ESPN

After the monumental 2010 season, safeties coach Chad Glasgow left to become the defensive coordinator at Texas Tech.

A few years back, former defensive coordinator David Bailiff, now the head coach at Rice, left coach Gary Patterson's TCU Horned Frog staff for a head coaching job.

And on Wednesday night, TCU co-offensive coordinator Justin Fuente became the latest to springboard from Frogs' success. Fuente, 35, has accepted the challenging job as head coach of the Memphis Tigers.

Success breeds opportunity and Patterson is pleased to see it.

"He's a good, young coach on a really good offensive staff," Patterson said late Wednesday night. "He will work very hard trying to get them on the road to where they want to be."

Memphis finished 2-10 and 1-7 in the East Division of C-USA.

At TCU, Fuente, hired by Patterson in 2007 as a running backs coach, became co-offensive coordinator in 2009 and moved over to coach quarterbacks. He spent gamedays in the booth while his partner, Jarrett Anderson, handled handled running backs and coached on the sideline.

The Frogs will likely have to adjust for the Poinsettia Bowl on Dec. 21 in San Diego. Patterson said he expects Fuente will want to get to Memphis quickly and get to work.

Fuente and Anderson produced the three best offensive seasons in terms of total yards and points in school history and clearly prepared Cincinnati Bengals rookie quarterback Andy Dalton well for the NFL. This season, sophomore and first-year starting quarterback Casey Pachall, challenged four of Dalton's single-season school records (completions, completion percentage, touchdowns and yards) and broke one (67.8 completion percentage).

Patterson said he foresees continuing his tradition of co-offensive coordinators for the 2012 season when TCU enters the Big 12.

Anderson, who is finishing his 14th season with the Frogs, could possibly slide over and coach quarterbacks. Wide receivers coach Rusty Burns, who came to TCU in 2009 after being an offensive coordinator at SMU, Cincinnati, Wyoming, Memphis and Connecticut, could certainly be a candidate to sit shotgun.

"We've got a great offensive staff," Patterson said, "and we'll pick up and move forward."

UPDATE: The Mountain West Conference issued this brief statement on its blog at 1:06 p.m., regarding the Thursday meeting between officials from the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA:

"Followed up on various media reports regarding a potential Mountain West Conference-Conference USA merger, and confirmed that representatives of both leagues did indeed meet yesterday in Colorado Springs. Included were Commissioner Craig Thompson, Commissioner Britton Banowsky (who have a long-standing personal and professional relationship), and a couple MWC Athletics Directors. The informal gathering, which was previously scheduled, covered a wide range of topics, including concepts regarding television, scheduling and the BCS. Yet another example of the Mountain West's ongoing strategic thinking on a number of fronts, as the league continues to position itself in the national landscape."

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So the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA have apparently put their two brains together and are talking a one-game showdown -- champion vs. champion -- with the winner being granted an automatic BCS berth.

First question: On the surface, it seems ludicrous, so why would the BCS agree to give an automatic bid to a non-automatic-qualifying conference team every year?

Answer: They won't (in my opinion, but let's continue...). Conference USA hasn't sniffed a BCS berth since long-departed Louisville in 2004 and Tulane a dozen years ago. Last season, unranked East Carolina knocked off No. 18 Houston in the C-USA championship game. East Carolina went to the Liberty Bowl and lost to unranked Arkansas, 20-17, and finished with a 9-5 record. Houston came to Fort Worth and got shellacked by unranked Air Force, 47-20, in the Armed Forces Bowl to finish 10-4. Since the 2006 season, no C-USA team has finished with fewer than three losses. In three of those four seasons, the league's best team had four losses. Can you imagine the national outrage had 9-4 East Carolina actually played its way into the BCS by upsetting TCU in a one-game bonanza?

That's reason enough to end this conversation right here, right now ... but, having said that, the one reason the BCS might bend and agree to such a scenario would be to avoid the embarrassment of last season when it had to deal with two BCS-busters and threw TCU and Boise State into the Fiesta Bowl to eat their own. A MWC vs. C-USA playoff would lump 23 teams (assuming today's count for the 2011 season of 11 teams in the MWC and 12 in C-USA -- things can change quickly, like, say Houston switching sides, but the numbers would stay the same) together and immediately lop off 22. No longer would the BCS have to worry about two teams messing things up.

Second question: This is a no-brainer for C-USA, which has never sent a team to a BCS game, but why would the superior MWC want any part of this?

Answer: Last year, TCU and Boise State both crashed the BCS, but two years ago, undefeated Boise State was left to play one-loss TCU in the Poinsettia Bowl. Would Boise have taken a one-game playoff against the C-USA champ for a shot to play on the big-money stage? Of course. What if TCU and Boise both go undefeated this season? One scenario: Boise gets the BCS bid and unbeaten TCU is invited to the Las Vegas Bowl. Gary Patterson has worked too hard to elevate TCU to a national platform to just give unproven C-USA a ticket to the BCS gates, but in the current system, Patterson might figure he has a better shot each year to win his conference and then win one more against the C-USA champ to ensure getting into the BCS rather than depend on BCS calculations to determine his team's fate.

Also, this would eliminate the undefeated-or-forget-it situation that now exists in the non-automatic-qualifer conferences, easing pressure on TCU and Boise State and the others to sweep their non-conference schedules, typically highlighted by two to three tough matchups against major-conference schools (TCU plays Oregon State and Baylor this season; Boise plays Virginia Tech and Oregon State). A loss in September wouldn't end all BCS hope as it does now.

The MWC and C-USA are also looking toward the future. Although the superconference model didn't come to fruition this summer, nobody is shortsighted enough to believe the Big 12 is stable and the Big Ten and SEC won't seek to expand. When and if superconferences emerge, schools in the MWC and C-USA won't hold their breath for an invite, and that includes TCU. Arranging this championship game would possibly ensure a spot in the BCS when the landscape again changes.

Third question: Would such a championship game generate more money for the two conferences?

Answer: How much is debatable. Surely, ESPN would pay for an elimination game, but it certainly wouldn't rank up there with, say, the attractiveness and popularity of the SEC championship game. And, revenue generated from a championship game would seemingly have to be split among the 23 teams, further watering down the profit margin.

Alternate solution: Merge. Let's say the Mountain West bids farewell to New Mexico, Wyoming and San Diego State (WAC, anyone?) and moves forward with eight -- TCU, BYU, Boise, Air Force, Colorado State, Fresno State, Nevada and UNLV -- and invites four from C-USA -- Houston, Memphis, Tulsa and maybe Southern Miss for a 12-team conference with a championship game. That's not bad football to take to ESPN and other networks to hammer out a more lucrative TV deal than either conference has now. It's also a stonger product than either can currently take to the BCS for eventual automatic inclusion.

If BYU follows Utah out of the Mountain Western Conference, leaving the league considerably weakened with eight teams spread out between San Diego, Laramie, Wyo., and, of course, Fort Worth.

BYU will reportedly become an independent in football and join the WAC in all other sports after this season. BYU left the WAC in 1998 as one of the founders of the MWC.

With Utah's departure to the Pac-10 and BYU's apparent independent streak, the MWC is now in full scramble mode, reduced to eight teams after this season. The MWC would figure to want to beef up to 10 teams as it strives to gain entrance into college football's pearly gates as a BCS automatic qualifier. The MWC, two years into a four-year BCS evaluation period, believed it had bolstered its chances when it added Boise State two months ago as its 10th team. Boise State has the option to return to the WAC without penalty -- a nightmare scenario for the MWC -- but because of the chance to gain automatic-qualifier status in two years, we'll assume, for now, that Boise sticks.

So which conferences will the MWC be forced to poach? The primary league on notice is Conference USA with the WAC also in the cross-hairs.

The two most successful programs in the WAC are Nevada and Fresno State. However, ESPN.com's Andy Katz reports that Nevada and Fresno State, approached by the MWC on Tuesday, have agreed to stay in the WAC.

Fragile C-USA offers more possibilities, and more regional ones from TCU's perspective, starting with Houston, Tulsa and Memphis. UTEP would figure to be down the line with SMU, even with its resurgent football program under June Jones, figuring in as a longshot.

Just two months removed from the uncertainty of the wild conference realignment ride, suddenly, it appears, the MWC finds itself on the clock.

UNIVERSITY PARK -- Forward Papa Dia had 23 points and 14 rebounds and guard Derek Williams scored a game-high 25 points, including clutch free throws down the stretch, as SMU scored its signature win in the Matt Doherty era, 70-60, over Memphis.

No, this is no longer John Calipari's Memphis Tigers. There is no Derrick Rose or Tyreke Evans. Still, Memphis came into Moody Arena at 15-5 and 5-1 in Conference USA. SMU improved to .500 at 10-10 and 3-3 in conference and extended its winning streak to four games, tying their best stretch under Doherty back in November and Decmeber of 2007.

For the first time in a long time, the Ponies are feeling pretty good about themselves.

How good? Consider the student section stormed the court and the players hugged and jumped around at center court. Really.

"I have been here three years and I think that is the biggest win since I've been here" Dia said. "I've never had this kind of feeling."

The Ponies trailed 30-25 at halftime with Williams admitting they were playing through some nerves. He then scored 19 of his 25 points in the second half, including 12-of-13 from the free throw line, to lead the charge.