LEAGUE STILL OPEN TO EXPANSION

Honolulu. We have an agreement with the Arizona Bowl in place. For our other two bowls, we’re allowed to sign up to six bowl partnerships. The big one is here in Las Vegas. The people involved — the Raiders, the stadium, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, ESPN — are still looking at all their various options.”

Under the current agreement, the Mountain West sends its league champion to the Las Vegas Bowl to take on an opponent from the Pac-12 Conference. If the Las Vegas Bowl decides to move on from the MWC, the league will have to figure out another destination for its top team each year.

One possibility could be a second bowl game in Las Vegas, something that Thompson said was a possibility but far from a sure thing at this point.

“Probably cart ahead of the horse a little bit on a second bowl. The short answer is, obviously we’d love to stay in Las Vegas and if that means a second bowl, that is something we would strongly consider,” he said.

“We know we bring thousands of fans to town, we have a passionate base across our 12 institutions that love to come to Las Vegas. We are marketable and we’re a known commodity. We’ll continue to talk with those people, but at the end of the day it’ll be determined by whoever is running the stadium, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and others, including ESPN, presumably, as to who they want to play in that game,” Thompson said.

Regarding expansion, Thompson was open about the Mountain West’s “hot and heavy” but unsuccessful courtship of Gonzaga over the winter. The Mountain West currently has 11 basketball members and 12 football members (including football-only Hawaii as an associate member), so balancing the leagues by adding basketball-only Gonzaga — one of the top programs in the nation — would have been considered a coup.

Though Gonzaga ultimately decided to remain part of the West Coast Conference for now, Thompson said the door for expansion conversations was open.

“The pursuit of Gonzaga probably got a little more public than I would have cared to have it taken,” Thompson said.

“We have 11 basketball schools; there is an opening for basketball. We have 12 football-playing members, so a 13th football-playing member, while workable, is probably not the most desirable.”

Though the league failed to add Gonzaga, Thompson said he still believed the basketball outlook for the Mountain West was “on the upswing.”

“I like where the league is now,” he said.