Craig Thompson, the only leader of the Mountain West Conference in its 24-year history, will step down as commissioner at the end of the year, he announced on Wednesday.

Thompson, 66, didn’t explicitly call it a retirement, but a move to allow for new blood for the first time since the MWC officially launched in 1999.

What You Need To Know

  • Craig Thompson, the only commissioner the Mountain West Conference has known in its 24 years of existence, is stepping down on Dec. 31, 2022

  • Thompson, who serves on the College Football Playoff Management Committee, said helping oversee the expansion of the CFP to 12 teams from four was one of his final priorities

  • The University of Hawaii became a football-only member of the Mountain West in 2012

  • The MWC did not announce a timetable or process for announcing Thompson's successor

With the recent announcement that the College Football Playoff will expand from four teams to 12 as soon as 2024 — creating a realistic opportunity for the Mountain West to have a representative in future playoff fields — Thompson, a member of the CFP Management Committee, said the time was right for a move.

He called CFP expansion his “one remaining priority.”

“I take considerable pride in my committed engagement to this effort over the past two-and-a-half decades and look forward to the finalization of those details in the coming months,” Thompson said in a statement through the conference. “With CFP expansion accomplished and having invested almost a third of my life in the Mountain West, the time is now right for me to conclude my tenure and allow the Conference to continue its momentum under new leadership.”

The MWC experienced occasional turbulence of conference realignment, but Thompson largely kept the MWC membership intact over the years, losing only BYU to football independence, and TCU and Utah to power conferences.

The conference began as eight breakaway schools from the old Western Athletic Conference and grew gradually to its current 12, including Hawaii as a football-only member. Thompson, previously the commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference, oversaw the dramatic breakaway that began with an infamous clandestine meeting between presidents of five of the schools — Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, Utah and Wyoming — at the Denver International Airport.

When the WAC and then-commissioner Karl Benson threatened to pluck MWC teams back into the fold in 2010, Thompson and the MWC turned the tables and added WAC schools Fresno State and Nevada, and one year later San Jose State and Utah State, dealing an effective death blow to football in the WAC. Perennial power Boise State had already agreed to come over in 2011.

Hawaii had to agree to paying travel subsidies for other teams to come to the islands for conference games in the Mountain West, a policy that was mirrored in UH's membership in the Big West Conference in non-football sports.

The attainment of 12 members allowed the Mountain West to hold a football championship game starting in 2013.

More recently, Thompson in 2020 led the way for a $270 million TV rights deal with Fox Sports and CBS, increasing revenues for membership.

“Craig has provided important leadership to the MWC since its inception,” said UNLV President Keith Whitfield, Vice-Chair of the Conference Board of Directors, in a statement. “We are stronger because of his work as we go forward into a quickly changing landscape in the NCAA and the College Football Playoff discussions.”

The conference did not give an indication of its hiring process for Thompson’s successor.

Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.