Hawaii to join Mountain West Conference as per CFB insider’s latest conference realignment report

The current conference realignment arms race is heating up, and the reported addition of Hawaii to the Mountain West Conference is the next move by Commissioner Gloria Nevarez. The Rainbow Warriors will join the UTEP Miners who departed Conference USA in a key conference realignment move on Oct. 1.

According to Action Network analyst Brett McMurphy, the Rainbow Warriors will officially join the stabilized MWC as a full member in 2026. Hawaii has been a football-only member of the MWC since 2012 while its other sports competed in the Mid-West Conference.

"Hawaii will join Mountain West as full member in 2026, sources told @ActionNetworkHQ. With 8 full members required to be FBS league, MW now targets NIU & Toledo as football-only members, sources said. MW still wants to add at least 1 football member," McMurphy tweeted Tuesday.

Hawaii Director of Athletics Craig Angelos was ecstatic about the move to the Mountain West Conference. Angelos told KHON2 Sports:

“We will no longer be paying those travel subsidies for those sports, which will save us a lot of money. And then, of course, travel subsidies in the football, that has never has gone over well with any of us. Kind of a slap in the face to have to pay for all your competitors to come over. And I think that was a big issue for us. This is the opportunity to right that ship right now.”

Hawaii to join Mountain West Conference isn't MWC's last move

Commissioner Gloria Nevarez managed to stop the bleeding after the Utah State Aggies departed for sister conference, the Pac-12. Nevarez has since stabilized her conference, and the move by Hawaii to join the Mountain West Conference is a step in the right direction.

Conferences require eight members to be considered a part of the FBS. With the Hawaii move, the conference is now in good standing.

Despite that fact, according to Action Network's Brett McMurphy, the MWC is still targeting more football programs, with the Northern Illinois Huskies and the Toledo Rockets being considered football-only additions to the MWC in further conference realignment moves.

According to the report, the possible addition of Toledo and Northern Illinois would significantly increase the value of any future media rights deal with the conference having programs in five timezones, the only such makeup in the country.

The move by Hawaii to join the Mountain West Conference still leaves the MWC needing one more football-only program to balance the conference to eight league games.

The arms race between the MWC and the Pac-12, who added the Gonzaga Bulldogs as a non-football member, is still at an impasse with both conferences requiring one football member school to balance the league in terms of games played.