Officially, nothing happened yesterday. But what we did get is some new reaction and some juicy new rumors, some of which sound plausible but others sound absurd.
- The WAC has said they’re totally going to stick together and rebuild their conference. Commish says they want to find other 1-A (aka FBS, which I’m slowly being worn down and probably going to start using now that it’s pretty universal) schools in their footprint so they don’t have to wait on the transition period. Only problem is, there aren’t any independent ones, and the WAC has very little to offer anybody but maybe a Sun Belt school over by Louisiana Tech. Speaking of which…
- La Tech is totally committed to the WAC unless anyone, anyone, anyone? else would like for them to join their conference. Which creates a big problem for the WAC finding other schools in their footprint. As I see it, the only schools they might entice would be the Louisiana schools or maybe North Texas from the Sun Belt, and only by throwing some of that 10 million buyout pool at them (and it’s still super-unlikely, but 3 or 4 million bucks could go a long way at ULM, for example). But as for Louisiana Tech, I don’t see them as a gem that C-USA sees a need to expand for, so they’re going to have to hope for the Sun Belt to take them in.
- Utah State is claiming it turned down an invite from the MWC. Nobody seems to be buying it.
- BYU (remember them? Supposedly set this whole thing in motion?) has not actually said one thing all week long. Not a word.
- On the big rumors side, there seem to be two versions of one big rumor. The first version is that the Mountain West is working on a massive 20 team superconference merger with Conference USA. This one feels pretty far-fetched, but there’s a few people in grown-up media that are pretty convinced talks are happening. It’s so far out there that nobody has dared write up an article on it, but @DanWolken, a Memphis writer, has his ear to the ground and his twitter feed has as much as anyone on this rumor.
- The lesser, more believable but still remote rumor is that instead of a merger, the two leagues are working on a winner-to-BCS champion vs. champion title game. There’s still bugs in that notion too- would CUSA (and/or a 10/11/12 team MWC) hold their own championship game, then send that team to this title game? Would they try to pick winners from 10-12 teams who haven’t all played each other? The possibilities on this one are pretty exciting. Personally, I want to see two championship games, with the winners playing off.
- One last rumor that hasn’t been published by a news outlet, but is going crazy on the message boards- C-USA is targeting TCU and Temple for a 14 team expansion. A google search shows just how fast this rumor is spreading.