LAS VEGAS — Tired of staying up into the wee hours of Sunday morning to watch CSU's football games?

You're not alone.

Fans across the Mountain West are grumbling more and more about the league's late-night games.

Attendance at those games is declining, and administrators are beginning to question whether the $1.1 million a year most are receiving from the league's broadcast partners — CBS-Sports Network and ESPN — are worth the additional exposure.

The conference might even cut the cord entirely, going the way of millions of millennials and others who are dropping their cable and satellite TV packages in favor of digital alternatives, when its current contracts expire after the 2019-2020 school year. Five of the largest pay-TV providers in the country lost a combined 527,000 subscribers in the second quarter of this year alone, Reuters reported Friday.

Craig Thompson, the Mountain West's commissioner since its start in 1999-2000, said the conference could have just as much reach with a digital-only package as it has with its current mix of partners. But he's not sure a digital-only option could replace the revenue conference schools currently receive from their 10-year deals worth $116 million.

Amazon is paying $50 million for the rights to stream 10 Thursday night NFL games next season, Forbes reported, five times more than what Twitter paid for 10 Thursday night games in 2016. Facebook, YouTube and Google also are seeking more live-stream content, the financial magazine reported.

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But what, if anything, would they be willing to pay the Mountain West for live broadcasts of football and men's basketball games, given the relatively small fan bases of the conference's 12 football-playing schools?

Certainly not the $20 million to $35 million-a-year schools in the Power 5 conferences are earning from their media rights packages with major TV networks and the conference networks created through those deals. The Big Ten signed a new deal last week worth a reported $2.6 billion over six years.

Money like that might make the control those networks have been given over kickoff times a bit more palatable. But MW schools are playing late-night games on Fridays and Saturdays that start after half the country has gone to bed, for a tiny fraction of the revenue the big boys are receiving.

Five of Colorado State University's eight league games last season began at 8 p.m. Mountain Time or later, and another kicked off at 7. Boise State played five games on days other than Saturday last season and played all of its home games at night, with five starting at 8:15 p.m. or later.

"If you're finishing your game the next day, that becomes difficult," Boise State coach Bryan Harsin said. "So game times are part of it when you're talking about just actually getting people in the seats."

Even some of the fans with tickets are staying home to watch those games, particularly those played in November in cold-weather cities like Fort Collins; Colorado Springs; Laramie, Wyo.; Boise, Idaho; and Logan, Utah.

So Thompson and the athletic directors of the MW's 12 football-playing schools are taking a closer look at all the options before agreeing to any new media rights deals. CBS-Sports Network and ESPN, he said, have offered to extend the current deals under the same financial terms, but the MW is in no rush to renew. Those discussions won't take place for another 18 months or so, he said, giving the conference time to better understand and explore the options.

"The real key there is going to be monetization," Thompson said Wednesday at the MW's football media days. "We need the revenue."

Campus Insiders, which has since been purchased by Stadium, streamed seven MW football games and nine men's basketball games on Twitter last season and will do so again this year, a Stadium executive said. The conference also live-streams dozens of games each year on its own Mountain West Digital Network.

But there's no revenue associated with those streams, only an increase in the national exposure MW schools are seeking.

Coaches like playing games on national television, even if it is networks with limited viewership, such as CBS-Sports Network and ESPNU. It helps spread their brand.

But they also like the wide reach of the digital broadcasts, allowing recruits and their families to tune in from anywhere in the country at any time on whatever Internet-connected device they have available.

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"We're trying to keep up with the times, and part of it is generational," Thompson said. "You've got a couple hundred thousand students that are 18 to 20 years old on our campuses. They're not watching cable; they're not watching satellite. They have a Netflix account, and they're doing social media.

" … How do people consume their information?"

Potential recruits and undergraduate students might prefer the live-streaming options over cable and satellite TV, Thompson said. And 30- to 50-year-olds taking their kids to soccer practices and games might like the convenience of following along on smart phones and tablets. But the 60- to 70-year-olds, who make up the majority of donors that purchase luxury suites, fund scholarships and help pay the coaches' salaries, want to be able to sit down on their couch on Saturday and watch games on broadcast, cable and satellite TV networks that they can't attend in person.

"We're trying to appease everybody and trying to find that right mix," Thompson said. "So we have a couple more years, 18 months, to determine what's happening in the marketplace and the industry.

"And I can assure you, we'll make a decision sometime in the first or second quarter of 2019 and, I'm making this up hypothetically, we'll go with ESPN and Google," he said. "And then by the time the contract starts in July 2020, we'll go, 'Why'd we do that Google thing; there's something new and flashier out there.'

"I don't know. It's a game we're all playing."

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news