Peak Perspective: Beef Jerky, Men’s Basketball, and the College Football Playoff

Today’s column is a collection of different things going on.Things have been hectic in the Mountain West and the college sports world during the past month. There is of course basketball news that is taking center stage this week with the NCAA Tournament occurring. Also, the Mountain West announced their new football championship sponsor. Plus, some thoughts on the College Football Playoff updates. Let’s dive in.

Mountain West Partners with Old Trapper

It wasn’t huge news at the time, but the Mountain West announcing a new partnership does represent a noticeable change in how they have operated in the past.

At the end of February, the Mountain West dropped the announcement that they are partnering with Old Trapper over the next few seasons to be the title sponsor for their football conference championship. Along with this, Old Trapper will become the official beef jerky of the Mountain West.

It is doubtful anyone was clamoring for the conference to establish an official beef jerky, but it’s still nice to see it established for a few reasons:

1) They didn’t have a title sponsor before (I think?), and appeared to be the only conference without one.

2) Extra money is good for the conference.

3) This can lead to a number of fun possibilities to incorporate into the championship game experience. The release says:

“As the championship game’s title sponsor, Old Trapper will be incorporated into the Mountain West Football Championship mark displayed through promotional, digital, and social content, along with in-stadium branding. Also included are additional pregame and in-game promotional tie-ins and prominent signage at MW Football Media Days.”

Does the winning coach get doused in beef jerky following a victory?

Will there be a beef jerky eating contest at halftime where fans can compete and win something?

Will players get to do some NIL deals promoting Old Trapper products and secure tons of free beef jerky (and money) in the process?

For a conference that needs to do everything possible to stand out on and off the field, a non-traditional title sponsor could create some effective gimmicks for the brand.

4) It continues to show how Gloria Nevarez is getting creative and publicizing the conference in a way her predecessor never seemed to spend too much time on, at least in the public eye. More on this in the next section.

Mountain Best in Men’s Basketball

The MW Conference kept the six-bid dream alive for pretty much all of the conference slate of the season and the dream came to fruition on Sunday with a new record of six Mountain West teams making the tournament. Although the lower seeding showed that power conference bias is still alive and well, the conference still tied for the third-most bids in all of college basketball. On the other hand, maybe the poor showing by at least three of the teams could justify the seedings to some degree. Back to the point, at least some credit should go to Nevarez and the Mountain West publicizing the conference’s success this season.

This Sports Illustrated article detailed much of this over the weekend. The MW created the marketing strategy with the hashtag #SixBidMW in mid-January, and as the season drew to a close, they increased their promotional content.

During the Mountain West tournament, people may have noticed that the video board beneath the scorer’s table featured messages throughout the whole weekend such as “Best in the West,” or featuring stats about the league’s 24–7 record against Pac-12 and WCC teams. In addition to this, media members were given info sheets that featured cases for all six items and wrote #SixBidMW across the top of them. Commissioner Nevarez said: “When we started campaigning for it, we thought it was a possibility... We wouldn’t have done that (campaigning) if we didn’t have the stats to back it up. It wasn’t aspirational, it was backed by performance.”

This is a drastic difference from the Craig Thompson era, who rarely, if ever, advocating for his teams in a public manner. While it seems like he was skilled at operating behind the scenes, drawing up public perception is important as well. Launching this campaign is a welcome sight, no matter how it ended up being.

College Football Playoff Agreements

There was a lot of build up the past few weeks, but when it came to decision time, only a few things were finalized. That’s not to say what was finalized, wasn’t significant, but it did feel like a bit of a letdown, in more ways than one.

As far as the decisions go, the big outcome was deciding on how the revenue from the playoffs will be distributed, starting in 2026. The top two conferences, the Big Ten and the SEC, began pulling their weight and proposed the accepted model that gave them the largest share of the revenue. Like most moves, this puts mid-major teams like those in the Mountain West at a huge disadvantage, as they will only receive 9% of the revenue, or $1.8 million per school. Sadly, that is a significant amount of money for most of these schools, but it pales in comparison to the super conferences, who stand to earn $21 million per school going forward. As usual, the rich get richer because they are making all the rules. It is sad the revenue get distributed this way as opposed to a model similar to the college basketball tournament.

Otherwise, the other aspect finalized was that the playoff will officially continue through 2031. As if there was any doubt that the powers that be would still want a playoff at the end of the season. And the money that comes with it.

On the other hand, there were a number of things tabled for another time. Among them was the number of teams that will be in the playoff in the years to come. For the next two seasons, it will function as a 12 team model. After that, things are unknown, but it won’t be less than 12 teams. The 14 team model has been the one leaked to the public most consistently, and like the payouts, it favors the SEC and Big Ten. They have proposed a breakdown where they get a guaranteed 3 teams each, followed by 2 teams from the ACC and Big 12, then 1 G5, and 3 at-large teams. Any guesses where the at-large teams will be coming from more often than not?

Unfortunately, at this time, the fear of the two super power conferences breaking off is so strong, that the general perception is the rest of the conferences have to agree in order to benefit at all. However, at some point, there should be a question of whether college football can support two must-see formats; one between the Big Ten and SEC and perhaps a more appealing one featuring everyone else.