In case you somehow missed the big news yesterday. The Mountain West and Conference USA announced on Monday that the two conferences will merge completely starting with the 2013-14 academic year. The presidents of the sixteen schools met in Dallas on Sunday to work out the broad direction of the new conference. You can read the full release if you like but we've summarized the nitty gritty of the arrangement here.

The structure of the new conference will include:

Membership of 18 to 24 universities

National scope from the Atlantic Seaboard to Hawaii

Championship football game format that includes semifinal match-ups

Championship basketball tournament

Regular season scheduling in divisions

NCAA FBS affiliation

Mechanisms to emphasize and improve academic standards and fiscal responsibility

The timetable for all the details to be worked out is six months. Currently there are sixteen remaining members of the two leagues for 2013. With the conference planned to have 18 to 24 members there will be at least two schools added and as many as eight. I'd only expect two teams to be added so that with 18 teams there can be two divisions of nine teams. That allows eight non-conference games in football and then a championship game. UTEP is likely to be moved back to the western division and be reunited with it's old WAC foes.

New schools that could be added to the Eastern Division include FIU, Louisiana Tech and Temple. Obviously there is plenty to work out a number of schools will be working to try and join. So what does this mean for Wyoming? We give our thoughts after the jump.

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There has been plenty of commentary on the merger between the Mountain West and Conference USA that will take place in either 2012 or 2013.  Plenty of it has been negative but the move actually makes a lot of sense right now.  I'll tackle some of the common complaints about this merger and what makes it such a smart move for both conferences. 

NO BCS AQ BID INVOLVED

Gaining AQ status has been the goal for the Mountain West ever since the BCS formed.  Even after this evaluation cycle the Mountain West would still have to apply for waiver to be granted to AQ status.  Even if Boise State and Air Force stay in the Mountain West the league would have been denied AQ status.

I do not believe the Mountain West was going to get a BCS AQ position if we stayed status quo. And we had some pretty bright people looking into that. It would have had to go to a waiver process and we were not going to get the votes. So it looked very, very unlikely. From all sources that we could gather, we were not going to get a BCS AQ, short of a dramatic miracle. So does it help us? It surely doesn’t hurt us, because we weren’t going to get one anyway.

- Wyoming AD Tom Burman

So the Mountain West isn't losing out by doing the merger here and the BCS wouldn't automatically grant this merger an automatic berth right when it was announced.  It has be approved by the NCAA before the BCS could even evaluate the alliance.  They would still need to meet with the BCS after the evaluation period and try and work things out for the alliance to earn a BCS bid.  And who knows if the BCS will be even be in existence in a couple years.  The current BCS contract runs till 2014 and and a new system may replace it.  The larger conferences may try and break away from the NCAA and form their own system.  A conference that contains over one sixth of the entire FBS has a better chance of being added then just a 10 team league.

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One conference has the golden but not enough members and plenty of discourse.  The other conference has solid membership but doesn't have an invite to the exclusive party.  The Mountain West and Big East both want part of what the other one possesses.  Working together could save both conferences or they could cannibalize each other and neither is left in a position of power.  The Mountain West has been working on a football only merger with Conference USA but instead should looking at merging completely with the Big East.    

This isn't currently being mentioned by any outlets as a possibility but it makes sense if they each want to try and survive.  Dan Wolken of the Daily tweeted yesterday that if the Mountain West and Conference USA schools resolved to stick together and not join the Big East then the conference would die simply because it couldn't add any schools.  Temple from the MAC is the only other team from a non AQ conference that would be even worth adding for the Big East. 

Obviously this would be a huge conference that would literally stretch from coast to coast.  The Mountain West currently has 10 members and the Big East will have six after the loss of Syracuse and Pittsburgh.  In this scenario we're saying that the Big East drops the basketball only members since that is a big reason why their current conference is so dysfunctional.  Hawaii is a football only member of the Mountain West and Air Force will likely be football only in the near future.  So that leaves 16 teams teams for football and 14 for basketball.  For creating divisions easier and the fact that both conference want to get an influence back in Texas we will add SMU and Houston to the mix.  Since Air Force is already willing to travel east to be apart of a BCS league then we will add them in the east division with the Texas schools.  So now we have 18 members for football and 16 for basketball. 

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Welcome to the eleventh installment of our summer series in which we realign the FBS conferences based on geography.  To find out about the concept behind this idea and see our ten previous revisions make sure you check out our summer series landing page. We release a new conference each week so feel free to bookmark the site so you don't miss any updates.

Well to quote the Grateful Dead... "What a long strange trip it's been......."  We've now gone from coast to coast and this is the final conference revision that needs to be done.  If you've been reading the previous editions and have ever FBS school memorized then you should know who will be in this conference based on process of elimination.

Don't become distraught because this series is ending because lucky for you we will have a bonus article that goes up next week.  In that piece we will do a recap of the series and give some insight into what we learned as well as post the results of the NCAA 12 simulation based on these conferences. 

LEAGUE NAME:  The Big East was one more of the more geographically appropriate conferences until last fall when they decided that TCU would fit as a member of this northeast based conference.  Those kind of shenanigans don't fly in our scenarios.  This conference needs that truly reflects it's nature and so we decided on:  The Wicked Nor'easter Conference.  The presenting sponsor of all conference events is Samuel Adams Beeeeer.

I'm sure the NCAA would have no problem with a beer company being a title sponsor.

THE SCHOOLS:  Half of the league members are current members of the Big East.  Then we add a mash of Conference USA, ACC, Big 10, MAC and an independent to complete the crew.  Boston College is a former member of the Big East so there is also some added history/rivalry there by bringing the Eagles back.  

We're not doing the separate basketball members of this conference.  As we've done before this is a FBS football only conference.

	Boston College		Penn State
	Connecticut		West Virginia
	Syracuse		Pitt
	Army		Rutgers
	Buffalo		Temple

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Welcome to the tenth installment of our summer series in which we realign the FBS conferences based on geography.  To find out about the concept behind this idea and see our nine previous revisions make sure you check out our summer series landing page. We release a new conference each week so feel free to bookmark the site so you don't miss any updates.

Welcome to the penultimate edition of our summer series and thanks to everyone for visiting the site this summer.  While we have been working on this series more real life scenarios may be playing out over the next couple weeks.  If Texas A&M does move to the SEC this could create a domino effect that completely alters the college football landscape.  NCAA realignment Armageddon watch is back and in full effect.

Enough reality talk here now, time to get back to this fantasy project that is way more important.

LEAGUE NAME:  The Mid American Conference or MAC is still an an appropriate name for this conference.  However we decided that we needed to change things up a bit here.  Eventually we ended up with a geographically based name: The Ohio River Conference.  If you weren't aware the Ohio River forms the border between Kentucky and Ohio and West Virginia and Ohio.  Hopefully it doesn't get confused with the Ohio Valley Conference.

THE SCHOOLS:  A nice mix of schools were have here: a core of five MAC schools, two Big East members and one representative from the SEC, Big 10 and Conference USA.  With this alignment we end up with eleven members which has not been a popular choice in previous revisions.  Incredibly eight members come from Ohio, with two from Kentucky and one school representing West Virginia.  Marshall is a former member of the MAC and would fit in well with these schools.

	Louisville		Ohio State
	Kentucky		Toledo
	Cincinnati		Akron
	Miami (OH)		Kent State
	Ohio		Bowling Green
	Marshall

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Welcome to the ninth installment of our summer series in which we realign the FBS conferences based on geography.  To find out about the concept behind this idea and see our eight previous revisions make sure you check out our summer series landing page. We release a new conference each week so feel free to bookmark the site so you don't miss any updates.

After finishing up the south we heading up the coast of the Atlantic at full steam.  Wait a minute, coast of the Atlantic?  It must be time to redo the Atlantic Coast Conference.   After this article we have just conferences left to redo in this series.  And we are even getting closer to football actually starting here with camps starting this week.

LEAGUE NAME:  With the Atlantic Coast Conference or ACC it is a conference that doesn't need much fixing.  The name accurately describes the geographic locations of it's members.  The only alternates I could think of are Central Atlantic Conference or Mid Atlantic Conference which are both already taken.  I took that as a sign to leave well enough alone and just stick with: Atlantic Coast Conference.

THE SCHOOLS:  The current ACC is fairly well aligned but the crazy thing is figuring out the divisions where some how Boston College and Florida State are in the same division.  There are only nine members in our revision so there wasn't even the need for divisions to be created.  The heart of conference is seven members of the ACC along with the addition of ECU from Conference USA and independent Navy. 

The northern and southern outliers from ACC are no longer apart of the conference.  This creates a balance of the five Carolina schools that are nicely grouped and then the northern pairs of the Virginia schools and Maryland/Navy.  These are also some of the oldest schools in the United States and bring plenty of history with them.  Navy adds even more tradition to this conference.

	North Carolina		Virginia
	Duke		Virginia Tech
	NC State		Maryland
	Wake Forest		Navy
	East Carolina

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Welcome to the eighth installment of our summer series in which we realign the FBS conferences based on geography.  To find out about the concept behind this idea and see our seventh previous revisions make sure you check out our summer series landing page. We release a new conference each week so feel free to bookmark the site so you don't miss any updates.

The Sun Belt has typically been one of the worst performing conferences in the FBS.  A group of smaller schools spread across the southeastern United States that has been dwarfed by it's bigger neighbors.  With this revision it really is an entirely new conference and has very little to do with the old Sun Belt.  The "SEC" was redone last week and that is why we are now revamping the Sun Belt.  Don't let the name throw you off here.

LEAGUE NAME:  We need a new name for this conference since it needs a totally fresh image.  In MLB spring training they have two leagues: the Cactus League in Arizona and the Grapefruit League in Florida.  That second name keeps coming into my mind since all of the Florida schools are included here.  As a result we now present to you: The Big Citrus Conference.  There already is a Citrus Bowl, a Peach Bowl and an Orange Bowl.  Citrus is a huge crop in that region so the name works for this conference.

THE SCHOOLS:  Every conference wants part of the prize that lies in Florida and this conference shows it. Taking members of the SEC, ACC, Big East, Conference USA and Sun Belt.  There is a fair amount of balance with three SEC schools and four SEC schools.  USF is from the Big East and UCF desperately wants to join them.  With seven members from Florida it would certainly be a Florida based conference but the Georgia and South Carolina schools are no slouches and will make they sure are heard at league meetings.

	Georgia		Florida
	Georgia Tech		Miami
	South Carolina		USF
	Clemson		UCF
	Florida State		Florida Atlantic
			Florida International

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Welcome to the seventh installment of our summer series in which we realign the FBS conferences based on geography.  To find out about the concept behind this idea and see our six previous revisions make sure you check out our summer series landing page. We release a new conference each week so feel free to bookmark the site so you don't miss any updates.

Last week we tackled the Great Lakes region and this time we are heading straight back to the heart of the south.  This time we are reshaping the most powerful NCAA football conference for at least the last decade.  Things will look way different after we are finished with the power structure of football in the south.

LEAGUE NAME:  The current name for the Southeast Conference or SEC is a simple yet descriptive name that is almost perfect enough not to mess with.  It doesn't deal with any inaccurate numbers related to membership and it describes the region so well. 

Since this conference is no longer aligned in the east we will go with a new name: Central Southern Conference or CSC.

THE SCHOOLS:  Mix of schools from the SEC, C-USA and the Sun Belt form this new conference.  We draw from five states: Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas and Kentucky.   All the FBS schools from Alabama and Tennessee are included along with Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Arkansas State and Western Kentucky.

There is a true southern flavor with these schools and tradition oozes from every direction. There is plenty of heat, humidity and tons of food because tailgating is considered sport to these diehard fans.  The west division consists of the Arkansas and Mississippi schools, Memphis and western most Alabama schools.  The east combines the remaining Tennessee school schools with Western Kentucky and furthest east Alabama schools.

These divisions work geographically as well as creating some competitive balance,  three SEC schools are allotted to each division.

	Alabama		Auburn
	Ole Miss		Tennessee
	Mississippi State