I could see C-USA letting the MWC grab UTEP and Tulsa so that CUSA could merge with the Big East for a favorable amount of teams.

Mountain West and C-USA have called a joint teleconference with the media tonight to announce their merger according to Joe Schad.

ESPN is running the merger. So what's the deal? will the MWC need to add 2 and is CUSA losing 2 for a 10/10? Is this a move to try and keep BE from taking their schools?

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BW/WAC/MWC CHAMPS '77 '82 '85 '88 '89 '91 '92 '93 '99 '12
['08 NCAA BASEBALL CHAMPS]

Either its just for TV contracts and some OOC scheduling (like 1 OOC football and basketball games against each other each year like the PAC10 Big 12 Hardwood Challenge) or its is an attempt to shield themselves against the BE by declaring conference solidarity and making their schools less likely to defect or its a move to basically stop the bleeding a recover from the poaching of the Big East and still stay relevant for a future AQ.

A 10 team split would be perfect for them, play round robin with in each conference and then have a joint CCG.

Let assume for a moment that the BE survives, then they are most likely taking from most reports UCF, Temple, and Air Force/Navy for football only with Air Force joining the MVC in all other sports. If this happens simply shift UTEP over and they have a perfect 10/10 split. If Temple is blocked by Nova and the BE take ECU or Memphis then CUSA could hold pat at 10 w/ UTEP and the MWC could add Utah St (or BYU if they wanted back in) to get back to 10 after Air Force leaves.

Of course the most interesting thing would be if this stopped anyone from leaving CUSA/MWC and basically kills the Big East but I already wrote something about that one the BE forum.

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Fan of the Big 12 Conference, the Mountain West Conference and...

If it plays out like this

SEC-Mizzou
B12-Louisville
BE-UCF, Temple, Houston, ECU*, Boise*, AFA*, Navy* (12/16)
MWCCUSA-8/9=17 add 1, Utah St. for 18? I think should just be all sports at that point.

If it's like this

SEC-Mizzou
B12-UL,WVU,UC
BE-dead
MWCCUSA-Rutgers, USF, UConn, Temple for 10/16, move 3 schools to MWC? 13/13 UTEP/SMU/Tulsa

_________________

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BW/WAC/MWC CHAMPS '77 '82 '85 '88 '89 '91 '92 '93 '99 '12
['08 NCAA BASEBALL CHAMPS]

It will go down like Big West football. Won't last even five years.

13/13 ewww....move Houston to the MWC and add LA Tech and Temple to CUSA for 14/14, but anything more than 10 means there will not be a CCG under the current rules, so most probably it is just a move to lock down a bigger TV contract and an OOC scheduling agreement.

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Fan of the Big 12 Conference, the Mountain West Conference and...

And especially if the current BCS conferences pick off some members (SMU to Big 12 or Boise to Pac-12 for example), it won't last.

Conference call summary....
http://www.themwc.com/sports/m-footbl/s ... 11aah.html

* Air Force, Boise State, Central Florida, Houston and SMU all voted this morning to agree to this deal.
* Currently there are 22 teams involved.
* Through at least the first the two leagues would play their normal schedule and then a title game.
* 2013 is target date to begin, but possibly 2012.
* Legislature will need to be put in place to have this cross-conference title game.
* Neither commissioner has spoken to Bill Hancock to see if the champion receives a BCS bid.
* Television contracts will remain league specific.
* Title game can be sold to any network.
* Through at least first year leagues will be completely separate.
* After a year or two a more divisional format will be created.
* Possible semi-final matchup between divisional teams then title game.
* Bigger was mentioned a lot with the 22 teams and more inventory for television to sell.

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Fan of the Big 12 Conference, the Mountain West Conference and...

The alliance could play a championship game as early as 2012

Hoops Weiss at NYDaily news discussing yesterday's MWC/C-USA FB only merger announcement at http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/colle ... l?r=sports

Almost assume 3 CUSA schools leave and 2 MWC. Means totals are:

CUSA (9)
MWC (8)

Solutions:
* Utah St. to MWC (9/9)
* North Texas to CUSA (to replace SMU), UTEP to MWC (9/9)
* North Texas to CUSA, UTSA to CUSA, UTEP to MWC, Utah st to MWC (10/10)

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You didn't hear Boise supposedly said no, and told the MWC they're staying. AFA doesn't want to go w/o Boise, Army, or a waivering Navy.

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['08 NCAA BASEBALL CHAMPS]

I'm still trying to get my arms around this MWC-CUSA football merger.

At first I thought MAYBE the idea was to lock up all the BE expansion candidates, let the SEC & Big 12 pick over the BE, leaving the MWC-CUSA in the cat-bird seat, where they would then invite BE FB remnants and absorb the BE's AQ...
That could still happen.

Then it hit me what the other motivation may be.....
If CUSA were to become the sponsoring conference of this combined MWC-CUSA FB operation, then the MWC is no longer sponsoring FB.
This means that Boise State and Air Force can leave their other sports in the MWC.
This also means that if BYU does not get an invitation to an all-sports conference, they can park their other sports in the MWC too (instead of the WCC).
BYU could stay independent (using the MWC as Notre Dame uses the BE) or even join the BE FB West Division (along with Boise St. and Air Force)...

So when Craig Thompson was "asked to get this done", the deal may have been that Boise / Air Force told him they were moving their FB to the BE,
but needed a way to let them stay in the MWC for other sports.
If this is the case, then Hawaii becomes Big West / CUSA FB (no connection to MWC).
The MWC would have 9 schools for non-FB sports. They could expand to 12 with : BYU's "Olympic Sports", Denver, Seattle...
They may take some schools from the WAC like: Idaho, Utah St., SJSU (if they can place ther FB operations in this CUSA FB league).
The WAC is then left with a bunch of FB schools in Texas, Louisiana, which merges into the Sun-Belt.

Very interesting take. It works in everyone's benefit if it happens that way.

I'd imagine 10 is the ideal number of football schools in each division for 9 conference games. If BSU and AFA move their football, the MWC would be at 8 football, 9 olympic sports. So they would probably bring in two full members (and since there is a partnership with C-USA, no need to raid them, unless C-USA says take UTEP so we can get someone like Temple). So I would think USU and SJSU would finally get invites which gets the MWC to 10/11. Adding Denver would be perfect to get them to 12.

C-USA would lose 3 bringing them to 9. Adding North Texas would help offset the loss of SMU so I'd imagine they'd be in. Not sure if there are 2 non football candidates to get the conference back to 12, but it wouldn't be entirely necessary.

Both conferences would be very solid and if the merger was unsuccessful, they could easily split from each other and the MWC could go back to sponsoring football.