Merger’s about TV deal, not football

I'm usually not a big change-for-the-sake-of-change guy. It's a concept that often lacks improvement and imagination. You don't learn anything from it.

But if it leads to a better television contract for those Mountain West Conference teams about to merge with others from Conference USA, and if it means we will again be treated to the witty, oh-so-magnetic personality of Mike Hamrick, well, change is both good and necessary.

They are calling it an association, perhaps because neither side wants to be known as the one absorbed into another. Fine. Semantics. It's a way to appease all egos of university presidents in a room (never an easy task) and dress up the news release.

Bottom line: It's a merger with the chance to add more members.

They are coming together because these are unsteady and desperate times in college athletics, and the only thing worse than being part of a non-Bowl Championship Series league is being part of one and sitting on your hands.

To give the new union a chance -- it could have between 18 and 24 teams and will begin play in 2013-14 -- you need to look past the one sport from which all this conference expansion lunacy has been driven since the beginning.

On its face today, this would be an average football league on its best Saturday, with the chance of being downright awful some weekends. The sport is dreadful on more than one college campus included in this merger, from Las Vegas to New Orleans to Birmingham to Albuquerque.

Numbers: The 16 programs already proposed to join the yet-unnamed conference were a combined 87-118 in football last season. Since 2003, only four times has one of those 16 made the top 25 of a season's final BCS standings, with Hawaii the best at 10th in 2007. In six of those seasons, none were among the final 25 ranked.

In terms of college football nationally, these 16 exist firmly in the nosebleed section of relevance.

But if the best we can hope for in a new-look BCS is a plus-one format in 2014, it's not as if you expect the likes of Southern Mississippi or Tulsa or Hawaii to be much of an annual football power, anyway.

At this point, the hope for UNLV and others has to be more about gaining a better TV package.

It's this wish, along with the idea of Hamrick, the Rebels' former athletic director, consistently offering those authentic quotes and perhaps even joining me for a bite to eat and catch-up chat as Marshall's AD, that makes Monday's announcement so interesting.

No one will claim so publicly, but you can be sure the main reason for Mountain West teams wanting this merger is the idea of lighting The Mtn. network ablaze and starting over, preferably with the imposing and yet needed letters ESPN.

CBS reportedly loses around $2 million a year as primary owner of The Mtn., and even though the network has pockets deeper than the Dead Sea, you figure such successful folks won't take to the idea of forfeiting such amounts of cash forever. You also figure spending the time and money to pursue litigation against the conference for wanting out of its contract wouldn't be viewed as smart.

Why create bad press by picking on the little guy when you can just be done with him?

Whether this new league would seek a TV package with Fox, the primary broadcast partner for Conference USA, or some sort of combined package to also include ESPN and others, you won't find anyone outside the Mountain West offices upset its programs would finally get to recruit to something other than The Mtn.

In this instance, change for the sake of change is OK. No one knows how the finished product might look. Maybe a Temple or San Jose State or Utah State or all and more are added. Maybe the Boise States and San Diego States quickly discover those Big East riches aren't all that rich in football as other members jump from that wobbly vessel, and return to be part of this new venture.

It's still true that the number of TV sets a league offers doesn't matter if no one is watching and that even though a new conference such as this floats the idea of a playoff format to decide its annual football champion, it won't matter much in the BCS world if most of your teams involved are dead-flat average.

But just the hint of Mountain West schools getting better national exposure and better recruiting avenues by landing a better TV deal makes the merger-association-alliance-whatever attractive.

That, and in a small way, Mikey Hamrick is coming home.

Oh, the joy!

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday on "Monsters of the Midday," Fox Sports Radio 920 AM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.