Some general Fresno State Football news. Some of the info on specific players at practice comes from IbarHarry, a regular practice attender and poster on the Bark Board.

New Commits: Since signing day, the Bulldogs have added 2 more commits. Long Snapper (And brain tumor survivor) Harrison Linsky, and JC Tackle Cody Clay have both committed. Clay is immediately eligible to play in the fall, as he was an automatic qualifier out of high school

Drew Hill leaves: Director of Football operations Drew Hill has left for Fresno State 2.0 Colorado State. I am not sure if a replacement has been named.

#5 Victor Dean via media.scout.com

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As you all know by now, or should at least have some inkling of, Fresno State's coaching staff has gone through a huge amount of turnover. The only remaining coach from Pat Hill's staff is the RB coach Joe Wade. The Fresno Bee is doing an ongoing series of interviews with the new coaches. I've collected all of the interviews so far here for your convenience.

Offensive Coordinator Dave Schramm

Defensive Coordinator Nick Toth

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Day 5 of the NFL Combine was today. The Mountain West has nineteen players there. I've listed them here along with a tidbit or two about certain players and a link to their NFL.com analysis. Not every player has worked out, and not every player did every drill, so these profiles might not all be complete. Still, it should be interesting to see where these guys go on draft day.

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The merger as it exists today is 8 CUSA - 8 MWC (7 football):

We have to assume Big XII will add Louisville & BYU (or Cincy). When they do, AF will move to BEast. If the Mormons still refuse to play nice, Temple will replace Cincy in BEast.

I believe the Alliance wants 20 teams - 4 divisions of 5, 2 'conferences' of 10. 9 games against your half so everyone plays everyone. Semifinals = East #1 plays West #2 & East #2 plays West #1. Winners meet in your Alliance Championship Game.

So we need to add 5 full members with football & a non-football school to balance out Hawaii. I believe the Alliance should go after big markets to help tv contract $$$ (the only thing that can keep a conference this big together).

Philadelphia - Temple from MAC.Miami - FIU from SUN. San Antonio - UTSA from FCS/WAC. Salt Lake City - Utah State from WAC. Bay Area - SJSU from WAC. San Diego - SDSU (no-football) from Big West/MWC.

Move SoMiss over to Central & UTEP to Mountain to keep it more regional.

The Alliance doesn't have to take the best football programs based on RPI's now that there's no automatic BCS bid at stake. Outside of middle-of-nowhere West Virginia, Mississippi & Wyoming - all these schools are in metro areas.

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From where we are now, the middle of February, to June 30th, what do fans of the MW have to look forward to? What little is leaking out right now is cryptic at best. At present, if I had to guess, I would look for an expansion of the alliance from 8/8, as it stands now, to a 10/10 or, less likely, to a 12/12 model, which I would argue is nationally more plausible.

From trying to read between the lines, Bob Stull is getting ready for a switch to the MW. That would mean 9/7 MW/C-USA split. If Temple joins C-USA, the numbers would go to 9/8 but this still does not address the Hawaii partial membership issue. Does a watered down MW/C-USA (at 9/8) have enough inventory to fill media scheduling demand, required for a bigger payout? The addition of UTEP to the MW renews rivalries and cuts down on some travel expenses, while Temple would bring in a part of the large, new market of Philadelphia. Is that enough to spark the interest of a big-time network?

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With the Big East sucking up MWC teams to stay relevant & schools abandoning tradition for $$$, I started thinking what could have been. Only NM, Co St, Wyoming & UNLV will be left from the original '99 MWC.

I was wondering if there's room for a BCS conference between the PAC & the Big XII but 2 things ruined the WAC/MWC. Karl Benson adding 6 teams in '96 after 2 yrs on the job & Craig Thompson not getting on ESPN. MWC was a good idea after Benson threw away tradition for San Jose St & small private school in Texas. But I don't understand why they left UTEP, Fresno St & Hawaii out. The MWC 8 + those 3 schools & TCU could have been playing a championship game since '96 when TCU & UNLV were added. Obviously TCU & Utah were offered bids into PAC & Big XII so they would have left regardless of how strong this hypothetical WAC was but Boise St & Nevada could step in as replacements in 2011..

I counted the years the traditional rivals were in the same WAC/MWC conference through 2014 when Air Force leaves to join Navy in BEast.

So could this 12-team conference from 96-'10 w/ Utah & TCU earned an automatic BCS bid? Could it keep it w/ replacements Boise St & Nevada from 2011 on?

[Bumped to the front page.]

Some of us are old enough to remember the presidential election of 1992. Instead of only having the usual milk toast, two party candidates, the US voter was treated to a third party candidate, who actually got enough votes to put a scare into the establishment: Ross Perot. One of Ross Perot's most famous quips was about jobs leaving the US for Mexico, as NAFTA was being discussed... he called it the "giant sucking sound" of jobs being outsourced south of the border.

Fast forward to the present day to Jeremy Mauss' article in the Mountain West Connection, in regard to the expected announcement of Navy's imminent inclusion in the Big East as a football only member. For the Big East, this is a solid addition, one that keeps it's non-football members happy and one that pulls a military, academic institution into it's ranks.

What the members of the MW are beginning to hear is becoming all too familiar: Ross Perot's giant sucking sound. It is the sound of yet another team, as Jeremy Mauss astutely pointed out, being sucked out of the MW, further depleting its membership and lowering it's quality of left-over teams. Air Force, which had previously spurned the advances of the Big East, now has a familiar dancing partner set to join in 2015. With the departure of WVU to the Big XII, the Big East is at only 11 "permanent" football members and the Air Force Academy would be a great match with Navy. The inclusion of AF into the Big East would also give the western teams another travel partner, closer than going all the way to Storrs or New Brunswick. Additionally, if the Big East sticks with an 8 game conference schedule, then AD Hans Mueh could potentially schedule CSU and Wyoming out of conference.

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Not much has come out of the talks that began yesterday in Dallas, but an article that did come out yesterday, on CBSsports.com, reports that one option being explored by "the Hair" and BB would be to dissolve the two conferences, the MW and C-USA, and create a new league. The problem with such a proposal is that by remaining separate each conference would stand to receive its $13.6 million FBS payout. Instead of 2 conferences, each with a payout, there would only be one, and therefore, only one payout. That leaves a great deal of money on the table leading to speculation that an outright merger is unlikely.

Commissioner Thompson, who is "...not overly optimistic" about the MW receiving an AQ bid for the next two seasons, is looking into all options for the so-called "Big Country", as the conglomeration is being dubbed, because no league name has leaked out as of yet. The C-USA recently signed a $43 million deal with Fox, which presently has TV rights through 2015. This claim has been disputed by ESPN, believing it had an option on rights. Getting "Big Country", with a MW division, on Fox or ESPN would be a welcome change for fans and recruiters in the MW. Such a dissolution would allow the "Big Country" to negotiate a new TV deal, which would most likely kill the Mtn. network.

There are obvious issues still looming: what to do with Hawaii's partial membership? Can BB and CT negotiate a sliding contract, that would expand, should the alliance look to go up from 17 to 18, 20,22 or 24 teams? What would the payout for member teams be? Is there a big enough market even with an enhanced league (24 teams, 2 divisions) to warrant a big enough contract for an expanded league? How would such a league differ from the new Big East, which has the superior teams from the MW and C-USA? How would a smaller 17 - 18 member league even be able to compete with a similar scheduling alliance between the Pac 12 and B1G, which will have 24 teams? How would the larger version compare? Would the new TV rights make up the difference in potential FBS payout loss? Does the alliance have to go up to 24 teams to remain stable, should the MW or C-USA get raided again (AF might still be going to an expanded BE now that Navy has elected to give up its independent status)? Does the MW have to pre-empt such a move by AF, or others, to even make it to the alliance, because the MW has only 7 full members moving forward? Are there many teams, which would provide viable options for expansion, from an athletic and academic standpoint and which add marketable areas for the alliance? There seems to be a significant amount of dissatisfaction with the MW as it presently stands and something will have to change.

Is the Mountain West's Network, "the Mtn.", a boon or a bane for the Mountain West conference and its quest for visibility and acceptance? Since the MW parted ways with its ESPN viewership and ushered in the first conference network, on September 1st, 2006, there has been disagreement about the Mtn.'s ability to offer the MW the kind of platform it needs to showcase it's teams, not only nation wide, but even in it's own regions. This inability has exacerbated the difficulty some member institutions have had in reaching larger audiences, both in recruiting and in advertising, and has arguably led to the defections of some of the more prominent institutions for larger, better paying and more visible conferences, or even for no affiliation at all.

The contract offered to the member institutions of the Mountain West is between $1.4 - $1.9 million annually. While better than the contract offered to the WAC conference by ESPN, which offers its member institutions a little under $500,000 annually, this pales in comparison to the contracts offered the so-called AQ conferences. So what can the MW do about the woeful state of affairs in relation to its TV contract? Quite a bit: the contract with Comcast is upon the calendar year 2012. There is an outdated article from the Honolulu Star Advertiser, which is one of the few to discuss the issues involved with the MW contracts, that outlines some of the issues involved. More importantly, what can all of the MW fans do about the predicament the fearless leaders of the MW failed to see coming?

For those of you, who haven't seen this site on the the Mtn's website, here is what you can do to get the Mtn. better distribution, in more areas. This could then lead to more advertising revenue and provider fees, and hopefully, more overall funding for the member institutions:

Fans, like you, we would like extended distribution of our network. To do this, we encourage your support by making your voice heard and letting distributors know that you would like to see The Mtn.

Distribution decisions are made by viewer demand so every call, email and letter will help.

~ Thank you.

Contact your cable or satellite provider and tell them "You Want The Mtn."

Cable / Satellite Provider	Phone Number	Website
AT&T Uverse	Ph: 800.288.2020	www.att.com
Charter Communications	Ph: 888.438.2427	www.charter.com Live Chat (current customers)
Comcast	Ph: 800.266.2278	Email Live Chat
Dish Network	Ph: 888.581.9813 or 888.686.2388	Feedback Live Chat (current customers)
Time Warner - San Diego	Ph: 888.892.2253	Email
Time Warner - North Texas	Ph: 972.742.5892	Email Live Chat
Verizon FIOS	Ph: 888.881.8161	Email Live Chat

As it stands, subscribers to Direct TV and Comcast can get the Mtn., but Dish and certain areas with Time Warner cannot (see above for more details). That means the Dallas/Fort Worth and San Diego areas could not watch their MW teams, unless they had specific network subscriptions. This is cited as the primary reason, by the presidents of BYU and Utah, for wanting to leave the MW. It is no doubt a leading reason for SDSU and TCU wanting out of the MW: more money, more availability to the local residents and more exposure.

If you subscribe to any of these providers, please contact them early and often to vigorously campaign for the Mtn.'s inclusion into their respective programming additions. They will only do so, if a significant amount of requests are made, and no one knows how many it takes to reach the critical mass, which would warrant inclusion. Get active and get the Mtn. included, so that the remaining MW institutions get the increased funding and visibility they deserve!

note: with 1:30 remaining in the third quarter and west virginia with the rock and leading clemson 63 to 26, i'm going to go out on a limb and publish these results. if the tigers come back to win, i'll repost the results after i get over the shock of the biggest bowl game comeback ever.

well, i pretty much owned the bowl season pick'em second round. the only game i missed was the rose bowl and had wisconsin's quarterback not thrown a late fourth quarter interception, who knows how that game could have turned out?

anyway, i ended up seven and one. chiefsfan and pack_fan tied for second at five and three each. roflcopter16 overcame a slow start and, despite computer problems and not getting his picks in before the start of the houston/penn st game, recorded a three and four record.

since there were only four contestants for the second round, i'm going to arbitrarily change the game. this next round will be a head to head matchup. i will be the number one seed by virtue of having the best second round record. chiefsfan will be number two since he had the closer tiebreaker guess. pack_fan is number three and roflcopter16 is number four.

it will play out this way...

one versus four and two versus three. head to head. mano a mano. picking these three games:

at&t cotton bowl -- kansas state vs arkansas (pick the final score of this game as the tiebreaker)

bbva compass bowl -- smu vs pittsburgh

godaddy.com bowl -- arkansas st vs northern illinois

the top two will advance to the one game championship picking a winner and guessing the final score of:

the allstate bcs national championship game -- #1 lsu vs #2 alabama.

make all four picks and tiebreaker scores and record them as a comment to this fanpost prior to the start of the cotton bowl on january 6th.

i'll post a short commentary after the godaddy.com bowl and then announce the winner after the lsu-alabama matchup.

whoever ends up on top will receive a genuine paper certificate, suitable for framing, identifying him as the winner of the mountain west connection's 2011-12 national collegiate athletic association football pick'em constest for all his friends and family to drool over and envy. it will be printed with proper capitalization, punctuation and everything and mailed first class to the winner.

thanks for playing and good luck!