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When the Mountain West raided the WAC, the latter lost four schools and eventually disbanded for football. The WAC is struggling to stay viable in other sports.
Two schools that were put in untenable positions were Idaho and NM State, which had to settle for moving to the Southern-based Sun Belt Conference. The Sun Belt recently informed those schools, in light of the NCAA's decision to allow 10-team leagues to have a football championship game, that their 4-year contracts will not be extended after 2017.
It appears that Idaho already have concluded that they have no viable alternative but to become the first school to drop from FBS to FCS, most likely by rejoining the Big Sky Conference, which housed the Vandals for 30 years before they moved up. They're still considering staying in FBS as an independent, but that seems unlikely.
NM State is really in a tough situation. The MWC and Sun Belt don't want them and they are geographically a long way from almost every Big Sky school except Northern Arizona (and they aren't that close). Still, their FBS future is probably doomed. Their athletics department is in financial distress. This won't help. I can see why Marvin Menzes would jump at UNLV's basketball head coaching job. Get out of Dodge!
One of the problems these schools will run into on the short term, if FCS is in their futures, is that they must drop from 85 to 63 scholarship players.
Lots of luck!
Two schools that were put in untenable positions were Idaho and NM State, which had to settle for moving to the Southern-based Sun Belt Conference. The Sun Belt recently informed those schools, in light of the NCAA's decision to allow 10-team leagues to have a football championship game, that their 4-year contracts will not be extended after 2017.
It appears that Idaho already have concluded that they have no viable alternative but to become the first school to drop from FBS to FCS, most likely by rejoining the Big Sky Conference, which housed the Vandals for 30 years before they moved up. They're still considering staying in FBS as an independent, but that seems unlikely.
NM State is really in a tough situation. The MWC and Sun Belt don't want them and they are geographically a long way from almost every Big Sky school except Northern Arizona (and they aren't that close). Still, their FBS future is probably doomed. Their athletics department is in financial distress. This won't help. I can see why Marvin Menzes would jump at UNLV's basketball head coaching job. Get out of Dodge!
One of the problems these schools will run into on the short term, if FCS is in their futures, is that they must drop from 85 to 63 scholarship players.
Lots of luck!
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