A month ago, the officials for the two premier non-AQ conferences announced that their leagues would dissolve and merge to create a new super-conference in 2013. While this merger will possibly form the largest conference the NCAA has ever seen, the CUSA/MWC merger is more a marriage of necessity than convenience. The inconveniences of having a league with 18-24 teams that stretches from Honolulu, HI to Greensville, NC (roughly 5,000 miles) are probably more than I can list on one blog posting; but this new league has some interesting ideas to combat at least a few of them. First off they will use the pod format utilized by the old 16 team WAC. This assures that more games are played within the region of a given school. With the current 16 teams the leagues share, the pods may look something like this:
West
Hawaii
Fresno St
Nevada
UNLV
Mountain
Air Force
Colorado St
Wyoming
New Mexico
Central
Tulsa
Rice
UTEP
Tulane
East
UAB
Marshall
ECU
Southern Miss
Second, they have proposed not only a conference championship game, but also (an NCAA first) semi-final conference games. Under current NCAA rules semi-final games are not allowed, so some rule petitioning would have to happen before this vision comes to fruition. It would work like this though: At the end of the season, the team with best pod record from the East would play the team with the best pod record from the Central. The team with the best pod record from the West would play the team with the best pod record from the Mountain. The winner of those two games would then play in the Conference Championship Game. Example, say ECU wins the East pod. Tulsa wins the Central pod. Air Force wins the Mountain pod. Hawaii wins the West pod. ECU and Tulsa would play in a semi-final and Air Force would play Hawaii in a semi-final. The winners of those two games would play for the Conference Championship. On to the next question: most press releases talked about an 18-24 team conference, so who gets added? One team that may be a shoe in is Utah St. It was already offered membership to the MWC and they would fit nicely with geography the new conference would be touting. Other candidates that make sense are (keep in mind I am completely aware that none of these teams will ‘capture’ a TV market, their presence in new markets is what I see as value):
*San Jose St: would add a travel partner with Fresno St and adds a large TV market
*Louisiana Tech: would add another market in Louisiana and fits excellent geographically
*FIU: re-establishes a presence in the state of Florida filling the void left by UCF
*N. Texas: re-establishes a presence in the DFW area in Texas
*Troy: solid program with geographic fit
*Middle Tenn State: another program that re-establishes markets voided by teams leaving for the Big East, also fills in geographically
*Arkansas St: a new market, and a good fit geographically
Other outside expansion candidates:
*Idaho: hard to believe Idaho actually had a chance to join the PAC-8 at one time, I just don’t see any way Idaho gets in.
*New Mexico St: the only shot they have is that New Mexico (a current member) may drag their in-state rival in the fray.
*Appalachian St: would have to make a quick jump from FCS to FBS; but has the facilities and the support (I actually hope they get a shot)
*UTSA: just made the jump to FBS this year; has tremendous support but is a fledgling program
*Toledo: rumored to have asked for a CUSA bid in 2004; may or may not still be interested
My best guess is that Air Force will eventually join the Big East and that CUSA/MWC will target 20 as the optimal number of teams. 20 teams (4 pods of 5 teams) makes the most sense for scheduling. Play every team in your pod and every team from another pod for two years; then rotate the pods every 2 years. This enables teams to have 9 conference games a year, allows teams to play their division round robin each year (an NCAA rule), and allows every team to see each school home and home every six years. Using the candidates I have outlined above, I think CUSA/MWC might end up looking something like this:
West
San Jose St (new addition)
Fresno St
Hawaii
Nevada
UNLV
Mountain
Colorado St
Wyoming
Utah St (new addition)
New Mexico
UTEP
Central
Tulsa
Rice
Tulane
Louisiana Tech (new addition)
North Texas (new addition)
East
ECU
Marshall
UAB
Southern Miss
FIU (new addition)
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