Nevada and Fresno State to join MWC

[sraczk2011]

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=5474774

Fresno State and Nevada are leaving the Western Athletic Conference for the Mountain West.

The schools ended a wild Wednesday by announcing they are accepting invitations to join the Mountain West, which has added three prominent members of WAC in the last two months.

Boise State is already bound for the MWC next year and now the Bulldogs and Wolf Pack are following as well, leaving the WAC's future in question and the Mountain West preparing for life after Utah and possibly BYU.

"Fresno State is honored to accept the invitation to join the Mountain West Conference," Fresno State president John Welty said in a statement. "We look forward to competition against some universities we have not faced previously and to renewing rivalries with San Diego State, Colorado State and several other schools that we enjoyed previously."

Nevada President Milt Glick said in a statement: "The offer to join the Mountain West Conference is an opportunity we cannot turn down. The Mountain West is a strong conference and this will enhance our natural rivalry with UNLV and continue our rivalry with Boise State. We believe joining this conference is in the best, long-term interests of our fans and program, and also view this invitation as acknowledgement of our work to build a strong, competitive program."

San Jose State finally has a shot in the WAC now!

[Warner2BruceTD]

What is left of the WAC? Don't they have like 5 schools now?

[SHOGUN]

Sweeet.

MWC is going to be great next year.

[Maize]

The WAC is going to be left with six: Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State, San Jose State and Utah State.

The Mountain West will be at 10 teams and should look at the possibility of expansion to 12. If they do expand, I don't know what two teams you take that remain. Maybe for sake of rivalries and geography, NMSU and Idaho?

[Golden Taters]

This is going to be a good basketball conference to watch.

[Hasselbeck]

Sweeet.

MWC is going to be great next year.

They won't be able to move over until 2012, as they missed the July 1 deadline.

Not sure what BYU plans to do now, I think they might lean towards staying because a big part of their independence in football was being able to play the likes of Hawaii, Nevada and Fresno State.. and with Fresno State and Nevada now joining a bigger conference, they may not want to play BYU as often.

Should BYU stay, the MWC suddenly becomes (or I should say remains) a pretty solid football conference and a pretty solid basketball conference.. and the fact they move to 10 teams gives them an outside shot at petitioning for a conference title game given the fact the Big 12 will do that as well with only 10 squads.

[Hasselbeck]

wouldnt be surprised if Hawai'i goes indpendent route

Doubt it. They'd have to find several schools willing to travel to Hawaii in the middle of football/basketball season.. typically during the middle of conference races. Few schools would want to do that, and it's not like Hawaii is worth a shit in terms of television exposure as all their games start very late in the mainland.

The WAC will probably pick up some crappy Sun Belt schools or some FCS schools (Montana, UTSA, Texas State just to name a few) that want to move up to FBS and try to assemble a conference of some sort.

[Hasselbeck]

The WAC is going to be left with six: Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State, San Jose State and Utah State.

The Mountain West will be at 10 teams and should look at the possibility of expansion to 12. If they do expand, I don't know what two teams you take that remain. Maybe for sake of rivalries and geography, NMSU and Idaho?

The smart play for the MWC if they want to go to 12 schools would be to target the Texas/Oklahoma market and go after teams from Conference USA. Teams like UTEP, Houston, Tulsa come to mind.

Ideally the MWC would get UTEP in whatever expansion scenario, because there are rivalries already in place with them being a former WAC school. Houston would also be a major coup for the conference IMO.

There are also quiet rumors the additions of Fresno State and Nevada are a pre-cursor to a major merger between the Mountain West and Conference USA, which would form the first 'super-conference" in the country, super meaning size of conference more than anything. TCU coach Gary Patterson hinted at something big being in the works, and a couple of reports from the Houston Cougars Rivals site reported these rumors today.. so who knows.

[Fox1994]

My bad. :ionno: http://www.vsndaily.com/showthread.php?t=61565

http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2010/08/18/nevada-follows-fresno-sts-lead-accepts-mwc-invite/