Mountain West’s future: Gloria Nevarez inherits realignment, branding questions

ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO - JANUARY 27: Mountain West Conference commissioner Gloria Nevarez addresses the media before a game between the Air Force Falcons and the New Mexico Lobos at The Pit on January 27, 2023 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Photo by Sam Wasson/Getty Images)
By Chris Vannini
Feb 3, 2023

At any given moment over the past month, Gloria Nevarez was probably on the move.

After officially taking over as the Mountain West’s second commissioner on Jan. 1, she held meetings at the College Football Playoff national championship game in Los Angeles, then at the NCAA convention in San Antonio. She has visited Wyoming, New Mexico and Air Force and spent time at the conference offices in Colorado Springs. Next up is a trip to Boise State. She has tried to take in a men’s and women’s basketball game at each stop as she learns about her league.

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“I have to get to campuses,” she said.

The only other commissioner in Mountain West history, Craig Thompson, was a million-miler on two airlines, lauded by conference members for always making himself available. Nevarez plans to continue that. People who have worked with Nevarez in the past praise her communication skills.

Not only is Nevarez adjusting to a new commissioner role after holding the same position with the West Coast Conference, but she just wrapped up her time on the Division I Transformation Committee, one of six college sports boards or committees with which she is involved. Few people are as interested in the nitty-gritty details of college sports as Nevarez, the second female and first Latina commissioner of an FBS conference (she’s also one-quarter Filipino and one-quarter Irish). While some FBS conferences have recently gone outside the box with commissioner hires, the Mountain West went from one college sports leader to another. Nevarez, who played basketball at UMass, has also worked at the Pac-12, Oklahoma, Cal and San Jose State.

“You can’t ask for a more connected commissioner,” former Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth said. “You’re not getting secondhand information from her.”

There is a strong belief within the Mountain West that it is poised to become the top football conference in the Group of 5. The American Athletic Conference, most often the top-rated G5 league, lost Cincinnati, Houston and UCF to the Big 12. The Mountain West is also a strong men’s basketball conference, with the potential to earn as many as five NCAA Tournament bids this year.

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But the conference, which formed in a breakaway from the WAC in 1998, now faces the possibility of losing members as the Pac-12 and Big 12 explore future expansion. It’s no secret that San Diego State is at the top of the list among G5 schools. The MWC also had a difficult 2022 football season, and it hasn’t earned the Group of 5 spot in a New Year’s Six bowl since 2014. There is work to be done.

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It all sets up 2023 as the year that will chart the future of the Mountain West. Realignment and messaging are the biggest areas of immediate focus, along with all the big-picture changes coming to college sports. It’s on Nevarez to steer that ship.

“Craig did a good job teeing it up,” said SDSU athletic director JD Wicker, “and I look at Gloria as someone who can take the next steps into what college athletics can become.”

Fresno State beat Boise State for the conference title in December. (Brian Losness / USA Today)

Nevarez knows the No. 1 issue on her plate is conference membership and realignment. That’s the message from presidents and athletic directors. That’s the case for any conference these days.

The MWC has lost only three members in its 24-year history. TCU played in the CFP national championship last month, Utah won its second consecutive Pac-12 football title and BYU is joining the Big 12. That’s a good track record. The AAC was raided last year, and now eyes are on the MWC.

“You can’t be reactive,” Nevarez said. “You have to keep relationships warm, keep your ear to the ground to assess what’s rumor and what might have legs. I don’t know if you can prevent being totally caught off-guard, but even a day or 48 hours heads up, you’re better off. Concurrently, plan for losing school A, B or C. Have contingencies ready, schools that could potentially join. That’s all you can do at this point. What I like about the Mountain West, despite being an original disrupter, they’ve had stability.”

San Diego State knows it’s in a good position. The Pac-12 will soon be absent in southern California when UCLA and USC depart for the Big Ten. The Big 12 has also been open about its desire to add West Coast schools. SDSU opened a new $310 million football stadium last year as part of an expanding campus, and the football and men’s basketball combined winning percentage since 2010 is second only to Ohio State.

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“We’re competitive in all of our sports, we invest in our programs and our academic institution is a rising star,” Wicker said.

The Pac-12 is not expected to make expansion decisions until the completion of its media rights deal, a process that is expected to wrap up early this year. There’s no consensus among college sports leaders about what the Pac-12 could do, whether that involves adding one or more schools, or none. Elsewhere in the Mountain West, Boise State has long had Power 5 dreams and brings brand recognition and television eyeballs. UNLV’s location in Las Vegas is appealing, even with one of the worst football teams in the FBS over the past two decades. Fresno State has tried to make its case too, with support from city leaders.

“If an opportunity comes to anyone to elevate, no one is going to say no,” Wicker said. “We’ll continue to be the best San Diego State we can be and see where that leads up. We’ll work with Gloria and the Mountain West to make sure we’re being the best partner to everyone we can be.”

What the Mountain West does in response depends on what happens. If it loses one or multiple teams, does it need replacements? There aren’t many geographic fits in the FBS outside of UTEP or New Mexico State in Conference USA. North Dakota State is one of the most successful teams at any level of football, with nine FCS national championships in the past 12 years, and it has prepared itself for an FBS move if the right fit comes. South Dakota State just beat NDSU in the FCS championship game and is amid its best football run in school history, and Montana and Montana State have winning football traditions, though their athletic budgets are far below current MWC teams.

A year ago, after pushing back a raid attempt by the AAC, the Mountain West considered expanding into Texas to add FBS schools like North Texas, UTSA or Rice from Conference USA. Some administrators in the MWC, speaking on the condition of anonymity, wanted to do it, but the league presidents decided not to expand. That was in part because individual schools would have made less television money by dividing the pie more ways, a source with knowledge of the situation told The Athletic at the time. Those Texas schools instead moved to the AAC. The MWC administrators who wanted to get into Texas still see it as a missed opportunity, especially if the MWC loses teams.

Nevarez dealt with realignment as WCC commissioner. Gonzaga has and continues to flirt with other leagues, and BYU announced in 2021 it would leave for the Big 12.

“She has a vision,” Roth said. “She can say, ‘We don’t have to fit into a box or be what people tell us.’ When tough decisions need to be made, she has the ability to stand up and say, ‘This is what we’re doing.’”

Four MWC teams made the NCAA Tournament in men’s basketball last year. (Isaiah J. Downing / USA Today)

The Mountain West’s biggest strength comes in its depth. Four schools have won the football championship in the past four years, including surprising upstarts San Jose State in 2020 and Utah State in 2021. Three teams won at least 10 games in 2022 (compared to one in the AAC) and four did the year before (the AAC had two). Mountain West football has finished first or second among G5 conferences seven times in 10 years in the computer rankings that determine CFP payouts to the leagues. That includes four first-place finishes, most recently in 2021, but it dipped to third in 2022 amid a down season, behind the AAC and Sun Belt.

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Though the conference is typically deep, it often fails to produce one standout team above the rest, with Boise State not quite as powerful as it once was. It’s one reason the Mountain West has earned the Group of 5’s New Year’s Six bid only once (Boise State in 2014). The AAC has claimed it seven times, including each of the past six, as its top team has typically separated itself. But five of those seven bids were earned by teams on their way out of the AAC. With CFP expansion coming in 2024, the Mountain West feels well-positioned to make the larger field.

“We have a really good core,” San Jose State athletic director Jeff Konya said.

Men’s basketball has emerged as another strength. Four MWC teams made the NCAA Tournament last year, and the league has five teams in the top 40 of the NET rankings, just one of five conferences that can say that.

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“We’ve positioned ourselves in football and men’s basketball as a strength when you look at conference realignment,” Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey said. “I can’t wait for 2024 (CFP) expansion, because that’s going to put us in a really good place.”

Everyone The Athletic spoke with agreed the biggest area for improvement is pushing the conference’s message and brand.

In 2019, Boise State found itself behind AAC teams Memphis and Cincinnati heading into the final week of the football regular season, all but guaranteeing the AAC champion would get the New Year’s Six spot, which it did. Then-coach Bryan Harsin railed against the league and later said privately that the Broncos should leave the conference.

“We’ve got to step up and promote or do whatever we have to do along the way,” Harsin said publicly at the time. “… When things like this season are happening, you’d sure like to see our university and our conference do the most they can to help put us in a position at the end of the year if everything else has been taken care of.”

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Four years later, that’s still a focus.

“We have to tell our stories better, both institutionally and as a conference overall,” Konya said. “One of the handicaps of being a western conference is our late-night games aren’t getting to the powers that be in real time. There’s got to be a postscript education process. There’s a big opportunity to tell the things we’re doing well, like our men’s basketball right now.”

Thompson was respected for his decades of work and progress made in college sports, but many in the league wanted him to pound the table for the conference more often. That did improve late in his tenure. The Mountain West took jabs at the AAC on social media when the moment was right and Thompson was more visible in the media. But AAC commissioner Mike Aresco is known for his promotional blitzes, doing all kinds of interviews for print, TV and radio to hype up his teams. The Sun Belt made a similar PR push last year after adding four schools and joined the fray by declaring itself the best Group of 5 league. Conference pride still means something.

“Brand elevation is something I’ve heard from our folks that they want more,” Nevarez said. “We have such a good thing going. There’s a way to pound our chest about that, to elevate ourselves nationally.”

Other topics Nevarez will face down the line include the conference office’s lease in Colorado Springs, which comes up in 2025, and the television deal, which runs through 2025-26. Most MWC schools earn around $4 million annually in television money. That’s behind the AAC but far ahead of the other G5 leagues. Boise State’s special TV revenue carve-out for its home games has been a point of contention in the past, with the school threatening legal action against the conference in 2020 over the possibility of that going away. Late kickoff times have also frustrated fans, and Nevarez has heard that already. Negotiations on the next media rights deal are less than two years away.

These conference issues, both current and future, come on top of larger changes to college sports. Lawsuits regarding player employment and the NCAA’s approach to Congress are other topics on the docket for 2023.

That’s the environment Nevarez has inherited and the vision she has moving forward. She spent the last few months of 2022 shadowing Thompson in various meetings. Now the second commissioner in the Mountain West’s history will shape its future. That starts with those trips to see everyone.

“The major issues are the major ones for everyone right now,” she said. “You learn so much by physically being on campuses. I’m excited because this is a really well-built thing. It’s not broken. I feel really lucky.”

(Top photo of Gloria Nevarez:  Sam Wasson / Getty Images)

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Chris Vannini

Chris Vannini covers national college football issues and the coaching carousel for The Athletic. A co-winner of the FWAA's Beat Writer of the Year Award in 2018, he previously was managing editor of CoachingSearch.com. Follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisVannini