Mountain West, C-USA still flirting, despite breakup rumor

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Merger, amalgamation or association.

Speculation is heating up about what form a proposed union of the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA might take.

The chairman of the MWC Board of Directors maintained on Tuesday, “We are on course and proceeding as planned” in the face of a CBS.com report that labeled the impending merger as “unlikely” and quoted an “industry source” as saying it “probably will not happen.”

But Nevada-Las Vegas president Neal Smatresk, who heads the MWC board, told the Star-Advertiser in an email, “I have no idea where that came from. We are on course and proceeding as planned.”

The two conferences said last month they have an early June deadline for an announcement.

Britton Banowsky, C-USA commissioner, told the Star-Advertiser in a text, “… the work continues on the project. No decisions have been made and the next meeting of presidents is at the end of the month. Our timeline for a decision is early June.”

The University of Hawaii will join the MWC as a football-only member on July 1. Nevada and Fresno State will become full members.

In February, the two conferences had declared their intention of dissolving in order to form a new 16- to 24-member conference to promote stability and negotiate a more lucrative TV contract. But they acknowledged in March that obstacles, including the retention of NCAA basketball tournament money, made a merger more likely than the creation of a new conference.

The MWC, which will be left with eight teams when Boise State and San Diego State move to the Big East, has been considering expansion with Utah State and San Jose State from the Western Athletic Conference and, possibly, Texas-El Paso of C-USA. Meanwhile, C-USA, which will have eight schools when Southern Methodist, Houston, Central Florida and Memphis depart, has been looking at several possibilities, including Louisiana Tech of the WAC, Charlotte of the Atlantic 10 and Sun Belt members Florida Atlantic, Florida International and North Texas.

Smatresk said a decision on MWC expansion was still expected by mid-June.