Looks like a joke.
What is not a joke is the status of the non-BCS league football conferences. Their future is some middle tier structure that takes them out of the FBS. They just can't create revenue to keep up. Probably not to the FCS, but left out of the big time and really in some limbo status where nobody cares. This will happen in the next 3 or 4 years when all the power teams and conferences finish rearranging. While USU scrambles to get MWC status (and as an aside, I'm not sure why the MWC would take them, they bring no real interest on the Wasatch Front [read TV sets -- does anybody outside of Logan really care?], no ability to generate advertising and bottom line zero new revenue) and one wonders if the MWC can even make the grade without TCU, BYU and Utah anyway. Boise State is has an interesting story, but no real market and not enough TV power. Yet they will now be asked to carry MWC revenue because none of the other teams can do it. USU does nothing for them and the Aggies have become the ultimate wannabe. The Titanic is sinking and no lifeboats are in sight.
USU posters can see this little joke as an FCS insult, but the reality is that WSU and the rest of the Big Sky have real stability (and actual tradition) in the FCS world that is ours. And while our financial status may be challenging we don't have to come up with a way to generate $20 million yearly just to keep a football program alive -- and that is the price-tag to be a serious FBS team today, and the reason, ultimately, that the Montana teams said no. Seriously, can you imagine pulling for a team in the WAC. Or worse, thinking that the WAC has any legitimacy. It has suddenly become non-existent in the college football world and is now a one bid basketball conference with a far-ranging footprint that has no natural rivalries. It is easily the most uninteresting conference in the country.
