There's a team out there currently playing a lower-level of football that is poised to make a jump up to FBS. That team checks virtually all the boxes for the PAC and is likely going to be the next team invited. And it's going to surprise almost everyone.

The team: Mesa State University (I guess it's now called Colorado Mesa University) in Grand Junction, Colorado.

You may be asking: "BYUMizzou, have you been licking wallpaper?" I assure you that I have not. Mesa state has gradually been building itself into a powerhouse university on the western slope of of Colorado. Much like UVU, it started off as a community college, then a 4 year state-system college, then to a full fledged university. It currently has a larger enrollment than Boston College, Northwestern, Notre Dame, SMU, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Duke, and TCU. It clearly has the enrollment and resources to compete at a much higher level than they currently do (NCAA DII).

Mesa State began an ambitious program this spring to transform their football and overall athletic program into something that would be competitive on the D-1, FBS level. They essentially did what Kevin Young did with the BYU basketball program and hired a GM type person to run the business side of things and to start running their football program specifically with an NFL-light type of organization.

They did this with the idea that there is a big geographic void in the western FBS conferences (PAC, WAC, MWC, and B12) in the western Colorado and Utah regions. They started pulling players in from Utah high schools to give the football program more of a bi-state feel. They signed 11 players from Utah this past year, including from Timpview, Skyridge, Hunter out of the Granite School District, Hillcrest, and others, along with picking up some Snow College transfers.

The board of regents knew that there would be major reshuffling in the FBS football conferences within two years with the PAC's short 2 year exemption from having to have 8 teams. Originally, the idea was to position itself to land in the MWC as backfill when the PAC inevitably poaches some of the top schools from that conference (as we saw happen today). The new athletic GM is now pushing for even more ambitious goals. With word that USU and UNLV are not high-priority targets for the PAC to get to 8 schools, Mesa State is quietly working on convincing the PAC that it provides the best alternative for expansion. With it's new bi-state flavor, they would bring both the Colorado and Utah television markets. They're willing to do an SMU-lite type of deal where they take a 50% revenue share for 5 years, so they give everyone else a larger revenue share initially. And they fit well in the State-U model that the PAC is reforming itself into.

You may ask who the genius is behind this unconventional plan. Here's your answer: LINK