The University of Hawaii will be joining the Mountain West Conference as a full-time member starting in 2026. This ensures the conference’s NCAA high Division I standing moving forward. Hawaii has been a football-only member since 2012, so the move means the school will bring its other varsity sports to the conference.

The University of Hawaii’s full membership ensures that the Mountain West Conference will be recognized by the Football Bowl Subdivision, as the conference has met the eight school minimum. The Mountain West has survived conference realignment despite losing five members to the PAC-12 conference. The PAC-12 currently sits with seven members and has been competing with the Mountain West to add another.

Now that the Mountain West has beat the PAC-12 in reaching the eight team mark, it eases the burden of recruiting schools against the competing conference. The Mountain West will save millions of dollars, as they can worry less about trying to lure in prospective schools with the exit fees of the five schools that left.

However, the Mountain West is still looking to add one more member. The top candidates to be added to the Mountain West are rumored to be Northern Illinois University and the University of Toledo. Both schools currently reside in the Mid-American Conference and adding one or both would help with football scheduling. Normally, schools play eight conference games a year, so having nine members means that everyone plays each other once.

The safety of the Mountain West Conference means that the University of Wyoming is safe from moving down to Division II or to a smaller conference. That would have had serious implications for the athletic department’s budget as the University would lose broadcasting and brand deals. It would have likely led to a variety of varsity sports being cut along with the department losing funding. Now, UW can look forward to more years in the very conference it helped found.