The MAC benefits from having a collective group of schools in a compact geographic area, all of which are on the same pecking order in college football. NIU and Ohio fans might have fever dreams of the AAC but those ideas aren't backed up by administration support .
Take a look at the other G5 conferences leagues. They all suffer in that their geography is all spread out and massive numbers of their membership want greener pastures and their adminstations do as well. The MWC in particular deals with an extreme outlier in Hawaii, and their bell-cows Boise State and San Diego State who have tried to bolt twice in the last thirty-six months with enthusiastic support from their administration.. The AAC had an awkward existence last summer where pretty much every member of their conference sans Tulsa pursued Big 12 membership publicly.
The desire to move up is a pretty big elephant in the room: CUSA and the SBC are no different. CUSA backfilled for years with SBC members as their own membership moved on to different leagues.
The solution to the issue isn't merger between the two leagues it's splitting the 24 schools into three tight geographic leagues
Flair Country
Marshall
App State
UNC-C
Old Dominion
Coastal Carolina
WKU
MTSU
*James Madison
* Would need to move up**
** or Liberty stops being horrible.
Georgia/Florida Line
Georgia Southern
Georgia State
FIU
FAU
UAB
Troy
USA
S.Miss
Louisexas
ULM
La Tech
ULL
Ark State
Rice
N.Texas
Tex State.
UTSA
That's three geographically balanced leagues, compact to save on travel cost and with a regional identity to form rivalries. Eight team leagues would allow scheduling flexiility - either to ensure more money games to float their athletic departments or to schedule and maintain rivalries across the different leagues.
What about UTEP - UTEP needs to be in the MWC. geographically they align better, I assume at some point Hawaii is either going to fold or be evicted from the MWC. They'll fit in that slot.
