Breaking BYU News

Sources close to Two Brothers Rant have confirmed that BYU will remain in the Mountain West Conference. While the details of the deal remain unknown, sources said that alterations to the television contract BYU has with the Mountain West will be made in order to accommodate a more lucrative TV deal for BYU.

Additionally, Utah State University will be invited to join fellow WAC members Nevada, Fresno State and Boise State as the 12th team in the Mountain West Conference. A 12-team conference will qualify the Mountain West to hold an annual conference championship for football.

Brigham Young University originally agreed to a deal that would move them to independent status for football and they would join the Western Athletic Conference for all other sports. League rumors claim they planned on bringing fellow MWC schools New Mexico and UNLV with them to the WAC, creating a much more powerful conference than the one Boise State left due to annual talk of poor strength of schedule.

When leaks of the deal reached offices of the Mountain West Conference, they immediately made a power play of their own, inviting at least three schools from the WAC (Nevada, Fresno, Utah State) to join the Mountain West.

Because they could not get a guarantee that the BYU deal with the WAC was done, Nevada and Fresno State decided to jump ship and join the MWC. This weakened the conference BYU was trying to create and halted their plans to move.

It is unclear whether the deal will be announced this year and go into effect for the 2011-2012 season or be pushed back another year, but sources have confirmed that this is the deal currently in place for BYU.

TBR will be a guest on The Woodshed Podcast Wednesday, August 25th to discuss these changes.