...the one thing I don't think he's done well is bowl alliances. Most of our bowl games are not attractive at all. (Not that it's affected CSU at all...lol.) Also, there were valid reasons to move away from ESPN, but I do think that is one you can look back on and think hurt us from an exposure standpoint. The other one is, I would have liked to see him close the deal with bringing Gonzaga aboard for basketball. I would have gone all out to get them. Give them concessions to entice them to make the move...that would have completely bolstered us as a bb conference.

But no commissioner was going to be able to keep Utah and TCU from leaving for a P5 conference when their opportunity came. I guess I would have fought harder and made concessions to keep BYU...but they had their mind made up to go independent after Utah/TCU left. Once those three left, it changed the conference for the worse. We had to make defensive moves to stay afloat by adding Utah State, San Jose State, Hawaii, Fresno State, Nevada. Not sure what our better options were at the time.

The conference under Thompson has been a pioneer in college athletics in many ways:
--Expanded on the WAC tradition going of playing more prominently on Thursday nights (now everyone does it)
--Was the first conference to try instant replay
--Was the first conference to have its own TV network (which was awesome. Not sure why fans hated it...but it was such a great asset for fans...and was a real shame when it went under due to lack of distribution and ultimately the departure of our top three schools)
--Moved basketball championships to Vegas...which has since been emulated now by the Pac 12, West Coast Conference, Big West, and WAC conferences permanently.