The Sun Belt might add another school -- Louisiana Tech??

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The conference has entertained expansion overtures from multiple programs in recent months, and the league has expressed keen interest in at least one of those candidates, The Miami Herald has learned.

Sources close to the situation would not specify which school is atop the list of contenders, but the pool of potential programs is relatively shallow when the conference’s top two criteria are factored in.

The Sun Belt would only consider universities with an established Football Bowl Subdivision program currently aligned with another conference. And the conference would want any new member to fit into its geographical footprint.

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Of course, only schools currently aligned with non-BCS automatic qualifying conferences would have anything to gain by joining the Sun Belt. Furthermore, Conference USA and Mountain West programs likely would see a move to the Sun Belt as a step down, so schools such as UCF are not an option.

And so, the Sun Belt would likely poach a school from either the Western Athletic — which will lose four teams to the MWC in the next two years — or the Mid-American conferences.

And, winnowing the field even more, the southern-most MAC school is Ohio University — far from a tropical destination.

“Realignment will sooner or later affect us,” Western Kentucky president Gary Ransdell said. “I think the Southeast has to be where we focus our attention.”

Perhaps tellingly, Ransdell added: “The WAC can’t afford to lose much more if they’re going to be a viable conference.”

By 2012, the WAC will become just a seven-school football conference, four of which — including Louisiana Tech and New Mexico State — are past members of the Sun Belt.

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