The Mountain West Conference has vacated its longtime Colorado Springs offices, ending a more than 25-year run headquartered in the city and eliminating what had quietly become a proving ground for national sports broadcasting talent.
Among the whirlwind of changes sweeping the Mountain West in recent years was an agreement from the conference to relocate to Las Vegas after spending the entirety of its more than 25-year existence headquartered in Colorado Springs. The move impacts the conference's roughly two dozen positions.
On the recently vacated second floor of an office building near Interquest Parkway and Voyager Parkway, a pair of budding sports broadcast journalists once honed their craft. For three or more years apiece, both broadcasters lived and worked in Colorado Springs in a Mountain West role that will now be based in Las Vegas.
One of the two, now serving as ESPN's college football sideline reporter, covered Alabama's opener last week, is assigned to the Georgia Tech–Tennessee game this weekend, and is already booked for the 2027 NHL Playoffs. The other is in Boston this weekend as part of the Kansas City Royals broadcast team, with additional roles spanning the Big Ten Network, TNT, and professional women's soccer play-by-play announcing.
Both broadcasters arrived at the Mountain West straight out of college and eventually moved to roles that began putting their faces on television screens around the country. After the conference launched its in-house digital network in late 2012 and established Jesse Kurtz as executive producer and lead anchor, a studio host and reporter position was added to help cover the conference's 17 sports. The first full-time hire came to Colorado Springs already well-versed in the Mountain West as a Las Vegas native and San Diego State graduate.
Colorado Springs' geographic location allowed on-air staff to pitch stories about nearby programs such as Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, or Wyoming and then drive to shoot and produce them — an advantage that will be lost in Las Vegas, where no programs aside from UNLV are within convenient driving distance.
Under Kurtz's mentorship, one broadcaster found strength in versatility, with her handling of the conference's array of sports leading to television roles as varied as interviews with basketball coaching legend John Calipari and cornhole championship broadcasts, before she took a position with the NHL's Las Vegas Golden Knights and later joined ESPN's team. The other arrived with more experience after serving in a sideline-reporting role at Kansas State, with Kurtz noting her stated goal was to become a major league baseball and college football sideline reporter — a mission accomplished when the Kansas City native joined the Royals this past offseason.
Most of the conference's move will go unnoticed by casual sports fans because of the behind-the-scenes nature of a conference's responsibilities, though not all roles operate with relative anonymity, with on-air talent being the prominent example. Much like might be found with minor league baseball, the community had I-knew-them-when opportunities when rising stars honed their craft locally — and much like minor league baseball in Colorado Springs, the chance to follow the next generation of broadcasters use the Mountain West as a launching pad is now gone.
The position is currently held by another broadcaster who has already moved to Las Vegas, where the new studio remains under construction at the still-taking-shape headquarters on the south end of the city. Several longtime conference employees will remain in Colorado Springs, but when their positions are eventually vacated, they will be replaced by new hires based in Las Vegas.
When the last of those Colorado Springs positions turns over — and the chapter in the city's sports history fully closes — remains to be determined.