im all for that conference the west needs a new football/basketball conference. There arent any western conferences besides southland that have a mix of football and non football teams, that play in one conference.

As far as the Big Sky teams? Absolutely not. The BSC has already closed the door on Southern Utah due to their academics not being up to par. Montana is gunning for the Mountain West, and unless they leave SUU has a ghost chance in Hades of getting in.

I don't see them picking up the Dakota schools either unless the entire conference decides to move to Bowl Subdivision (which might be a possibility if Montana goes to the MWC, or Sac State to the WAC). You look at the map and think it would make sense, but the problem is the Dakota schools are on the clear other side of the state, while the closest school is Montana State, which is in western Montana. Not to mention you have outliers in western Oregon, northern California, and Arizona. That's just way way too big of a footprint for a conference. Not to mention the BSC has a lot of prestige for a I-AA conference, and it makes little sense for anyone to jump ship to join the Dakotas and Utah schools in a mid-major conference starting from scratch.

If the Summit League adds UND and USD, that gives them six football members, which would likely require the Summit League to sponsor football. Here's how things might look on July 1, 2011:

Summit League (6) - North Dakota, North Dakota State, South Dakota, South Dakota State, Southern Utah, Western Illinois

Big Sky (9) - Montana, Montana State, Northern Colorado, Northern Arizona, Weber State, Idaho State, Eastern Washington, Portland State, Sacramento State

Gateway (6) - Missouri State, Northern Iowa, Illinois State, Southern Illinois, Indiana State, Youngstown State

Do Cal Poly SLO and UC Davis join the Big Sky or Summit as football only members, or play as independents? Does San Diego "move up" to scholarship FCS?

Does the Gateway (and possibly Missouri Valley) expand with an OVC school, Division II upgrade, or even a football-playing school on the East Coast?

Do any other Summit members begin football programs?

I doubt any of the current Summit members that don't have football will be adding it. IUPUI, UMKC, and Oakland are all commuter schools, so it's going to be nearly impossible to get enough attendance to justify it. Oral Roberts and Centenary are privates, so they would have a rough time just getting the money to start up a program.

I see it a little differently. I think Texas State probably better have expressed an interest in moving up to the NCAA before the 4 year moritorium on new applications was announced. It seems likely that UTSA is one of the 20 teams and barring UT/the legislature shutting down the university and the Student body's desire to play I-A, they will probably be in the FBS by 2016 or so. They have a great media market that they alone own. No NFL competition. The only game in town. If they can pull even 25K to their games they could easily find their way into CUSA.

Now take a look at Texas State's situation at that point. With UTSA in the FBS, Texas St. would at that point almost certainly want to move up, but at that point the dynamics change entirely. Now you have a school wedged between UT and UTSA trying to jump to FBS and presumably challenge both schools for recruiting. Do you honestly think UTSA at that point is going to strongly argue for the admission of Texas St. into CUSA knowing that it will hurt their recruiting? Frankly moving up would seem a very difficult proposition with as many alumni as UTSA and UT have kicking around. Good luck getting that by the legislature.

Secondly, The Austin/San Marcos Market is nice, but not overwhelming. I don't thing CUSA is drooling to add it. Plus, Texas St. is a distant #2 in terms of fans in their local market. That screams Sunbelt, which Texas St. will not accept, creating more time in FCS.

Texas St.'s best option is to jump up at the same time as UTSA. If the two schools move up together and commit to staying in the same conference, they can have a ton of leverage getting into a league.

Personally, I think financially it is in the state of Texas's best interest to have our 5 regional giants with I-A aspirations (UNT, UTEP, Houston, Texas St., and UTEP) together in a conference. Maybe with Memphis and possibly LA Tech.

(I didn't mention one of the Texas regional giants. UT-Arlington is effectively "Football dead" with the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium going in in Arlington. They would be smart add as a I-AAA non-football member of the new conference --- New SWC?.)

That leverages the large alumni bases and all of the big media markets in the state to pull in a similar but more advanced school out of a disfunctional conference (Memphis) and La Tech (a school that isn't in the shreveport Market, but has as much of a claim on that market as any school. Add that to their Native Monroe Market and it isn't awful.). Those 7 schools would have a pretty good TV deal split between few mouths. I think they could offer Memphis a better share than CUSA can as currently constructed.

Neither TS-San Marcos not UT-SA filed the necessary paperwork to beat the moratorium.

The moratorium was voted on and essentially enacted immediately, and few teams that were still "pondering" a move up snuck in under the wire. The last clump of teams to do so included SIU-Edwardsville, Seattle, Oklahoma City College, Houston Baptist, New Haven, and Bryant (they may have been unaware the moratorium was coming, and just got lucky on their timing of filing at least an intent to move-up, which I think launches an "Exploratory Year", which is then followed by about 4 "Transition Years". There was about 20 schools in various stages of transition when the moratorium hit, and the UT-SA and Texas State were caught flat-footed....

For this rebirth of a Southwest Conference to occur, some event will have to influence an implosion of C-USA.

We know East Carolina isn't happy with C-USA's geography. They want to join the Big East, but that isn't necessarily on the horizon. Marshall similarly is rather geographically isolated.

And the Sun Belt Conference would probably love to jettison Denver and some non-football schools to go to an All-Sports format.

So long term, it may be possible that the eastern-most C-USA teams leave and join the Sun-Belt football schools in a new conference. This would open up some slots in C-USA for schools like Louisiana Tech, UTSA, and Texas State.

What could set all of this in motion is a Big East split and expansion, whereby the Big East Football 8 broke off, and added some C-USA teams like UCF and Memphis (it could be some other combination, it doesn't matter). Suddenly C-USA has some openings, and East Carolina / Marshall appear to be further isolated. C-USA targets schools like: North Texas, La Tech, and move-ups from the Southland. East Carolina and Marshall start talking to the Sun-Belt.... A few other teams maybe caught in the middle, like UAB and Southern Miss.

First, I see Southern Illinois and Youngstown State going 1-A to join the MAC. The MVC then adds Eastern Illinois and Southeast Missouri State from the OVC, and Western Illinois from the Summit. This gives the MVC 7 football-playing schools with scholarships, allowing the MVC and Gateway Conference to merge, making Gateway into the MVC Football League, with NDSU and SDSU (and maybe later, UND and USD) as football-only members.

The MVC Football League:
Eastern Illinois
Illinois State
Indiana State
Missouri State
North Dakota (FB-Only)
North Dakota State (FB-Only)
Northern Iowa
South Dakota (FB-Only)
South Dakota State (FB-Only)
Southeast Missouri State
Western Illinois

MVC for other sports:
East:
Bradley
Eastern Illinois
Evansville
Illinois State
Indiana State
Western Illinois

West:
Creighton
Drake
Missouri State
Northern Iowa
Southeast Missouri State
Wichita State

The Big Sky takes Southern Utah as well, replacing a Great West/Big West bound Sac State.

Meanwhile, several schools in the south central US which don't sponsor football could break from the Sun Belt, Southland, and Summit Conferences/League, and join with Texas-Pan American and Houston Baptist to form a new Trans America Athletic Conference. Namely:

Arkansas-Little Rock
Centenary
Houston Baptist
Lamar
New Orleans
Oral Roberts
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
Texas-Arlington*
Texas-Pan American
Texas-San Antonio*

*Those schools only joining if they don't end up adding football

This opens the door for several more schools to move up to D-1(AA/FCS) and join the Southland. My alignment would be this:

East:
Central Arkansas
Delta State (from DII)
McNeese State
Nicholls State
Northwestern State
Southeastern Louisiana

West:
Abilene Christian (from DII)
Midwestern State (from DII)
Sam Houston State
Stephen F. Austin State
Texas State
West Texas A&M (from DII)