The silence has broken as the Mountain West is expected to add Hawaii to the conference as a full member. Hawaii has already been part of the Mountain West as a football-only member, but now all athletics are expected to compete under the Mountain West banner. College football insider Brett McMurphy just announced this information recently.
However, one of the most essential parts of this new deal isn’t the full membership, but Hawaii won’t have to pay travel subsidies to visiting teams. It’s been a long-standing issue with Hawaii that teams would require a travel subsidy to compete in Hawaii because of its remote location. Those days are gone; however, as per their new agreement with the Mountain West, they won’t have to pay visiting teams anymore. This is a massive win for a program that has consistently struggled to attract competition to the islands. Removing this barrier will improve the athletic situation of the university.
This is big news for the Mountain West Conference itself as well. Adding Hawaii as a full member means the conference has the required number of full-member teams to maintain its conference destination. Since the Pac-12 plundering, the Mountain West needed to expand its numbers, sitting at just seven full members before this move. Now that they’re at the threshold, they can focus on long-term rebuilding and the future of the conference.
However, these aren’t the last moves the Mountain West has planned. They have set their eyes on adding two other schools to their ranks, focusing on adding NIU and Toledo to the conference as football-only schools. The goal is to add at least one more football school to the conference. With both schools currently playing in the MAC, there are reasons this could be a tempting offer. Even though it might not be a considerable increase, Mountain West could offer a better media rights deal and upfront compensation for joining. This could be an exciting arrangement for two schools looking for a large footprint in the college athletic scene. It feels unlikely that they would jump ship, though. The current arrangement in the MAC would prevent the schools from separating their football programs from the conference while keeping their other athletic programs attached. So, it would most likely mean they would have to join as full members or separate their football programs and join a separate conference like the Horizon League for the rest of their sports.
It’s unclear how solid these talks are, as things are still developing, but we’ll keep you updated on any new information.
For those who missed what happened this Saturday evening, Oregon managed to squeak out a win over conference rival Ohio State. The game came down to the wire with a final drive from Ohio State in the game's waning moments. Down one point, all they needed was a field goal. They were driving the ball well, nearing field goal range as the clock ticked down.
This was until a rather interesting moment happened. With the clock winding down, Oregon seemingly made a critical error. They had a formation with 12 men on the field. This led to a too-many-men-on-the-field penalty, which is 5 yards and a replay of the down. This seemed like a critical mistake by the Ducks, but it was the plan.
The thing about a 12-man on-the-field penalty is that the clock still ran for the down. Even though they had an extra defender in on the play, and the offense was given 5 yards, it still helped the Ducks. The Ducks managed to burn crucial seconds off the clock, guaranteeing the offense only earned 5 yards on the play. These few seconds, while not entirely the reason for the Ducks' victory over the Buckeyes, did influence the game.
The debate is about what should happen because of this. Now that the flaw in the rules has come to the surface, the NCAA is investigating the issue. It’s unlikely to affect the game's result, but we may see an adjustment to the rule. We could easily see the “Lanning Rule” added to the rule book. Perhaps making 12 men on the field a dead-ball penalty prevents clock run-off or allows the coach to accept the clock run-off. Regardless of what they do, this was undoubtedly a genius understanding of the rules. The fact that Lanning pulled this wizardry out of his pocket in one of their most critical games was undoubtedly impressive.