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Members of Conference USA and current and future members of the Mountain West are on their way to forming a new conference that will begin in 2013.
The 16 schools announced their plans Monday.
“This is an exciting development that will stabilize the current conferences and create the first truly national conference with members in five time zones and television viewership from coast to coast,” UNLV President Neal Smatresk said in statement. “We are moving our plans forward rapidly and expect to complete our conversations in the near future. Look for further announcements soon as we work together on this exciting new venture.”
The new conference will likely include 18-24 schools, be split into divisions and not only have a football championship game but also semifinal games, and will hold a conference basketball tournament.
School leaders said they plan to complete work on the new league in six months.
In October, Conference USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky and Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson announced the two leagues were working to merge their football operations starting in 2013.
At the time, both commissioners left open the possibility that the football relationship could grow into something bigger.
Since then four C-USA members—SMU, Houston, Memphis and Central Florida— have announced they will join the Big East in 2013. Boise State and San Diego State from the Mountain West also announced they would be joining the Big East for football and switching their other sports to new conferences. The Mountain West also lost TCU to the Big 12.
The new plan is for Conference USA and the Mountain West to join forces and start over. That would allow the new league to negotiate new television deals.
Nowhere in the release are the names of the conferences mentioned, just the schools involved. They are:
— Air Force, Colorado State, UNLV, New Mexico and Wyoming, which all currently compete in the Mountain West.
— Alabama-Birmingham, East Carolina, Marshall, Rice, Southern Mississippi, Texas-El Paso, Tulane and Tulsa, which all currently compete in Conference USA
— Fresno State, Nevada and Hawaii, which all currently compete in the Western Athletic Conference, but are set to join the Mountain West in 2012.
All the schools except Hawaii will compete in all sports in the new conference. Hawaii will be a football only member.
“Today’s announcement is both a culmination of several months of discussion between the presidents and chancellors of these 16 universities and an historic starting point to forge a ground-breaking, new conference,” Thompson said in a statement. “There are a myriad of details and moving parts that will be finalized in the weeks and months ahead, but there is positive momentum toward long-term stability and a tremendous opportunity for all involved.”
