teams, Mountain West schools aren't really supporting their teams all that much this year. UNLV does well when they're good, but they're not drawing well right now.

Average attendance figures for the Mountain West this year(Arena size in parentheses) [average pct. of capacity in brackets):

Air Force 2,028 (5,858) [34.6%]
Boise State 3,943 (12,644) [31.2%]
Fresno State 5,652 (15,544) [36.4%]
Colorado State 2,948 (8,745) [33.7%]
Nevada 8,522 (11,784) [72.3%]
UNLV 7,571 (18,776) [40.3%]
New Mexico 10,681 (15,411) [69.3%]
San Diego State 11,396 (12,414) [91.8%]
San Jose State 1,618 (5,000) [32.4%]
Utah State 8,523 (10,270) [83%]
Wyoming 3,126 (15,028) [20.8%]

Here is WCC attendance:

BYU 11,674 (19,000) [61.4%]
Gonzaga 6,000 (6,000) [100%]
LMU 953 (4,156) [22.9%]
Pacific 1,843 (6,150) [30%]
Pepperdine 1,035 [3,104] [33.3%]
Portland 1,588 [4,852] [32.7%]
Saint Mary's 3,143 (3,500) [89.8%]
San Diego 1,945 (5,100) [38.1%]
San Francisco 2,429 (5,300) [45.8%]
Santa Clara 1,341 (4,500) [29.8%]

If you look at percentage of capacity and not just raw attendance, it shows that many MWC schools aren't really drawing all that much. And while raw crowd size is bigger at almost every MWC arena than all of the non-big 3 WCC schools, the bigger arenas also likely mean the atmosphere in many of the arenas isn't much better than the WCC. So outside of four schools out of 11, what you have is small, empty arenas versus large empty arenas.

So with both the WCC and the MWC, what you have is the top third of the conference has rocking atmospheres (for the MWC, it's SDSU, Nevada, Utah State and UNM. For the WCC it's BYU, Gonzaga and St. Mary's) and the rest are either middling or sparsely attended.

I think the problem that often happens is people compare the WCC to what the MWC used to be and not necessarily what it is now.