The timeline can get a bit fuzzy, but here’s basically what happened during the spring and summer of 2010.

Boise State University (BSU) announced it was leaving the WAC to join the Mountain West
Utah accepted membership in the Pac12
Rumors of BYU’s move to football independence began swirling
The WAC commissioner and Utah State’s president courted BYU to join its ranks (this was “The Project”)
Chaos ensued
BYU left the Mountain West
Utah State got screwed




The first domino to fall was Utah leaving for the PAC, that happened towards the end of June, 2010. BYU then announced 2 months later, around the end of August or beginning of September, that they were leaving the MWC to go Independent.

Now what had happened between Utah's invite to the PAC and BYU going Independent, BYU was forming an alliance with the WAC, to put their basketball and Olympic sports in the WAC, along with scheduling agreements for football. Fresno St and UNR took that information to the MWC and basically undercut BYU's plans to join the WAC but pushing for an invite into the MWC. Around mid August, Fresno State and Nevada were then invited to join the MWC... the move was done by the MWC to destroy the WAC and hopes of destroying BYU's chance of going Independent in Football and joining another conference in all other sports.

The MWC rejected BYU's proposal for broadcasting rights and rejected BYU's proposal to keep all sports in the MWC and go Independent in football. So BYU joined the WCC and when Independent by the end of August.

Patterson kept running his mouth about BYU saying that BYU jumped the gun and should have waited, then TCU 2 months later accepts an Invite into the BIG EAST.

A year later, BYU was in talks with the BIGXII... by all accounts, the talks fell apart because BYU got nervous about giving up it's ESPN TV rights to go to a conference that was possibly losing Texas, Oklahoma, A&M and Missouri. So the BIGXII then invites TCU, TCU gets out of the BIG EAST agreement. November of 2011, the BIG EAST invites BYU, BYU turns it down by the weekend. A month later SDSU and Boise State and a few other teams are invited to the BIG EAST... The Big East falls apart completely Boise State goes back to the MWC, I believe they were invited and accepted and invite in 2011... but then decided to join the Big East and then renegotiated with the MWC to rejoin. Sometime around then, USU was brought in with SJSU.