They met in secret.

If word got out before they were ready to strike, it could spell disaster.

Presidents of four universities in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and the superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy convened in the spring of 1998 at the then 3-year-old Denver International Airport, not in the underground tunnels that intrigue conspiracy theorists across the world, but in a small, secluded meeting room.

At the meeting, CSU President Albert Yates, BYU President Merrill Bateman, Utah President Bernie Machen, Wyoming President Phillip Dubois and Air Force Academy Superintendent Tad Oelstrom conspired to break away from the Western Athletic Conference and form a new league — the Mountain West.

Yates voiced concerns about the way the overgrown Western Athletic Conference, which had expanded from 10 to 16 teams two years earlier, was planning to separate traditional rivals like CSU and Wyoming under a new scheduling format. The scheduling plan had already been in place for two years, although the quadrants CSU, Wyoming and Air Force were in had been paired together to keep those rivalries intact.

But now they were about to split into different divisions, possibly on a permanent basis, with CSU and Air Force going into one division and Wyoming going into another along with BYU and Utah.

“Many of us were really quite upset at the decision that the athletic directors had made about the formation of these two divisions without any input from us, the presidents,” said Dubois, now the chancellor at North Carolina-Charlotte. “I’m finding out I’m not going to be playing Air Force or CSU? Those were the two biggest gates for us.”

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So, at the urging of Yates, they agreed to the secret meeting at DIA.

They represented five institutions that were in agreement that the WAC, which spanned four time zones, had become too large. The problem was, they needed at least three more schools to form a new league.

Who would they ask to join them?

New Mexico — which like BYU, Utah and Wyoming had been a charter member of the WAC when it formed in 1962 — was an obvious choice. They needed two more. After much discussion, the group settled on San Diego State and UNLV.

They knew they had to work quickly, Dubois remembers, before anyone found out what they were up to and foiled the plan.

“We all felt it had to be done in a clandestine way,” Dubois said. “There was concern if political entities got involved, like the California General Assembly, that we wouldn’t be able to do it. We really did want a coup d’etat.

“… We ended up calling Steve Weber at San Diego State and Carol Harter at UNLV and Bill (Gordon) at New Mexico and inviting them in,” Dubois said. “It was kind of, ‘We need to hear from you by the end of the week or see you.’ ”

To the relief of the group. all three immediately agreed to join the new conference, which is now 20 years old.

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The eight presidents broke the news to their counterparts at the WAC’s other eight schools during the conference’s meetings in May 1998 with plans to begin competition the following fall. There was a lot of anger directed at the eight presidents and their institutions by those they were leaving behind.

Sonny Lubick, CSU’s football coach at the time, said Fresno State coach Pat Hill called him and blamed him personally for breaking up the WAC.

Lubick didn’t have any say in the decision. Even his athletic director, Tim Weiser, was caught by surprise over what the presidents had secretly done.

“I had no idea,” said Gary Ozzello, CSU’s long-time sports information director and now the school’s director of community outreach and engagement. “We got a call in May, Tim Weiser and me, and we were called to the president’s office. Dr. Yates said, ‘Here you go. Here’s the news release. We’re forming a new conference.’ ”

Yates, now retired and living in Denver, couldn't be reached for comment for this story.

Athletic directors and faculty athletic representatives from each of the eight institutions then started meeting monthly in Las Vegas to iron out the details. They hired Gene Corrigan, a former commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, as a consultant to help them negotiate television and bowl game contracts and ensure the MW champions in men’s and women’s basketball would receive the same automatic berths to the NCAA tournaments that were given to the champions of the other 31 Division I conferences.

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Ozzello, by default, handled the league’s public relations efforts at first, simply because he was at CSU, the school that led the succession, he said.

On Oct. 15, 1998, the league hired a commissioner, Craig Thompson, who was the commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference at the time and had previously helped launch the American South Conference and served as its first commissioner.

Within a week, Thompson was in Salt Lake City, joining ongoing negotiations with ESPN. A few weeks later, the new league finalized a seven-year television deal worth $48 million. By mid-December, the new conference had secured a spot for its conference champion in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee.

Thompson was working out of complimentary office space provided by the United Services Automobile Association in Colorado Springs with one assistant, an employee on loan from the Colorado Springs Sports Corporation to help answer the phones.

“I would go to lunch and come back and there could be 30 to 40 pink (message) slips from every coach, saying, ‘Where’s my schedule,’ and officiating and an update on the television negotiations, etc.” Thompson said. “It was an absolute fire hose.”

The MW formally opened Jan. 4, 1999, with headquarters in Colorado Springs

By June, the conference secured an agreement to play its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, where the WAC tournaments had previously been held, and a guaranteed spot for a conference team in the Las Vegas Bowl. The league’s first football game — CSU at BYU — was played Sept. 16, 1999, in Provo, Utah. The Cougars won 34-13.

The reputation of the league’s members and the presence of legendary football coaches Fisher DeBerry at Air Force, Lavell Edwards at BYU, John Robinson at UNLV, Lubick at CSU, and later Urban Meyer at Utah and Gary Patterson at TCU, were critical in putting the new conference on the national map in its early years, Thompson said.

Four MW football teams played in Bowl Championship Series football games, with three winning those games. And in 2014, Boise State became the first school outside of a Power 5 conference to play in a College Football Playoff-controlled bowl game, beating Arizona 38-30 in the Fiesta Bowl.

“When those presidents made that thing, it came together as a very strong league,” said Lubick, who led the Rams to two outright titles and a share of a third in the MW’s first four seasons. “I think it turned out to be a darned tough conference.”

Membership changes have diminished the league’s reputation nationally in recent years. Utah left in 2011 for the Pacific-12 Conference, TCU in 2012 for the Big 12 and BYU in 2012 for independence in football and the West Coast Conference in all sports.

Thompson admitted he worried about the league’s overall survival at that point. He convinced the league’s Board of Governors — presidents, chancellors or superintendent of each member school — in an August 2010 conference call to offer immediate invitations to Fresno State and Nevada, who had each remained in the WAC when the MW was formed. Boise State had previously accepted an invitation to join the MW for the 2011-12 season.

“Mike Gould, then the Air Force superintendent, and I were meeting with Comcast in downtown Philadelphia trying to see if there was a way to salvage BYU staying in the league with their television package,” Thompson said. “And they decided they were not going to stay in the Mountain West Conference. Utah and TCU had already left, and we were kind of playing a numbers game there.

“And so, literally, in an afternoon teleconference, we added Fresno State and Nevada. We jumped on a plane, flew home from Philadelphia, and held an impromptu press conference about 9 that night to announce that decision. That got our numbers up to eight, and then we subsequently added a few others since then.

“That was the only singular point, I would say, that I had some trepidation.”

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Hawaii joined as a football-only member in 2012, and San Jose State and Utah State were invited to join the league for the 2013-14 season, moves that left the WAC without enough football teams to continue sponsoring that sport.

Membership changes are a constant source of discussion, with Gonzaga turning down an offer to join the MW last spring and continued speculation about BYU’s possible return. New Mexico State, UTEP and others have also expressed interesting in joining the conference.

For now, the MW is staying put, with 11 full members and two affiliate members — Hawaii in football and Colorado College in women’s soccer.

Negotiations for new media rights deals — the current contracts with CBS-Sports Network and ESPN expire after the 2019-20 season — will begin in earnest in the spring.

The landscape of college sports viewing habits is constantly changing, with more games available on a wide range of digital platforms that are pulling audiences away from the traditional linear television networks.

And coaches, fans and athletic directors are trying to balance the benefits of the revenue generated from those media-rights agreements — a little more than $2 million a year for Boise State and $1 million a year for the rest of the MW’s schools under the current contracts — with the desire to exercise more control over the starting times and days of the week of their games.

The digital-only platforms aren’t in a position right now to offer the kind of money the TV networks are doling out, Thompson said. So, ultimately, the MW’s Board of Governors will have to decide what’s best for the conference moving forward.

Twenty years ago when the presidents, chancellors and superintendents met on the sly at DIA, they knew they could create a conference that was better for their five schools than what the WAC was providing. New challenges confront them now.

“It was the right thing to do at the time,” Dubois said. “… College presidents are not known for lacking confidence. Especially, Al. He was terrific.

“He was a very strong purposeful leader in those days.”

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news and listen to him talk CSU sports at 12:35 p.m. Thursdays on KFKA radio (AM 1310) and 8:45 a.m. Saturdays on Denver’s ESPN radio (AM 1600).

Mountain West membership moves

1999 – Eight charter members – Air Force, BYU, CSU, New Mexico, San Diego State, Utah, UNLV and Wyoming – leave the Western Athletic Conference and begin competition as a new conference.

2005 – TCU joins, leaving Conference USA

2011 – Boise State joins, leaving the WAC; Utah leaves for the Pacific-12 Conference

2012 – TCU leaves for the Big 12 Conference; BYU leaves for independence in football and for the West Coast Conference in all other sports; Nevada, Fresno State and Hawaii (football only) join, leaving the WAC

2013 – San Jose State and Utah State join, leaving the WAC

MW milestones