(01-24-2020 03:38 PM)Wedge Wrote: That's also true of the other conferences, they "replace" if they want to. And the SBC already showed a preference for 10 football teams rather than 9 when they added Coastal Carolina.
Could be, but that was an all-sport add of a school right near the eastern edge of their previous footprint.
I'd guess that between the three options ... play a complete round robin as 9, with the conference byes and loss of game inventory that entails, invite NMSU FB-only, with the extra travel that entails, or invite UMass FB-only.
If they are choosing between UMass and NMSU, NMSU would leave the divisional alignment stable, while UMass would either push someone -- Troy? -- from East to West or else would in the Western division on a much more distant island from the Western Division schools than NMSU. Between that and the history, NMSU seems a lot more likely.
But NMSU between a 9 school round robin, I dunno.
One difference from the time they failed to get a supermajority to extend NMSU's FB-only contract is at that time, dropping down from 12 FB members to 10 did not drop their base CFP payout, which is per school up to 10 members. This time, if there is a departing FB member, the base drops by one share, and that would be restored if they replace a departing FB member. The SBC might, for example, pass half of that on to NMSU and share the other half of it to whichever schools are visiting NMSU as a travel subsidy.