RE: Reconstitute a WAC
I think the Sun Belt's decision to part ways with Idaho and NMSU will have impacts on the WAC, but there's virtually no chance of it triggering the WAC's reconstitution as an FBS conference.
After the WAC lost most of its football members in 2012 and 2013, NCAA rules gave the WAC a two-year grace period to get back up to having the minimum eight FBS schools as full members to keep its status as an FBS conference. The two years went by, it didn't happen, and the WAC is no longer eligible for FBS status without an NCAA rules waiver. The current FBS conferences have no motivation to support such a waiver, so it's doubtful the NCAA would ever grant one. This would be true even if Idaho were willing to rejoin NMSU in the WAC, and the conference somehow succeeded in recruiting six of the eight top-funded FCS athletic programs west of the Mississippi -- UC Davis, North Dakota, North Dakota State, Sac State, Cal Poly, Montana, Northern Arizona, and Montana State -- to move up to FBS and join the WAC also.
However it is possible that, with NMSU's participation and leadership, the WAC could sponsor a new southwestern FCS football conference. This would require a few unlikely but not implausible things to happen.
First, Idaho would have to drop down to FCS and join the Big Sky, pushing its football membership to a bloated 14. Second, western and southern members of the Big Sky would have to decide they'd had enough of long road trips to icy Idaho, Montana and North Dakota. And third, NMSU would also have to drop down to FCS, but instead of seeking membership in the Big Sky or Southland, convince the WAC to sponsor FCS football and recruit disaffected members from the Big Sky.
For the record, I think that NMSU would be better off staying at the FBS level as an independent than dropping down. But if the school administration opts for FCS, it would be crazy for NMSU to join a supersized Big Sky or Southland conference and be stuck playing schools like Idaho State and Northern Colorado or Houston Baptist and Nicholls State. A strong new regional FCS conference affiliated with the WAC would be a much better home for NMSU.
The target schools to recruit from the Big Sky would be the four western and southern Big Sky outliers on the top-funded list above, i.e. UC Davis, Sac State, Cal Poly, and Northern Arizona, plus Portland State which had the best overall record among Big Sky schools in 2015 (including wins over FBS Washington State and North Texas) and is rebuilding its fan base. Having those five plus NMSU would qualify the new conference for an FCS playoff auto-bid. In the longer run UTRGV's start-up football program could be added to give the conference a Texas presence.
The side benefit of this strategy is that it would enable the WAC to replace Chicago State and UMKC with Portland State and Northern Arizona for non-football sports (presumably UC Davis and Cal Poly would leave their non-football sports in the Big West, and Sac State would put its non-football sports there as well). This would return the WAC to not only being a football-sponsoring conference but also a true western conference with reasonable travel.
In the new age of Division I athletics, if you're not a Power 5 conference you want to stay regional to control costs and keep your membership small enough to give everyone a good shot at the post-season. NMSU is a big dog in the WAC and has an opportunity to leverage its influence to re-make the WAC to fit that model and improve its own circumstances. I think that's a better option for the Aggies than becoming the 11th or 12th or 15th football member of an existing FCS conference where NMSU will have the same outlier stigma it had in the Sun Belt.
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