LAS VEGAS – Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez addressed media on Wednesday, welcoming three new school members and introducing a new trophy for the conference’s football champion.

This is a transformational year for Mountain West football, as it loses members Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State and adds North Dakota State, Northern Illinois and UTEP.

Among the topics covered Wednesday were ongoing litigation concerning exit fees and penalties for the five schools departing the conference (Nevarez could not comment) and the location of the conference basketball tournament (a six-year extension was recently signed with UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center).

Here’s more from Nevarez’s time at the podium at the Palms Casino Resort.

On moving the location of the office from Colorado Springs to Las Vegas …

We opened our headquarters, our new corporate headquarters are here in Las Vegas, and over in Town Square. 
Right now, it’s just a lot of boxes, still working on hooking everything up, but very excited to get that rolling. In that new office will be a state-of-the-art replay center with the latest and greatest technology from DV Sport, and we are also relocating our Mountain West Studio, where Jesse Kurtz and teams do all of our shoulder content interviews and programs. So that will be opening soon, ready for Week Zero, Aug. 26.

On teams adding uniform sponsorship patches …

Currently, 26 jersey patch deals have been sold around the country, and Mountain West leads that effort. Four of our schools – Air Force, North Dakota State, UNLV, and Wyoming – have announced jersey patch deals. UNLV was the first in the country to announce, and we know pretty soon we’ll have a fifth school in the league announcing something shortly.

On league financial distributions …

We were proud to have record-setting revenue distribution in 2025-26. We distributed a record high of $118 million to our member schools – $7.7 million of that was from NCAA men’s basketball, and $35 million of that from postseason football and CFP.

On bowl agreements for the 2026 season …

We will have four spots in the ESPN family of bowls, including a guaranteed spot in the Hawaii Bowl. We also continue to have a spot in the Arizona Bowl, and we continue to have a backup spot in the Cactus Bowl, which we’ve appeared in two of the last three years. 
The No. 1 selection from the Mountain West will appear in an ESPN event bowl, and we will work with ESPN annually to determine the matchup and the location. … We’re still working on 2027 because that, in large part, depends on whether or not the CFP expands.

On late-night kickoffs as part of the league’s attraction to television networks …

It is part of the value of western region inventory, and that’s not limited to the Mountain West. That is a factor. We do build in protections to ensure that no one school takes the burden of that, no one sport has too many, because we do prioritize getting student-athletes back in class. But time zone is one of the things that makes us valuable to media workers.

On future expansion …

Right now we have 10 football teams, which is a great number. You need eight to be FBS. We felt 10 was important to providing balance and a good schedule cadence. We’ve been open to 12; that’s where we’ve been in the past. However, we don’t want to add just to add. So I would say we’re not actively looking right now, but we’re always open to thinking about if there’s another school that can fit, that makes sense for us.