kahn Jr. and Antonio Morales of The Athletic, with the majority falling below $5 million during the 2025 season.
The Mountain West lives in that reality as we speak, but they can solve that problem easily with units from great performances and continuing their NIL expansion more and more. The play has been there, as the conference has earned 31 units from just men’s basketball since 2021, including San Diego State’s run that resulted in five units (the national game does not count) and 10 from the insane 2024 season where the six representatives went 6-4 combined.
With each unit being between $2-2.3 million depending on the year, the conference racked up about $62-71.3 million in units, which have been equally distributed between all of the teams in the conference over the last five years, with the majority of the money still being divvied out (it’s distributed over five years). The 2021 units have expired, and the ones from 2022 will at the end of the 2026-27 season. But that’s just in basketball, Boise State also brought in $8 million dollars for their one-game appearance in the 2024 College Football Playoff quarterfinal ($4 million for making it, $4 million for the quarterfinal appearance). This means that the conference has made somewhere between $70-79.3 million in units since 2021, and all of the schools get a cut.
This equal splitting of unit money, though a little unfair to the schools who make it, have been great for keeping the Mountain West (especially men’s basketball) growing in the new day of college sports. When mixed with the efforts of NIL donation campaigns where each program pushes their supporters to go and help them bolster their funds, and you have a recipe for a pretty good dessert if things pan out. And again, this is not to say that a school like Nevada, New Mexico, Air Force, Wyoming or any of the other Mountain West members will be on the level of a blue blood or set up power four school (somewhat excluding UNLV because of the potential currently and in the future, I know I sound like the SEC), but if they keep up the funding and get some good seasons under their belts again, money won’t be a problem in the mid-major realm for the Mountain West.
In the end, it will take a lot for the Mountain West to rebuild its image, especially when the new Pac-12 will be continuing to increase its presence at the same time. However, through individual and group efforts, there is a way for the conference to not only get that mid-major powerhouse status back, but level it up even more than it was before.
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