Conference USA and Mountain West Reportedly Set to Merge

Conference realignment in college football continues to heat up, as the Conference USA and the Mountain West are set to become one. 

According to sources from Brett McMurphy of CBSSports, the new conference won't start until the 2013-14 academic year. The sources cited legal reasons for the merger.  

There is no name for the new conference yet, but it will feature 16 total teams. 

What It Means 

The sport of college football is about to be down a conference. You can call this a super conference if you want since there will be so many teams in it, but the level of talent isn't on par with programs in the automatic qualifying conferences. 

The teams in this new conference are expected to be Marshall, East Carolina, UAB, Tulsa, Rice, Southern Miss, Tulane and UTEP of Conference USA, as well as Air Force, Colorado State, UNLV, New Mexico, Fresno State, Wyoming, Nevada and Hawaii of the MWC. 

The report states that Hawaii will be a football only school, meaning 15 teams for all sports and 16 for football. 

College football is constantly changing, and this new conference featuring teams from all across the country is further proof that geography is only a small factor in forming a league. 

What Happens Next? 

For starters, this new conference needs to think of a name. Please, if you have any suggestions for this craziness, I'd love to hear them in the comment section.

These new teams will have a lot to figure out over the next year in terms of scheduling not just football but all other sports. Plus, they have to decide what each division will be like. One would assume it would be all Conference USA teams on one side and then all MWC on the other, but you never know.

There's plenty of time to find a new name, and what would be really cool is if they let the teams of this new conference decide what it should be called. That's unlikely, though, but one can certainly dream. 

Whatever they decide to call it, each program will endure big changes moving forward. It's a smart move, though, especially with all the other conferences making new additions. Needless to say, the future of college football is changing in a big way right before our eyes.