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The Mountain West Conference (MW) is one of the collegiate athletic conferences affiliated with the NCAA Division I FBS (formerly I-A). The MW officially began operations in July 1999. Geographically, the MW covers a broad expanse of the Western United States, with member schools located in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Craig Thompson has served as Commissioner of the MW since its founding in 1999. The charter members of the MW included the U.S. Air Force Academy (Air Force), Brigham Young University (BYU), Colorado State University, San Diego State University, the University of New Mexico, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), the University of Utah, and the University of Wyoming. Before forming the Mountain West Conference, seven of its eight charter members had been longtime members of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). Half of these had been charter members of that conference from 1962. Overall, each school that has ever been either a full or football-only member of the MW spent at least three years in the WAC before joining the Mountain West. The 2013–14 academic year was the 15th anniversary season of the MW. ==History== The creation of the MW was a delayed aftereffect of the 1996 NCAA conference realignment, which had initially been triggered two years earlier when the Big Eight Conference agreed to merge with four members of the collapsing Southwest Conference (SWC) to create the Big 12 Conference, which would begin competition in the 1996–97 school year. The WAC, which had initially announced plans to expand beyond its then-current 10 members to at least 12, ended up with even more potential expansion prospects. Ultimately, the WAC took in three of the four SWC schools left out of the Big 12 merger—Rice University, Southern Methodist University (SMU), and Texas Christian University (TCU). Three other schools were added to bring the total membership to 16, namely Big West Conference members San Jose State University and UNLV, plus the University of Tulsa, an NCAA football independent and otherwise a member of the Missouri Valley Conference. However, the newly expanded WAC was soon wracked by tension between the established and new members. The final straw came in spring 1998, when BYU and Utah proposed a permanent split into two eight-team divisions. Previously, the WAC's 16 teams had been divided into four four-team "quadrants," two of which rotated between the Mountain and Pacific Divisions every two years. A two-division setup would have forced some schools into an unnatural alignment because of the geographic distribution of the conference.〔 Air Force was the most strident opponent of this proposal, threatening to become an independent.〔 Soon after the proposal by BYU and Utah, the presidents of Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, Utah, and Wyoming met at Denver International Airport to discuss their future, and they agreed to break away from the WAC to form a new conference.〔 They invited the WAC members New Mexico, San Diego State, and UNLV, to join them in what became the Mountain West Conference. The next move for the MW came in 2005, when the conference added TCU, who had spent the previous four seasons in Conference USA (C-USA). On June 11, 2010, Boise State University agreed to join the conference as its tenth member. On June 17, 2010, Utah announced it would be leaving the Mountain West to join what would become the Pacific-12 Conference. On August 18, 2010, amidst rumors that BYU was considering leaving the Mountain West to go independent in football and rejoin the Western Athletic Conference in all other sports, the Mountain West Conference officially extended invitations to California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) and the University of Nevada, Reno (Nevada). Both schools accepted and would become the tenth and eleventh members of the league. BYU announced on August 31, 2010 that it would leave the Mountain West Conference and go Independent in football and become a member of the West Coast Conference (WCC) in other sports starting in 2011. On November 29, 2010, TCU announced all athletic teams would move to the Big East Conference effective in 2012. (Less than a year later, on October 10, 2011, TCU announced it would not join the Big East but would join the Big 12, home to fellow former SWC members Baylor, Texas, Texas Tech, and formerly Texas A&M, in 2012 instead.) On December 10, 2010, the University of Hawaii at Mānoa accepted a bid to become the 10th member of the conference for football only. These changes would leave the Mountain West Conference with 10 teams for the 2012 football season. During the era of football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which was replaced by the College Football Playoff (CFP) in 2014, the MW champion qualified for a BCS bowl four times after the BCS formula was tweaked to allow teams from non-BCS conferences to play in BCS bowls if ranked in the top 12. However, two of the three schools that qualified are no longer with the conference. On October 14, 2011, the Mountain West and C-USA announced a plan for a football only alliance. On February 13, 2012, the two leagues announced that both conferences would be dissolving after the 2012–13 season to reform into one conference with at least 15 members for all sports, and a 16th team, University of Hawaii at Mānoa as a football-only member. However, when the two conferences discussed their plans with the NCAA, they were told that due to NCAA rules, they would forfeit substantial revenues. Specifically, the new conference would receive only one automatic bid to NCAA championships; at least one of the former conferences would lose future revenue distributions from the NCAA men's basketball tournament; and at least one former conference would not be able to collect exit fees from any members that departed to join the new conference. As a result, the Mountain West and C-USA backed away from a full merger. In late March of that year, the commissioners of both conferences stated that all 16 schools had entered into binding agreements to form a new "association", although the Mountain West and C-USA would have apparently remained separate legal entities.〔 In the end, this alliance never materialized due to both conferences soon adding new teams. On May 2, 2012, San Jose State and Utah State agreed to join the conference for the 2013–14 academic year. On December 31 of that year, Boise State announced that it had backed out of its previously announced move to the Big East for football and the Big West for other sports, and would remain in the MW. On January 16, 2013, San Diego State accepted an offer to remain/return to the Mountain West Conference in all sports. Keeping SDSU in the conference gives the Mountain West 12 football members, allowing for a Championship Game to be held. The first championship game took place on December 7, 2013.〔(Mountain West planning title game with 'addition' of SDSU )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mountain West Conference」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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