Because I agree that USF is too far out on the island. But if you do California, Colorado, Texas, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Texas that still pretty much hits Western US...with Memphis (Tennessee) and Tulane (Louisiana) as the mild outliers, but at least nearby.

And that's better than adding New Mexico and Hawaii (longer and more expensive travel) and Wyoming. You can argue that nobody cares about Tulane vs SDSU.... but do they care more about Wyoming vs SDSU

Actually, here's what would have been the ideal case for them - highlighting regionality and national spread



4 Divisions/Pods

• Northwest - Oregon State + Washington St + Boise St
• Southwest - San Diego St + Fresno St + UNLV
• Mountain - Colorado St + Air Force + Utah St (USU could be swapped out with Wyoming or New Mexico or Tulsa, but I think USU is best of those options)
• Texas - UTSA + Texas St + Tulane

Every year you play your pod (2 games), plus 2 of the other pods (6 games).  With the 9th game being against the similarly ranked team in the pod you didn't play, setting up a de facto tournament and veefing up the resume of your top teams, making you a near shoo-in for the last conference champion spot.

(For a full read on how this system would work, see here --> https://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=27917164)

In this case, it's great because you have two defacto rivals that you play every year, but still play the other teams at LEAST 2 of every 3 years, with the best teams playing one another even more often.

If you're the PNW or Mountain pod, you're going to play in California 5 out of every 6 years (2 out of 3 years you'll go against the California conference and half the time you don't play that pod,you'll still travel there in your end-of-season flex game).  Similar story for Texas