NIU to the Mountain West
- Thread starter PowerI66
- Start date
Oh no, I thought we were done with this...if all the good Mountain West schools are leaving (which means all of the TV dollars will be leaving) then why do it?
You are correct in noting that the Mountain West Conference is losing Boise State among other fb programs.
Since conference moves are ONLY made for money, and considering that in the Mountain West, NIU would play 4 road conference games each fall in Nevada, California, Hawaii, etc, … with related travel costs.
Thus, I assume that the Mountsin West football move will be way more lucrative than staying in the Mid-American conference.
So perhaps ESPN is planning to end its money deal with the MAC to play on Tuesday/Wednesday in November.
Those games obviously make the MAC teams TV money but also make the league the worst home-attendance conference in the nation.
Maybe NIU wants to play on Saturday and have more fans at games.
Maybe the Mountain West has a new TV deal coming for 2026 and beyond that is way better than the MAC deal.
We can’t make sense of the deal without the TV dollars.
My thought on this possible football move is that I wish Illinois high schools Would form more football-only conferences, as the. Catholic league/east suburban Catholic Conf. Has done, and also how the Chicago Public League has done.
I get that the ihsa 5-win playoff standard works against building football-only conferences in which elite-team leagues csn be built and bottom feeder-leagues can be built.
It would make the 9-week regular season intense at the top end snd more enjoyable at the other end.
But of course the concept does not work for the current playoff system so it has zero chance of happening.
My knee jerk answer would be "they should have just reorganized the SICA differently" but there are some lot closer to peer conferences elsewhere in the suburbs that could potentially collaborate and do this. To a degree you already see this in the CSL-MSL and the DVC-SWSC schedule arrangements.
Will never be "done with this". In another year or two, the Big10 and SEC will pull a couple schools from other conferences, then the ACC/Big12 will react to fill gaps/expand/merge/??? and it will ripple effect down through all the smaller conferences.
