Turnover high among Mountain West ADs during crucial period

Mark Coyle was barely out the door to Syracuse when Boise State found his replacement, naming Curt Apsey on Tuesday as its athletic director.

The hire was an easy one for the Broncos. Apsey spent 16 years at Boise State before leaving for Carroll College last year.

What isn’t so easy for the Mountain West is the continued shake-up throughout the league. Apsey is the sixth new athletic director since late November.

An astounding half of the conference’s football-playing schools are under new leadership at a time of tremendous challenge for the flagship football league among the so-called Group of Five.

UNLV’s Tina Kunzer-Murphy, at the helm since July 2013, is one of the senior ADs in the conference. She got to better know some of her counterparts during the spring meeting of the Mountain West’s athletic directors in Phoenix.

They might work for different universities, but they all have the same mission of trying to keep up with the power-five conferences from a financial standpoint, particularly when it comes to providing full cost of attendance as part of the scholarship.

“That was one of the biggest items we talked about, and the changing landscape of college athletics and student well-being and making sure you’re taking care of your student-athletes,” Kunzer-Murphy said. “The job of intercollegiate athletics is changing every day, and the financial implications are very, very strong, and everybody’s trying to figure out how to do it.”

All the Mountain West athletic directors realize the stakes, and some are taking action.

Kunzer-Murphy is working with first-year coach Tony Sanchez to build a football facility, and they hope to make an announcement in the coming months.

On Friday, Fresno State AD Jim Bartko announced the school was moving forward to renovate its football stadium as part of a general upgrade to its overall athletic department.

Colorado State will have a groundbreaking ceremony in September for a new football stadium that will open in time for the 2017 season.

Utah State, which on Tuesday announced it would receive naming rights revenues of $6.3 million over 22 years, will upgrade its football stadium at a cost of $36 million.

Fresno State, Colorado State and Utah State operate under new athletic directors. So the new ADs throughout the conference are showing they aren’t satisfied sitting around. They’re out to make things happen.

“There are a lot of things going on right now in college athletics that our presidents are dealing with, that institutions are dealing with,” Kunzer-Murphy said. “It’s important, I think, that we all work together as one.”

■ BIG 12 EXPANSION? — Just when it looked as if realignment was over for a while, the topic re-emerged Wednesday when Oklahoma president David Boren said he would like to see the Big 12 Conference add two members and actually get to 12.

That was bad news for the Mountain West because Boise State would make for a quality expansion candidate. But will the Big 12 expand and, if so, would the conference add the Broncos?

It doesn’t appear the Big 12 will expand any time soon, if at all, because no one rushed to join Boren in advocating for it. What happens behind the scenes, though, is anyone’s guess, and Boren has the respect among his peers to at least bring up expansion for discussion.

Another conference could expand as well, creating a domino effect throughout the nation. Remember how swiftly realignment occurred five years ago, radically changing the national landscape? So the Big 12 could decide to be proactive and protect itself by increasing its membership numbers in case the conference gets raided.

Would Boise State be involved? If the answer is for pure competitive reasons, the Broncos would have to be considered. But they don’t play in a big city, and so much of realignment is about TV market size. It’s why the Big Ten Conference added Maryland (Baltimore/Washington) and Rutgers (New York).

Change eventually will come to college sports, and it will be more than just a couple of schools switching conferences. When that day comes, all bets are off on which teams end up where.

■ FORCED OUT — Defensive lineman Ondre Pipkins would prefer to play his senior season at Michigan but will transfer because he wasn’t welcomed back.

He told ESPN that first-year coach Jim Harbaugh, associate athletic director Jim Minick and head athletic trainer Paul Schmidt repeatedly pressured him to sign a medical scholarship form.

Pipkins played last season after returning from a torn anterior cruciate ligament sustained in October 2013. He told ESPN he was healthy enough to play.

“College football is a business,” Pipkins said. “New coaches have to win games. They want to go with guys they think can win. If I’m a victim of making room, so be it. But if there is no concrete reason to disqualify a player, he should have the right to keep playing.”

Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow him on Twitter: @markanderson65. He is first vice president of the Football Writers Association of America.