A Conference That Spans a Hemisphere The game of musical chairs that is conference realignment has now produced what might be called a superconference, just by its sheer span alone. Reeling from defections of its highest-profile teams, Conference USA and the Mountain West have announced their remaining members will form one big association. This creates a league - which will get a new name - that will create a set of strange bedfellows: Hawaii in the same conference as East Carolina, Wyoming sharing a kinship with Southern Miss. Yes, it is a bunch of schools jumping into a lifeboat, but this is one ludicrously long lifeboat. The whole roster: UNLV, New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado State, Fresno State, Air Force, Nevada, Southern Miss, Tulsa, Rice, Marshall, Texas El-Paso, Alabama-Birmingham, Tulane and East Carolina. Hawaii will be a football-only member. The other schools will compete in all sports. This is an exciting development that will stabilize the current conferences and create the first truly national conference with members in five time zones and television viewership from coast to coast. This partnership brings together like-minded institutions to improve the integrity and stability of intercollegiate athletics," UNLV President Neal Smatresk said in a statement. We are moving our plans forward rapidly and expect to complete our conversations in the near future. Look for further announcements soon as we work together on this exciting new venture. Trying to put a positive spin on a "truly national conference" is no easy task and the travel expenses alone would make some university treasurers weak in the knees, but the new league is expected to use a regional format to make the travel less absurd. The new league hopes to start playing as such in 2013-14. The move follows the latest defections that have weakened C-USA and the Mountain West. Memphis just accepted an invitation to join the Big East, which is trying to fill its shrinking conference and has already swiped Boise State and San Diego State from the Mountain West in football as well as Houston, Southern Methodist and Central Florida from C-USA. The challenge now is naming it. Conference USA came closest to wiggling out of any geographic confines, but the new conference has vowed to have a new name, so perhaps Conference Western Hemisphere? What would you name such an unwieldy collection of schools?