Nevarez keeps fighting the good fight for the Mountain West

LAS VEGAS — For Gloria Nevarez, these last couple of years have been stressful to say the least.

But the commissioner of the Mountain West Conference came out the other side in fairly good shape. And going forward, she has a lot to be optimistic about.

Yes, the league lost five members, including San Diego State and Colorado State which were charter members when the Mountain West was formed in 1998. Yes, there was the contentious legal battle with the Pacific 12 Conference over exit fees and other financial matters. And there’s the ongoing struggle with paying student-athletes (or is it athlete-students?) as it pertains to Name, Likeness and Image along with eligibility issues and the transfer portal, things that every conference in college athletics is dealing with.

But in the grand scheme of things, Nevarez and her league appear to be in fairly good shape going forward. It added North Dakota State and Northern Illinois as football-only members, brought UC Davis and Grand Canyon on board as non-football members along with Utah Tech for baseball and men’s soccer and gave Hawaii and UTEP full status. It also secured six-year media rights deals with traditional networks CBS and Fox Sports and CW while adding MW+, a direct consumer app.  

“It hasn’t been easy,” Nevarez said Wednesday following her state of the league speech during the Mountain West Football Media Days at the Palms Casino Resort. “But today marks the other side of it.

“Our board, our athletic directors were the key to keeping the league together.”

There’s still ongoing litigation between the Mountain West and the Pac-12 which prevented Nevarez from discussing the financial settlements and payments of exit fees to her league. She admits it can be distracting at times but her focus right now is on the current membership and the upcoming season. The league will remain at the Thomas & Mack Center for the next six years as the site of its men’s and women’s postseason basketball tournaments, Its media rights deals are locked in through 2031-32. And while it might be nice to have 12 football-playing schools instead of 10, Nevarez said it’s not critical to expand just for expansion’s sake.

“We’re always looking but we’re not going to add just for the sake of adding,” she said.

Her bigger concern in football is getting a fair shake from the College Football Playoff. Currently there’s 12 spots with five of them going to automatic qualifiers from the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and the highest ranked “Group of Six” conferences, which would include the Mountain West.

To that end, losing Boise State and San Diego State probably hurts from an overall strength perspective. We’ll see how North Dakota State fares at the FBS level. My guess is the Bison will be competitive. It has enjoyed a pretty strong home-field advantage over the years playing at the Fargodome. It may come down to whether UNLV and New Mexico can have enough success to warrant consideration. The Rebels face the Lobos in Albuquerque on Nov. 14.

“I’m very confident we’ll have a couple of teams contend,“ she said of her league’s making a run at a CFP spot. “But I have confidence that the process for selection will be fair and we’ll receive every consideration if we have a team that’s worthy.”

The CFP championship game will be in Las Vegas at Allegiant Stadium on Jan. 25.

What really has Nevarez excited are the capital improvements virtually every Mountain West school is making in athletic infrastructure. Whether it’s a new Aloha Stadium for Hawaii or a new indoor facility for Nevada football or an $85 million facelift for War Memorial Stadium in Wyoming, her conference’s membership is investing in athletics.

“It’s very important,” she said. “A healthy league is dependent on strong membership. And athletics is the front porch for every school.”

To that end, the connectivity between the conference, its schools’ fan bases and modern technology is critical, particularly as the Mountain West becomes more national and less regional. It now stretches across four time zones, from Central with Northern Illinois to Hawaii. So having access to watching a school for its fan base is essential.

MW+ is supposed to be the answer. It costs $10.99 a month or $79.99 for the entire season ($67.99 if you subscribe in July or August) and gives you full access to each conference team. Plus, part of the cost is rebated back to a school you designate. So if you’re, say, a San Jose State fan and you purchase MW+, 60 percent of the $79.99 goes back to the university.

As for the NIL challenge, the conference is part of a growing trend of schools getting sponsor patches on its uniforms for football, men’s and women’s basketball and baseball. UNLV was the first to do so, inking a deal with Acesso Biologics, a Las Vegas regenerative medicine company, for five years worth $11 million.

In addition to the Rebels, Air Force, North Dakota State and Wyoming have uniform sponsor patch deals in place. Look for that number to grow in the months ahead. It’s an important revenue stream as schools try to find creative ways to fund their NIL collectives.

Let’s always remember that college athletics in 2026 is big business so you better have enough revenue coming in to sustain yourself in order to compete. That’s especially true for the non-Power Four leagues like the Mountain West.

So give Nevarez and her staff credit for seeking out and finding ways to not only stay together as a conference but stay financially solvent. Yes, at some point they’ll settle up with the Pac-12. Perhaps the Mountain West won’t get everything it felt it was entitled to. But it should get enough to have made the fight worthwhile.

And maybe at that point its commissioner can stay out of court and enjoy her time on the court.