Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson isn't sitting idle during the potential seismic shift in college athletics.

Thompson is investigating if TCU would remain in the MWC instead of its original plan to join the Big East in 2012, staying in touch with the Big 12 schools that could be left behind if four of the conference's core schools bolt for the Pac-12 and speeding up the process of putting together a deal with Conference USA where the two leagues would play in football a championship game to earn a possible automatic berth to the BCS.

Thompson told ESPN.com Monday that the MWC has room for growth and is actively looking at all its options available.

"We're doing the best we can, talking to our own institutions and trying to manage this and take the pulse of the whole intercollegiate landscape," Thompson said. "This is a giant game of musical chairs to see where the music stops. We're talking to Big 12 and Big East schools. Everybody is burning up the phone lines. It's all consuming."

Thompson said he has been talking to TCU on a constant basis to get a read on the Horned Frogs as they play their final season in the MWC.

The departures of Syracuse and Pitt from the Big East to the ACC has left the Big East unstable in football with other football-playing members Connecticut and Rutgers trying to get to the ACC and West Virginia wanting a spot in the SEC, according to multiple sources.

Thompson said he was hearing and sensing that TCU's first option is to stay with the plan of going to the Big East in what could be a likely merger under a Big 12 umbrella with its remaining schools if the Big 12 loses Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech to the Pac-12.

"But that's where the Mountain West comes back into play," Thompson said. "What are the numbers? Will they need to get to 12 or 14? Are they trying to get Air Force or Boise State? It would be a long way from Boise, Idaho or for Air Force's Olympic sports (to travel to Big East schools). We don't know what a reconfigured Big 12 would look like.

"BYU is still out there as an independent now, we have Hawaii as football only so there is a chance there could be different federated approaches for different sports like football," Thompson said. "Who knows what's going to happen, but TCU hasn't left yet."