WAC adds another non-football member

The WAC expanded on Thursday, but once again the conference added a�non-football member.

UT-Arlington is the newest addition to the league, bringing total membership to 10 teams. But there are only seven football playing members -- still short of the NCAA minimum for Division I conferences. Commissioner Karl Benson said on a conference call Thursday that he is hopeful that UT-Arlington would add football in the future. School president Jim Spaniolo said that discussion would not take place until after a new basketball arena is completed later this year.

Benson said the league still was looking for more football playing members both on the FBS and FCS level to begin play in 2013-14. But there are no indications on what schools could be eventually added.� He maintained that the addition of UT-Arlington would strengthen the basketball product and get the WAC multiple bids into the tournament, which would also increase money coming into the conference.

In addition, the move to bring in UT-Arlington keeps WAC in line with its vision to have 12 basketball schools and nine football schools. The WAC will now focus on bringing in two more football programs, Benson said.

"We definitely need to focus in on the football piece," Benson said. "We think that this addition of UT-Arlington is one more piece of the structure and that it puts us in a position to now know that we're two schools away from that No. 12. Without ruling anyone out, we are going to spend our time now really focusing and attempting to secure football-playing members.

"Right now, any FBS, any FCS school that is in our footprint, and the footprint is Texas, Louisiana and the states in the West, we have not ruled anyone out. It's been pretty clear that over the course from January to the first of May, we have made several visits and various contacts. We will follow up with the same pool of prospective football-playing members."

Source: http://espn.go.com/blog/ncfnation/post/_/id/43864/wac-adds-another-non-football-member

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