A press conference is scheduled tomorrow at 1pm mountain time and Utah will officially announce they are going to the Pac-10. There is the formality of Utah's Board of Trustees who will hold a public meeting Thursday at 12:30 p.m. (mst).  Do not expect any votes to stay in the Mountain West the money is too big and it will be nearly seven fold in television money:

The biggest payoff for the Utes should be in TV revenue. For the 2008-09 year the Utes reported just $1.2 million in TV revenue from the MWC. Teams in the Pac-10 make $8-10 million. A new TV agreement is expected to increase that amount.

Following the Utah press conference, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson is holding a teleconference at 2pm (mst) where he most likely will discuss Utah leaving the Mountain West.

 This Idaho football club has traditionally been a bottom of the cellar team in the WAC although that changed last season. The Vandals got their first winning season in a long time and most of that was because their offensive line played so good. Unfortunately, only one starter from that line is returning and that is going to make things tough on Idaho. The good news is they return every player on defense except for the free safety. That's not saying much though because this defense wasn't exactly what you would call good. Giving up 70 points to Nevada is just inexcusable. That said, having almost all of your starters return is a huge help and this defense should improve.

Idaho's schedule seems pretty fitting for their caliber of a team, they feature North Dakota, Nebraska, UNLV, Colorado State and Western Michigan. Nebraska is going to be a tough battle, but that is really only the tough test for this team. Conference Play isn't that hard either, with only three opponents in conference having a winning record last season.

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 We now tune back to our regular scheduled programming, but if you want some expansion talk here ya go.  Still unsure how Wyoming was able to get Texas to travel to Laramie last year, and had the gal to compete for the first half.  Texas is coming off of their BCS appearance where they lost to Alabama, and without star quarterback Colt McCoy.  The upside to that is freshman Garrett Gilbert was put in the most pressure packed situation he will ever face until Texas makes a return to the title game.

Losing McCoy to the NFL is a big blow as well as his favorite target Jordan Shipley, but the biggest blow could be the three offensive lineman that have moved on.  A reconstructed offensive line will make the running game tougher to get off the ground which has suffered the past where Colt McCoy was their leading rusher.

The expected lead back is Tre' Newton who was the teams leading returning runner and managed only 552 yards with six touchdowns, or the other is touchdown machine Cody Johnson who had 12 to go along with 335 yards.  The running game is a real issue, but head coach Mack Brown is expected to return to a more running offense instead of a shotgun passing offense.  That could help the running game be better by focusing it, possibly.

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 Amidst the Pac-10 expansion madness where Utah was left out of rumors, Ute fans needed some good news... and they got it.

WR Reggie Dunn out of Compton C.C. committed to Oregon State in 2007, but is now heading to Utah after the Beavers grew tired of his academic issues.  He was listed at a four-star WR by Scout and Rivals.  Scout ranked him the 48th best receiver coming out of high school and Rivals ranked him No. 28.

The 5'10" 185 pound speedy running back ran an official 4.35 forty at a Nike Camp in Los Angeles where he took top honors. He also runs a 4.28 at the USC camp.  

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 Note: This was written before the gigantic news about the hypothetical Pac-16...

In the comments of recent posts about expansion, questions and speculation about what are the options for the schedule, what is the best schedule type and which will happen. I'm going to try to answer those questions for all of you, although most of you probably will disagree.

Schedule Types

For this first type of schedule, I give credit to pappyman (a member here at Mountain West Connection) for coming up with this idea.

10 school division

This first schedule type is for if the MWC expands and adds only Boise St. to make 10 schools. This scheduling type is based off of the chance of the NCAA Bylaw that states you must have 12 teams and 2 divisions in order to have a championship game gets changed. The Pac-10 is currently pushing for this to happen, and if it does, it makes the schedule type viable. The idea is we have two divisions with 5 teams in each:

Each team would play every team in it's division once and play four out of the five teams from the other division each year. The team that they miss each year would rotate, and the winners of each division would play the MWC Championship game one week after the regular season ends. So for instance, Boise St's first conference schedule in the MWC might look like this:

This kind of schedule satisfies a lot of issues with the new schedule. For one, schools might be concerned with a true round robin of 9 conference games a season, especially Air Force who would only have one non-conference game a year to schedule because they play Navy and Army every year. With only having 8 conference games, the big teams would only miss out on each other twice every five years.

Another issue is that if we were to expand to 12 teams and move to a Big 12 style schedule, or not created divisions with the 10 teams but still gone with an 8 game conference schedule, the big rivalries would not have stayed intact. For instance, the annual Border War, BYU-Utah game and CSU-Air Force game would have been canceled for a few years under the Big 12 style schedule and would disappear once every nine years under the 8 game conference schedule with out divisions. By putting in divisions and purposely keeping rivalries intact in the divisions, you do not have to worry about that.

One of the main problems with a true round robin was that since the all the top 25 teams would be pitted against each other, more losses happen and worse BCS rankings come about hurting our chances at a BCS Automatic Qualification. This issue could also be solved if for the first season with Boise St. in, each of the top 25 teams are purposely made to miss a game with the one of the other top 25 teams in the other division. If this happens, then we would get better BCS Rankings just for the year that we need them in order to get a BCS AQ.

 Wisconsin's Stats for the 2009 season:

Returning Starters for Wisconsin:

This team lost a lot of talent after last season, but they still are ranked sixth in Lindley's Pre-Season top 25. It's because this team was so deep last season, that even though so much talent has left, so much talent steps in for the remaining open positions. For instance, at Tight End, Wisconsin lost star Garrett Graham who was First-team All-Big Ten. They have Lance Kendricks taking over the starting role and Wisconsin shouldn't lose anything at that position because of the caliber player that Kendricks is. Wisconsin shouldn't have any issues with departing players this upcoming season.

The one thing you have to wonder about this team is why they play a cupcake non-conference schedule that includes UNLV, San Jose State, Arizona State and Austin Peay? If they're such a good football team, why didn't they play Auburn or Cincinnatti? This team has a lot of talent, but you won't see any showcase games until conference play starts, and the first four weeks of conference play look pretty tough. Overall, I really don't think Wisconsin plays a good schedule. For a team of their caliber, They should play around six marquee games, not the four marquee conference games they have on the schedule for this year.

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Trying not to beat a dead horse, but the Mountain West Presidents meetings in Wyoming start this week look to be the first tangible evidence with conference expansion, because the Boise media is being invited to cover the event.  The invitation by the Boise media leads everyone to believe something will happen this week.   Now the Denver Post is on the bandwagon of adding Boise State to the Mountain West:

Football power Boise State appears to be only waiting for an invitation to become the 10th member of the Mountain West Conference. That invitation could officially come as early as Monday when the MWC's board of directors meets in Jackson, Wyo.

Speculation around the MWC and the Western Athletic Conference is that Boise State will bolt from the WAC. Typical is the comment by Idaho athletic director Rob Spear, who recently wrote to Vandals fans in his blog, "I am predicting June 7 will be the day when the first shoe drops regarding conference realignment."

There was an idea that some of the bottom schools would vote against adding Boise State, because it would make it even more difficult for those lesser teams to move up the chain.  My argument against that is that by adding Boise State would be the extra $18-$22 million the league would get as well as the uptick in recruiting for being a BCS league.  A prime example would be Cincinnati who joined the Big East in 2005 from C-USA and won the Big East in 2008 and 2009.

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The significance of this game is two fold; first it is being played in Jerry World just miles from TCU's campus, and second it might be the sight for Verba-Con 2010 (go listen to their podcast to get what that means).  Oregon State lost their regular season game to Oregon in their annual Civil War game by a mere four points.  That loss sent the Beavers from going to the Rose Bowl all they down to the Las Vegas Bowl where they were beaten by BYU and the wind.

The Beavers have had some legal troubles with some players stealing a golf cart and then crashing it.  Other legal issues for the Beavers was with quarterback Peter Lalich received a boating DUI while in Shasta, California.  That was his third alcohol related offense, and that lead to Lalich getting removed from Oregon State.  Prior to arriving in Corvallis, Lalich was booted from Virginia for alcohol related offense.  

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 chool:  Utah

Position:  Offensive Tackle

Height/Weight:  6'6''/278

High School:  Hurricane High in Hurricane, Utah

Offers:  Utah

Date Committed:  February 19, 2010

Recruiting Profiles:  Rivals, ESPN, MaxPreps

Utah's fourth pledge in the 2011 class was an in-state offensive lineman from 3A Hurricane with great size and potential.  He is Utah's second offensive lineman commit for 2011 along side Isaac Asiata.

Nielson looks to develop into a big, strong tackle with his great height of 6'6". He is considered one of the best lineman prospects in the state of Utah.  The big kid can also move.  According to his recruiting profile he runs a 4.9 forty.

Daniel Nielson played on both sides of the trenches in high school and recorded 31 tackles in the 12 games as a DT in 2009.  His Hurricane team lost the state championship to Juan Diego on a last second Hail Mary.

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The gigantic news earlier today came from the West coast where the Pac-10 is allegedly going to offer invites to the entire Big XII South -- sans Baylor -- and Colorado in a few days.  So much for those strict time lines, but could this be another Big 10 expansion accelerating only to be debunked the next day? It is possible, as anything is possible with this being the Great Realignment Battle of 2010.  So, the report from yesterday about the Pac-10 looking revolutionize college sports looks be coming true.