"COME FIND JOY" is an interesting slogan.

I thought so, since I read the brief as well.

One of you has to provide a link.

And here's the NCAA Division I Massey Ratings for the new Mountain West Football Conference:

47 UNLV
91 San Jose State
96 Northern Illinois
102 Air Force
105 UC Davis
113 Wyoming
116 New Mexico
117 Hawaii
121 Nevada
155 UTEP

As a comparison, here's the Big Sky Conference:

42 Montana State
105 UC Davis
110 Idaho
118 Montana
140 Northern Arizona
165 Eastern Washington
179 Sacramento State
181 Portland State
183 Weber State
186 Idaho State
215 Cal Poly
229 Northern Colorado

Here are the Massey Ratings comparisons of the Women's Basketball teams between the two conferences:

Big West:
129 UC Irvine
131 UC Davis
160 Hawaii
169 Long Beach State
181 UC Santa Barbara
207 Cal Poly
226 UC Riverside
266 UC San Diego
320 CS Fullerton
322 CS Northridge
352 CS Bakersifeld

New Mountain West:
55 UNLV
74 Grand Canyon
100 Wyoming
131 UC Davis
145 New Mexico
155 Air Force
160 Hawaii
166 UTEP
219 Nevada
263 San Jose State

I wasn't aware there was a men's game until DrMike's post. This is such an aggressive game full of fouls!

47-17 at the half. It's a blowout.

22-4 Ags at the end of the first quarter. I feel sorry for Bakersfield since they haven't won a game yet.

I moved my post to the Sacramento State thread:

I've been following TBM_JY on Twitter. He said the following three tweets about Sacramento State:

https://twitter.com/TBM_JY/status/1873793803418755204

It’s not a questions of “if”
@sacstate
goes to FBS, it is a question of “when” & “where”.
I do not believe the
@MountainWest
or
@pac12
are viable options right now, HOWEVER could another G6 conference be interested?

Adding time zones is important!

https://www.twitter.com/TBM_JY/status/1873798084133785800

I agree.
It’s either CUSA or SB if they are to get an offer.
“Waiting” is not a good strategy in conference realignment. Kill or be killed.

https://twitter.com/TBM_JY/status/1873802764561899542

With MWC adding UC Davis, there is Almost no chance they add Sac St right now.
PAC has gone on record that they are not interested. I don’t believe everything they say to the press, but I do believe this

This post moved to Sacramento State thread.

By the way, all Mountain Conference teams are in EA Sports College Football 25 video game. That video game is unexpectedly so popular that two software developers are rumored to internally discuss starting a college basketball edition.

What are your thoughts about seeing the Aggies potentially being in future video games?

I happen to watch ABC News 7 right now, and Teddye Buchanan was just interviewed. He said there are 2000 guys in the transfer portal.

Michael Vick reporting dispute between ESPN's Schefter, Sacramento Bee reporter

https://www.sfgate.com/collegesports/article/espn-sacramento-state-dispute-michael-vick-19984939.php

They go in- depth in that article. I'll just highlight one part that is interesting to me:

"The ESPN reporter wrote that the school “has over $50 million in NIL.” If that seems like an astounding total, it’s because it is. The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel noted that this would amount to 2.5 times the size of Ohio State’s roster. Not only that, but the number is a bit of a miscalculation. Davidson pointed out that the total is supposed to be money pledged over the span of a decade from a booster group that is dependent on Sacramento State’s entering the Pac-12 — a head-spinning endeavor on its own."

I don't get free Sacramento Bee articles, and this is the most I can copy:

"National reports that former NFL Pro Bowl quarterback Mike Vick was closing in on becoming the next football coach at Sacramento State are premature at best, the Hornets confirmed Monday afternoon.

Two Sacramento State officials told The Sacramento Bee that Vick being selected to head the Hornets’ football program are not true as the school seeks to find a replacement for Andy Thompson, who left the Hornets after two seasons as head coach to rejoin Troy Taylor, this time as assistant head coach at Stanford.

Taylor hired Thompson before the 2019 season at Sacramento State as defensive coordinator, and the two enjoyed winning three Big Sky Conference championships. Sacramento State won three games this season amid a crush of injuries and tight, close losses, a year after making the FCS playoffs for the fourth consecutive season."

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/sports/article297196234.html#storylink=cpy

I probably wouldn't say the Big West Conference for Women's Basketball is rising.

Here's the Massey rankings before today's games:

139 UC Irvine
144 Hawaii
155 UC Davis
167 Long Beach State
214 UC Santa Barbara
224 UC Riverside
227 Cal Poly
273 UC San Diego
325 Cal State Fullerton
337 Cal State Northridge
346 Cal State Bakersfield

The conference is ranked #25.

Was there a reason why TY Johnson was benched for the final minutes of the game?

I'm guessing Grand Canyon has great attendance due to the rise of the mega-universities. Grand Canyon has over 100,000 enrolled online and in-person.

Here's an article which mentions Jim Les' perspective.

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/hi/hawaii/sports/2024/12/10/hawaii-uc-davis-leaves-big-west-for-mountain-west-in-2026-?cid=app_share

I personally prefer to use median values to avoid skewed numbers.
The median ranking for the new Mountain West Conference is 122.
The current Big West's median ranking is 160.

On the other hand, I guess you would need to have outliers on the positive side, like UC Irvine, so that you'll decrease the chance of being a one-bid conference.