rivalry-bike (via weekes15)

What can I say?  I couldn't help myself!  I had to make these just for my own pleasure.  And I figured while I was at it I'd make it available for everyone in case someone else was as taken with the idea as I was.  Just a little something to get you into the spirit of the new rivalry that we will be redeveloping with the team over the ridge.  Available here in long or short sleeve for men or women.  

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The APR rates are in and it's not pretty this time around for BYU.  BYU's score was 929, the lowest in the Mountain West, and just 5 points higher than the threshold where the team can lose scholarships due to poor academic progress.   That score puts them a whopping 17 points below Utah State and 27 points behind Utah, their in-state competition.  

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May 24, 2011

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -

We at the Mountain West Conference are pleased to announce a complete re-branding of the conference identity.  With the addition of Boise State as a member, and the loss of BYU and Utah this year, as well as TCU next year, we felt it was important for the conference to create an image for itself that reflects the identity of the conference going forward.  We feel that this new logo will adequately reflect that change and are excited for our new image to go into effect.   We are proud to be the new turf the Broncos will walk over in their attempts to bust the BCS.  I think I speak for everyone in the conference when I say 'Go Broncos!!!'

Craig Thompson

Commissioner Mountian West Conference

It’s been a crazy week of blogging and this week’s rankings are in.  Unsurprisingly,  Jeremy Mauss continues his streak atop of the polls.  We’re pretty sure that he has the championship in the bag, which is really saying something this early in the season.  But here at MWCCBPR, we stick behind our earlier assertion that Mauss would bring home the hardware at the end of the season.  And so far no one else’s performance has been able to make us re-evaluate our opinion.  

The most significant change up in this week’s rankings comes in the dropping of Rebelfan1 from 3rd all the way to the tail pipe. 

Now, on to the rankings!

1.    Jeremy Mauss – Despite his general inability to use the words ‘than’ and ‘then’ correctly, no one can compete with this guy’s sheer volume of articles, fanshots, and comments.   Add to that his generally on topic and insightful thoughts and he has established strangle hold on the top spot now and for the foreseeable future. 

2.    Ben Findley – The scrapper out of TCU has once again delighted us with stellar commentary on the Horned Frogs and other topics.  His tenacious reporting of facts has earned him this spot and we think he’ll be entrenched here for a long time. 

3.    BYU Mitch – Despite a significant distraction in the form of the TDS going independent Mitch has managed to stay fairly active and produced some decent material.   Mitch’s recent column, “BYU Football at a Crossroads: Where to go from here,” allowed him to eek out a slim lead over bhsmarine in this week’s poll. 

4.    Bhsmarine – bhs has done an admiral job in a tough spot while reporting for abysmal Rams.  His courage in reporting for one of the worst teams in the MWC has earned him this spot.  And his recent posts nearly upset BYU Mitch for the third spot in the rankings.

5.    Josh Walrath – Josh is a bit of an enigma to us at the MWCCBPR.  While he clearly has talent, he doesn’t always put it to good use.  Since the beginning of the season he’s only managed four comments and one article.  Despite the obvious quality of the article, it’s clear his commitment is questionable.  

6.    Snake34 – Despite limited activity, Snake did manage a solid article in ‘How the MWC saved itself from Mediocrity.’  Even though he failed to use ‘itself’ as a word and instead wrote ‘its self,’ we think he has real potential if he can develop the discipline to be a more active blogger.

7.    Sam – Does this guy even write for MWC Connection?

8.    Rebelfan1 – As you should by now know, the lowest spot, or “tail pipe,” is reserved for the blogger who makes the mistake most worthy of a call out.   It’s been a tough couple of weeks for Rebel.  Despite fairly solid reporting and clear ability, rebels’ failure to correctly rank the Utes above Pittsburg for two consecutive weeks, as well as some clearly biased (dare we say homer like?) coverage of UNLV vs. Utah has earned him this weeks’ tail pipe.  The encouraging thing for Rebel is that he can always correctly rank Utah over Pitt next week and significantly move up the rankings.   

Now for the Tops and Bottoms.  As you know, we scour the blogosphere each week looking for the best bits of Humor, epic one liners, as well as the worst instances of Homerism, East Coast Bias, and BCSU snobbery, and bring them to you here as an addition to the rankings. 

Tops

Epic story:  The guys at OBNUG are no stranger to this award and bring it home once again in OBNUG’s ‘bet post’ on Virginia Tech’s blog “Gobbler Country” – epic ridiculousness in spades.

Epic Title: “James Madison 21, Virginia Tech 16: This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things” also from Gobbler Country. 

Bottoms

Call it being a fan, call it being optimistic, we call it Epic Homerism.

This week’s award goes to our very own WoflpackNev for: “Well if Fresno or Nevada upset Boise and gets in a BCS game it’s possible.”  We love your optimism Wolfpack, but this is never going to happen.

Epic BCS Snobbery:  Comes once again from Nick Saban who belittled the Boise State schedule saying:  “It's not just that you can beat one team, but if you have to beat six or seven other teams and have to play with consistency to do it, I think that goes a long way in saying a lot about what kind of football team that you have. And that's no disrespect that you have, because they may certainly be able to do the same thing if they were put in that circumstance."  And that his team that won the national championship in 2009 also beat VT and "six other teams that were the caliber of Virginia Tech, or maybe better. And maybe more than that if you throw in Texas and Florida in the SEC Championship game."
http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/feed/2010-09/vatechboise-st/story/nick-saban-weighs-in-on-boise-state#ixzz0zc9H7kZu

Congratulations Saban, you are once again the douche of the week. 

And finally the No Sense of Humor Award goes to:  Anyone who takes this post seriously enough to be offended.

Apparently the Big East has offered Villanova, which is currently a basketball only member of the conference, an opportunity to join for football as well. 

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ap-villanova-bigeast

Villanova currently competes in the FCS!!!! for football and has a stadium capacity of 12,500!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

The Big Least should immediately lose thier automatic bid to the BCS if this goes through.  They are already the worst BCS conference, and adding an FCS team should make them a laughing stock of the football world. 

Notice to MWC, you will earn an autobid in the near future as the BE numbers go into the crapper. 

I still have yet to see a reliable source that puts the cougars in the lonely independent bracket.  I know every 'news' organization ran with the story but the sources are fishy at best to me.  I mean, the sources they listed were at USU and the WAC office, in theory they could have known something, but I'm more inclined to believe that BYU may have talked to the WAC as part of the due diligence of exploring thier options that Holmoe talked about them doing over a month ago.   One thing seems certain as the smoke clears today, those 'sources' in the WAC office are likely losing their jobs this morning. 

Ok, on to the reasons why BYU should stay.

1. Being independent is ridiculously difficult to manage.  It's a constant scheduling difficulty trying to land enough decent teams that are willing to go home and home would be a full time job for several individuals and you'd still likely end up with a bunch of patsies looking to make a paycheck as opposed to powerhouse teams.  If you'll get off your arrogant power trip you'll see that in fact you're not Notre Dame and you aren't going to get special treatment from teams wanting to schedule you, or from the BCS.  You might make a bit more money, but you might also make less.   This is at best a gamble and you know the church discourages gambling.  ;)

2.  At this point there is nowhere to land your non-revenue sports.  The WAC is broken, and make no mistake if it does survive it will be a shadow of the conference it was a year ago.  The WAC is no longer an option, period.  That would mean your best bet would be the WCC.  Which, lets face it, is a HUGE drop down from the MWC.  It's essentially joining a conference with a bunch of junior colleges.  BYU considering going to the WCC is like Florida considering joining the Sun Belt.  It's ridiculous.

3. You're already accomplishing you're main goial of getting increased exposure.  If the reports can believed about Craig Thompson's visit with Comcast can be trusted, they agreed that they wanted to get the Mountain into more markets.  "Thompson spoke after returning from a meeting in Philadelphia with Comcast and CBS officials, who said they wanted the league and its television network -- The Mtn. -- to reach more markets."  Read, "Oh noes we're going to lose our investment on this thing, we better work a bit harder so we don't lose out completely."  Comcast/CBS does not want to lose BYU, like it or not BYU is one of the largest draws in the MWC where tv is concerned.  Congratulations cougars, your posturing has actually helped the conference put itself in a better position. (maybe this is what BYU wanted all along who knows)  Now move as a group to extend your advantage and restructure that awful deal.  And while you're at it add Houston to the mix so that you can have a championship game.   This new found position of strength should allow the MWC to increase it's monetary take from the TV deal as well as making more markets available to you.  Another thing to consider is the possibility of using the broadcasting assets you've been bragging about as a bargaining chip in the improved deal.  Everyone knows (now) that you have better facilities than Comcast/CBS, allow them to use them for certain games and charge them for it, get the best MWC games delivered in HD in an expanded footprint.

4. AQ status is a real possibility.  I know it hurt to watch Utah leave.  But try to put the emotions aside and look at this objectively.  At the end of last fall the MWC was essentially ahead at half time in the 4 year evaluation cycle.  The MWC is ranked 3rd in two of the three categories used to evaluate the conferences, and seventh in the other.  Ranking ahead of both the Big East, ACC, and the Pac 10 in the two former. Losing Utah and gaining Boise is essentially a push.  Adding Fresno and Nevada likely will strengthen you somewhat in the final category allowing you to be very close in all categories.  Adding Houston probably wouldn't change much but it may also help a little in this area.  Also, with BYU, TCU, BSU, Fresno, and Houston in the fold, the MWC would essentially have every school that has come close to busting the BCS except Hawaii and Utah.  But please, no one talk about adding Hawaii, the prospect is just ridiculous and if you don't know why you're clearly not aware of the reasons the MWC was formed in the first place.  Now, you've got the pieces, just be patient for 2 years.  You'll have a great shot at AQ status, and if things are close apply for an exemption.   The BCS will likely grant it in order to avoid massive negative exposure and possible involvement of congress if it looks like they're trying to shaft you in the process. 

If you don't qualify for AQ, you can still consider independence then.  Heck, if the MWC doesn't get in, I'll help you pack your bags.  But don't screw this up for everyone just because you're impatient.  Remember, patience is a virtue.

Straight from the horses mouth!

"June 16, 2010

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. -- The Pacific-10 has extended an invitation to the University of Utah to join the Conference.  A press conference will take place in the Rice-Eccles Stadium tower at the University of Utah tomorrow at 1 p.m. MT/12 p.m. PT."

http://www.pac-10.org/genrel/061610aaa.html

Please ignore my earlier pessimistic comments!  I'll try to be less pessimistic in our future Pac 12 travels. :D

There are rumors aplenty that the Utes will be invited to the Pacific 11.  As a dedicated Ute fan I'm of course very interested to find out everything there is to know on the subject.  I've spent days obsessing, reloading webpage after webpage looking for some tiny sliver of news to either confirm or deny the reports that my beloved Utes will be moving to the 'big time.'  

With all that I've read, I've now come to believe one thing about the Pac 11's expansion to 12 teams and Utah's rumored invite, it's never going to happen.   Why do I feel this way?  Several reasons, first and probably chief of which is this, the Pac 10 schools and fans don't want Utah.  Look at their blogs, chat rooms, and editorials and they all inevitably sigh and moan and say that Utah will probably get an invite, and then expound all the reasons why Utah should not be included.  None of their reasons have much to do with the school itself, basically boiling down to the fact that Utah is not the 'sexy' pickup that they'd like to have had.  We're no Texas, Nebraska, or Oklahoma.  They'll give us that we've been successful, but they still don't like us.

Second:  All the information coming out indicating that Utah will get an invite gives dubious sources at best to support their supposition.  I've spent literally hours backtracking the stories trying to find a credible source and the fact is, the best they've got are unnamed sources in positions that seem unlikely to have credible information.  Most trails lead back to the Utezone.com report, which is an extremely poor source for credible info. 

Third:  Official channels all deny everything.  Now you're probably saying to yourself "They always do that even when things are about to happen."  True, but the answers they give when things are actually going on tend to be much more illusive than the ones we're currently getting.  Also remember that  Larry  Scott has said that staying at 11 is a viable option.  So either A. our media people don't mind lying outright and are doing so, or B. there really is NO INVITE on the table at this time, and probably wont be one in the future.

Fourth:  The prolonged silence.  Everyone knows that Utah is sitting on their hands waiting for an invite, we also know that the Pac 11 needs one more for a conference championship.  If their plan all along was to invite Utah if the other options didn't work out, why didn't they just make the offer immediately upon hearing a 'no' from Texas?  They're not on the clock or anything, but there's also no reason for them to wait unless they are considering other options.   This tells me that we are in fact the Pac 10's VERY LAST OPTION, and not an attractive addition at that. 

Don't get me wrong, I WANT to be wrong about this.  I'd love for us to play in the Pac Tweleven, I hope I'm wrong.   But when it comes to Utah actually getting an invite, I'll believe it when I hear a commissioner say it.  Until then it's just homers and busy bodies puffing out their chests and congratulating themselves on the new conference.  Anyone remember how that worked out for Mizzou?  Please Larry Scott, prove me wrong, but until then, my advice Ute fans is this, brace yourself for disappointment .