Report: Mountain West in discussions to add Hawaii as full member to meet FBS requirement

The Mountain West and Hawaii are in discussions about adding Hawaii as a full member to the conference, per a report by Brett McMurphy.

Hawaii is currently a football-only member of the Mountain West and has been since 2012. As of now, the school’s non-football sports compete in the Big West Conference.

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This comes at a time when the Mountain West is looking to solidify its membership amid conference realignment and several schools leaving the conference, and needs to add a full-member to meet the FBS requirement moving forward.

The Mountain West is working now to meet the FBS requirement that a conference have a minimum of eight members, which is required to earn an automatic qualifying spot for the College Football Playoff. There is also a requirement that a multi-sport conference has at least eight members or risk losing recognition and voting rights on things like the Division I Council. However, there is a two-year grace period to increase numbers.

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These changes in realignment come from the Pac-12 looking to reinforce its own membership after falling down to just two schools. It started by adding several Mountain West schools, including Boise State, Fresno State, San Diego State, and Colorado State. That left the Pac-12 still looking to add and Utah State and Gonzaga have also since joined, though Gonzaga doesn’t have football, leaving the Pac-12 still short of the eight teams needed for the FBS requirement.

At the same time, losing five conference members put the Mountain West in a difficult spot, now needing to add to its own membership while preventing further poaching. Schools like Hawaii and UNLV had both been suggested as targets for the Pac-12.

The Pac-12 and Mountain West have both been looking into multiple options. However, those efforts have seen mixed results.  Memphis, Tulane,  UTSA, and USF recently released a joint statement expressing their intention to stay in the AAC. Meanwhile, talks between the Mountain West and Texas State reportedly stalled. Then, Sacramento State’s Pac-12 committee has raised $35 million for NIL funds.

As a school, Hawaii has unique challenges due to its location that makes travel costs very challenging for the school’s teams to get from the Islands to the Mainland and back consistently. At the same time, there is an extensive history there that makes the school’s sports teams popular.

Pac-12 lawsuit against Mountain West over poaching penalty

The Pac-12 has filed a lawsuit against the Mountain West for its poaching penalty that is going to force the Pac-12 to pay over $50 million to add the schools it’s added. It’s a penalty that comes from the scheduling agreement the two conferences recently entered.

In the lawsuit, the Pac-12 is claiming that the Mountain West is guilty of an anti-trust violation and that the rule is unlawful. However, Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez has pushed back on this sentiment.

“It is my responsibility to protect the Conference and always keep its best interests in mind. The Pac-12 Conference is challenging a contractual provision that it expressly agreed to and acknowledged was essential to the Mountain West Conference’s willingness to enter into a Scheduling Agreement, all while advised by sophisticated legal counsel. The provision was put in place to protect the Mountain West Conference from this exact scenario. It was obvious to us and everyone across the country that the remaining members of the Pac-12 were going to try to rebuild,” Nevarez said.

“The fees at issue were included to ensure the future viability of the Mountain West and allow our member institutions to continue providing critical resources and opportunities for our student-athletes. At no point in the contracting process did the Pac-12 contend that the agreement that it freely entered into violated any laws. To say that the Mountain West was taking advantage of the Pac-12 could not be farther from the truth.”

From here, the legal battle is going to need to work itself out while both conferences continue to look to add and solidify their respective positions.