Mountain West, C-USA No Longer Considering Dissolution, Discussing Other Options

Conference USA and the Mountain West Conference are "no longer considering dissolving," but instead are "deciding between two options: merge into one league or remain as separate leagues, but share television, marketing and scheduling resources," according to sources cited by Brett McMurphy of CBSSPORTS.com. If the leagues were to dissolve, then they "would lose their NCAA tournament units -- teams earn about $250,000 for their conference for each round they advance" in the men's basketball tournament. That money is "distributed to the conferences after a rolling six-year period." Merging the two current conferences also means the new league "would receive only one automatic NCAA tournament bid." If the conferences decide to stay separate, both leagues "would likely pursue additional members from other leagues" since each has lost several members. Sources said that presidents of the two conferences' member schools have "divided into five subgroups to discuss the different facets of the potential merger or remaining as separate leagues." Tulane Univ. President Scott Cowen last week said that the leagues "are already working on where the new league will be headquartered." Cowen: "So our belief is that it's going to happen" (CBSSPORTS.com, 3/26). In San Jose, Jon Wilner wrote even with an alliance, "which would mostly be for scheduling purposes, the MWC and C-USA may very well add new members." And such a development would "endanger the existence of other conferences." Wilner added the Mountain West must expand because the reconfigured MWC "will have 8 schools for football and 7 for everything else" due to Hawaii's Olympic sports heading to the Big West. The MWC "simply cannot stay at 7 for Oly sports, and, most likely, needs more than 8 for football" (MERCURYNEWS.com, 3/26).