Vince Lombardi and I have a question...

Couldn't have said it better myself, Vince.

I've been swamped at my day job, which is par for the course when you work in higher education. Tuesday night, as I was winding down for the evening, I saw something flash across the ESPN bottom line that caught my attention. To paraphrase, "BYU considering going independent in football."

My first reaction was, "Huh?"

My second reaction is noted above.

Come Wednesday morning, it seemed that the Cougars were close to forgoing the Mountain West and joining the WAC with their Olympic sports and basketball, and playing as an independent in football. In a deal with the WAC, they would be able to schedule somewhere between four and six WAC opponents to help fill out their schedule.

This would allow BYU to increase its profile by coming up with a television contract with ESPN to carry some games and would allow BYU to expand their own broadcasting network (which is transitioning to HD). BYU would get to keep revenue from all television appearances and any bowl games—especially if they made a BCS game as an at-large.

Wednesday afternoon, the Mountain West announced it had invited Fresno State and Nevada to join the conference, and both institutions quickly accepted.

As of last night, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson was saying that BYU is still a member of the conference, which is true.

A couple of questions come to mind:

1) BYU has looked at being independent before, but it was with the risk of being independent in all of their sports. Joining the WAC was supposed to offer stability to those other teams. But with the Mountain West crippling the WAC by taking (arguably) three of the top programs this decade in Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada, there is not much left of the WAC. Does this move force BYU into check and bring them back into the fold for now?

2) If BYU returns to the fold, the Mountain West will sit at 11 teams, one team short of the tantalizing figure of 12 required to have a conference championship game. Does the league bite the bullet and try to get someone from the West Division of Conference USA (UTEP, Tulsa, Houston) to round out the league?

3) Does this move, with or without BYU, force ESPN and the Mountain West to come back to the table and negotiate some kind of a partial television contract? Or is such a plan already in the works?

4) Karl Benson needs to decide on a plan of action. Does he try and recruit schools from Conference USA or the Sun Belt to join? Do you look at adding Division 1-FCS schools Montana, Northern Arizona, Weber State or Eastern Washington (to name a few)? Because while you can still be a Division 1 school in some other sports with a reduced conference, it's not going to work for football to remain a FBS conference with only six members. The rumor yesterday about trying to poach UNLV and San Diego State is a total non-starter at this point; neither school is going to leave the Mountain West at this juncture.

So it looks like we are back to being in the midst of Expansionpalooza™ once again, and the ground is shifting. It's just smaller tremors than anticipated.