A few more journalist around the WAC have weighed in on what the future holds for the WAC. Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News blogged about a few possible replacements for Boise State. Among the options according to Wilner's conversation with a few of his sources are to stay at an eight team league, add one of the teams we've mentioned in our earlier posts and those being Montana, UC-Davis, Cal Poly, San Diego State (unlikely) or North Texas. It's interesting to note that North Texas turned down WAC membership back in 2005 when Utah State, Idaho and New Mexico State joined the league. We've also read elsewhere that North Texas is actually hoping for membership in Conference USA. Remember that UNT has already experienced the financial burden of having to travel to west when USU, Idaho and NM State were in the Sun Belt and their administration may not want to travel down that road again, particularly since they'd be adding the Hawai'i trip.

San Diego State is one we hadn't really seen mentioned much. It's hard to believe that SDSU would leave the Mountain West to join the WAC, particularly since the MWC will be a stronger football conference and has a better financial distribution from a television contract perspective, not to mention that the Mountain West has been a stronger men's basketball conference in the past few seasons. But here is Wilner's thinking on the subject:

"But I wonder if California State University boss Charlie Reed would consider such a move in order to make struggling SDSU more competitive and have all three of his FBS teams in the same league."

The other option that Wilner brings up is adding non-football playing schools which apparently Commissioner Benson is open to (which could potentially open the door for either Denver or Utah Valley).

Matt Hinton, aka Dr. Saturday, one of the most respected college football bloggers out there writes that everyone is a winner in the conference realignment... except the WAC.

Here's a telling excerpt from his guest recent appearance on the radio in Fresno:

"Take Fresno State. The Bulldogs, in spite of their consistently solid record over the last decade and hard-earned reputation as giant-killers, haven't won even a share of a conference championship in 13 years under coach Pat Hill. When I did a spot this morning on Fresno radio, though, the question wasn't "Can we finally win the WAC now that Boise's gone?" It was "Is there any chance we can get an invite to the Mountain West, too?""

Those thoughts only echo the sentiments from Nevada and Fresno State that we shared in Friday's Daily Aggie.

Finally adding insult to injury (or in this case potential financial injury to injury), Chad Crippe of the Idaho Statesman reports that ESPN has the right to renegotiate the new $4 million television contract with the WAC because of the departure of Boise State in 2011. While according to the article Benson states that that particular conversation with ESPN hasn't taken place yet, one would imagine that it will pretty soon. Boise State was, as the article states, the centerpiece for ESPN's WAC football coverage and as another writer mentioned, the national audience isn't tuning in late November to watch Idaho versus Utah State, they're tuning in to see Boise State.

On to today's links...

Misc.
The Upset Blog ponders what's next for the WAC.

Ferd Lewis of the Honolulu Star Advertiser writes that Hawai'i needs to start positioning itself for the next conference shuffle.

Darrell Moody of the Nevada Appeal offers his thoughts on the expansion carousel.

Teddy Feinberg of the Las Cruces Sun-News shares his thoughts on what Boise State leaving the WAC means for the conference.

Aggie Women's Basketball
Jason Groves of the Las Cruces Sun-News spoke with head coach Darin Spence about scheduling.

Aggie Football
Teddy Feinberg of the Las Cruces Sun-News blogs about a few local players getting noticed.

Teddy Feinberg also writes about running back prospect Brandon Betancourt.

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