Let's say that the other shoe finally drops for the WAC and they lose Utah State to the MWC. At that point, the WAC can fold and begin a new conference. There is a chance that schools that have rejected the old WAC may join a conference under a new charter. One that addresses that weaknesses that have killed the venerable old conference...mainly the frequent flier miles. The New Conference could leave Louisiana Tech, UTSA and Texas State to the Sun Belt Conference or CSU and charter that they would not admit any school in a state completely west of the Continental Divide. This means that New Mexico State and Denver can stay.
WAC remnants:
San Jose State
New Mexico State
Idaho
Denver (Basketball Only)
Now, they would need five current schools from the FBS to join. Some could be football only, but the majority need to participate in all sports. The schools that are added need to already have facilities in place. This means that they already have a football stadium that is already 15,000 seats or greater. The schools must currently sponsor at least 14 scholarship sports so that the jump to 16 will not be too great of a financial burden. The Big Sky Conference is the only place to look for schools that meet this criteria.
All sports participants.
Montana
14 varsity sports with a 23,000 seat stadium
Northern Arizona
14 varsity sports with a 15,000 seat stadium
Weber State
14 varsity sports with a 17,500 seat stadium
Possible Football-only participant
Sacramento State (Would be allowed to move the non-football programs to the Big West Conference.)
18 varsity sports with a 21,000 seat stadium
Programs that would not meet the standards for the new conference:
Cal Poly--Football stadium too small.
20 varsity sports with a 11,000 seat stadium
UC Davis--Football stadium is also too small.
23 varsity sports with a 10,000 seat stadium
Montana State--Not enough sponsored programs
13 varsity sports with a stadium expansion underway to raise the capacity to 23,000
Portland State--Not enough sponsored programs
12 varsity sports with a 20,000 seat stadium
Eastern Washington--Neither a large enough stadium nor enough sponsored sports.
10 varsity sports with a 12,000 seat stadium
However, the charter can include provisional invitations to these four schools once they meet the charter criteria. Cal Poly and UC Davis could also be football-only schools.
Basketball Only Schools:
Utah Valley
CS Bakersfield
The new conference would have 7 football schools and 9 basketball schools for a start. If there needs to be more football schools, then UTSA and/or Texas State can be added with the provision that there will be no more expansion east of the Mountain Time Zone. If the other four schools join as provisioned by the charter, the conference could have 12 schools for football and 12 schools for basketball.
The charter can also have provisions to include CS-Fullerton, Long Beach State and the University of the Pacific if those schools bring back football.
The new conference would be a FBS school and sponsor a new bowl game in San Jose for the conference champion to play in.
3 comments:
wow, pretty silly
Agreed! It is all silly. Let's pretend that this all never happened. Bottom line, no matter how you feel about Idaho, San Jose State and New Mexico State their athletes, coaches and recruits did nothing to deserve this.
New conferences would make a lot of sense in many cases. What brings up some of the geographically-nonsensical conferences is the unwillingness of conferences to part with their autobid to the MBB tourney.
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