Lyell: Outside of Power 5, MW a good place to be

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement.

CSU to the Big 12 Conference.

Could it happen? Possibly.

Imagine CSU playing home football games against Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas State and West Virginia.

Basketball games against Kansas and Baylor.

Volleyball showdowns matching CSU’s Top 25 program against perennial national power Texas.

Baseball vs. … Oops, I nearly forgot, Colorado State University doesn’t have a baseball team.

Anyway, you get the picture.

If the Big 12 decides to expand from 10 teams to 12 or 14 or 16 so it can play a championship game in football, CSU will be discussed as a potential member. So will Houston, SMU, Cincinnati, Boise State, Brigham Young, Memphis, South Florida and Central Florida, among others.

So yes, it could happen. The Rams just might win the Power Five lottery and receive an invitation to join a conference whose schools earn $20 million a year from the television contract alone. That’s a big chunk of change for a school like CSU with an annual athletic budget of about $34 million.

There’s nothing wrong with dreaming big.

Trouble is, while stating the Rams’ case for inclusion in a bigger and better conference, it’s easy to forget how good CSU has it in the Mountain West.

Sure, the conference isn’t in the Power Five, and television revenue ranges from Boise State’s $4.5 million to as little as $1 million per school. Nobody really wants to play a football game in November against a 1-8 New Mexico team in a half-empty stadium in Albuquerque or a men’s basketball game in February with maybe 100 fans on hand at San Jose State.

Most of CSU’s “nationally televised’ games wind up on CBS Sports Network or ESPNU, networks available to most college football fans for additional fees that few are willing to pay.

Life in the MW, at times, can seem pretty bleak.

But consider the big picture.

The MW is a far better conference than the Sun Belt, or Mid-American — even Conference USA or the American Athletic Conference. Mid-American teams are playing seven conference games on Tuesday nights late this season so they can get on ESPNU and ESPN2.

The TV contract that forces schools to play those games isn’t all that lucrative, either, about $670,000 per school this year, according to ESPN’s Brett McMurphy. Those payments increase in the final 10 years of the 13-year deal that runs through 2026-27.

So despite its shortcomings, the MW is a pretty good place to be in the current college sports landscape. The conference sent its champion to Bowl Championship Series football games in 2004 (Utah), 2008 (Utah), 2009 (TCU) and 2010 and to the College Football Playoff-controlled Fiesta Bowl in 2014 (Boise State).

MW teams have gone 31-24 in bowl games since 2004 for a .574 winning percentage that ranks second — trailing only the Southeastern Conference’s .649 — among the 10 FBS conferences.

The MW champion is the odds-on favorite each year to fill the spot in one of six major bowl games guaranteed to the top-ranked champion from the Group of Five.

A MW team, in theory, could even get into the four-team playoff for the national championship with an undefeated season and the right schedule, Bill Hancock, CEO of the College Football Playoff, said last week at the MW football media days in Las Vegas.

In men’s basketball, the MW had the highest NCAA Ratings Percentage Index of any conference in the country in 2012-13.

And the average “public subsidy” — student fees, university funding and direct government support — for athletics at MW schools is about 47 percent, MW commissioner Craig Thompson said last week at the conference’s football media days in Las Vegas. That’s much larger than the average among Power Five conferences of 6.5 percent, a number from a new book “Administration of College Athletics,” by sports economists Erianne Weight and Robert Zulo.

But it’s far better than the 65 percent average among schools in the Group of Five. CSU’s subsidy, according to a USA Today analysis of reports submitted to the NCAA, was 51 percent.

No wonder CSU and others in the MW want to move up to a Power Five conference.

But if that offer doesn’t happen, or until it does, the Mountain West is a pretty good place to be. Far better, at least, than the alternatives.

Sports reporter Kelly Lyell can be reached by email at KellyLyell@coloradoan.com. Follow him at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news