Sunbelt to lose football only member

[NewsCopy]

The Western Athletic Conference board of directors voted today to invite Idaho to join the league, and the Vandals accepted.

Idaho will enter the league in 2005 as a full member.


"The University of Idaho is a good fit and has a long history with several of the current WAC members," WAC commissioner Karl Benson said. "It also has an academic program that is attractive, it has men and women's athletic programs that we believe adds to the overall strength of the WAC and its location makes geographical sense for the conference."


After Tulsa, Texas-El Paso, Southern Methodist and Rice leave the league after the upcoming 2004-2005 school year, the new WAC will be comprised of Hawaii, New Mexico State, Utah State, Idaho, Fresno State, Boise State, Nevada, San Jose State and Louisiana Tech.


Idaho will leave the Sun Belt (football) and Big West conferences.

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[bigearl]

No big surprise there, I still think LA Tech should join the Belt.

[RedBug58]

That's one less expensive trip for us and one more for Tech. They've been a pretty weak program all along. No TV market either.......

[UL_Cajuns]

The WAC is beginnning to look like the sunbelt rejects. NMSU and Idaho were never good for the belt anyway.

[bigearl]

Forget that... what can we do to improve? Are there any teams that we can add? Correct me if I am wrong, but we will now only have 7 teams, 1 short of the NCAA minimum to remain a conference. What do we do?

[ULTubaTom]

When the ACC wanted Miami to jump from the Big East to join their conference they offered Miami 2 million dollars. Maybe the Sunbelt needs to offer a school like Southern Miss. some money to jump from Conference USA to the Sunbelt.

[RaginCajun77]

I won't say it is time to panic but I think we need to add a member and quickly. We need to act and act now. Its time to lay an offer on the table for ULM and for LA Tech. If neither one of them jumps we need to explore our options.

[Crawfish]

We'll get another member, that is not a problem. The real news is that our travel cost for the Belt just went way down, and if they can jettison Denver, it will plummet even more. This is a really positive development for Idaho and for the Conference. Whoever we replaces them with will be a much easier road trip than Idaho.