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Mountain West, Conference USA Moving Forward With All Sports Merger, According To UTEP AD

I can not say that I am surprised that this me one bit by this news. With the rampart rumors about conference realignment with Houston, Central Florida, Houston, Boise State, San Diego State and Air Force being targeted by the Big East it only makes sense to fully combine into one giant league. Then it would be a 16-team football league and a 15-team league for basketball and other sports. Hawaii is a football-only member for the Mountain West.

This is coming from UTEP athletic director by Chris Lopez of the El Paso Times via Miner Rush:

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The league would sprawl from Greensboro, N.C., to Las Vegas, Nev. for basketball and all the way to Hawaii for football. Sticking with football, it would be an easy set up by playing seven games against your own division and one or two games against the opposite division. Then followed by a conference championship game. The travel would not be bad since teams would be making three road trips to the opposite coast every two years assuming a nine-game conference schedule.

Also, television deals line up since both expire at the same time in 2016 and from then on the league could be under one television contract.

Those are the few positives about forming one league, but overall it seems like a reach and there is no need to form this type of league unless one of the other is going to fall apart and with teams possibly moving to the Big East, both leagues will survive.

What do you all think?

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