I was thinking about the WAC when it grew to 16 teams once the Southwest conference disbanded.

So what if the MWC core schools decided to leave BEFORE the growth to 16 and took along the non-Big 12 schools from the Southwest?

Today, the conferences would/could look like this at 10 teams each 9the push for 12 teams for championships would yet exist:

Mountain West:
UNLV
BYU
Utah
Colorado St.
Air Force
New Mexico
UTEP
SMU
TCU
Houston


WAC:
Wyoming
Utah St.
Boise St.
Idaho
Nevada
Fresno St.
San Jose St.
San Diego St.
New Mexico St.
Hawaii


CUSA:
Tulsa
Rice
Tulane
LA Tech
USM
Memphis
UAB
Marshall
ECU
UCF

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At the time, they had no reason to leave, things were fine how they were pre-expansion. Now if the WAC had decided to keep the Divisions constant instead of flipping them around every year, things actually may have worked out better, or had they pared the expansion to 12 teams, we could be looking at an entirely different landscape than what they have now.

If the WAC had stayed with its 1995 alignment, or at least had not expanded beyond 12, we'd probably see something similar to what we have today. Here are some of my questions about what would have happened in the interim:

Would Rice, SMU, and TCU joined the Big West or Conference USA in 1996? Would Tulsa have joined done the same in 1999?

Would the Big West still be sponsoring football today, or would New Mexico State, San Jose State, Boise State, Idaho, Utah State, Louisiana Tech, Nevada, and UNLV have spent all or part of that time without a football conference?

What would the Sun Belt look like, and would have it started sponsoring football prior to 2001?