The decision to break from the Western Athletic Conference was always about football and money, never about men's basketball or automatic qualification.

But the fallout from the eight presidents' decision in May of 1998 to leave the WAC and form the Mountain West Conference in 1999 has finally hit men's basketball.

	“	If you look at the strength of our league, especially at the top, it's hard to imagine we won't get two to three schools in no matter if we have the bid or not. ”
		— New Mexico coach Fran Fraschilla

Neither the WAC nor the MWC will have an automatic berth to the 2000 men's basketball tournament.

Both groups -- the WAC (Fresno State, San Jose State, Hawaii, UTEP, Tulsa, Rice, SMU and TCU) and the MWC (Utah, Colorado State, BYU, Wyoming, New Mexico, San Diego State, Air Force, UNLV) -- protested to the NCAA, but to no avail.

The rule is clear: six members must have continuous membership for five seasons to keep the automatic berth. The WAC had only three (Fresno State, UTEP and Hawaii) that met the criteria. The league will play its fourth season this year with at least six members together for five years. The NCAA waived the final year, allowing the WAC to regain the bid in 2001.

The MWC made a claim that it should be judged like the Big 12, which didn't lose its bid when it added four Southwest Conference members to the Big Eight. The reason is the conference bylaws never changed and the league didn't have to apply for new membership in the NCAA's governing structure. The MWC did. But instead of penalizing the MWC for five years, it only banned the league for one season (in all championship-sponsored sports).

"If you look at the strength of our league, especially at the top, it's hard to imagine we won't get two to three schools in no matter if we have the bid or not," said New Mexico coach Fran Fraschilla, who took St. John's and Manhattan to the NCAAs in previous stops. "I don't think we'll have much of a problem this one year, until we get our bid."

The rest of the NCAA membership wasn't about to raise the automatic berths to 31. The men's basketball committee has capped the number of automatic berths at 30 and will have to decide for the 2001 tournament to either bump it up to 31 or force a play-in of the two lowest-rated conferences for the 30th spot. The WAC and MWC have been guaranteed automatic berths in 2001.

Technically, 35 at-large berths are available, but the WAC and MWC shouldn't fret over needing at-large berths to gain entry to the field.

The champions will likely earn bids and the second-place teams should, too.

The Great Midwest never had an automatic bid during its four-year existence from 1991 to '95. In 1991-92, Cincinnati, Memphis and DePaul all made the field with Cincinnati and Memphis playing in the Elite Eight and eventually the Bearcats in the Final Four.

Cincinnati, Memphis and Marquette made it in '92-93, and Cincinnati, Marquette, Alabama-Birmingham and Saint Louis earned bids in '93-94. In the final season ('94-95) before it evolved into Conference USA, Cincinnati, Memphis and Saint Louis were invited.

"We definitely have a chance for multiple bids, as in three," MWC commissioner and men's basketball committee chair Craig Thompson said during the MWC meetings last month. "But we'll have to win our share of bigger non-conference games to get our RPI up. We have to get those wins against top 40 teams. There will be little room for error."

Hawaii coach Riley Wallace said he noticed that all of the teams in WAC downgraded their schedules this year, which could dip the WAC's overall power rating. The mentality among schools like TCU, Tulsa, and to some extent Fresno State, was to load up on 'W's' to get 20-plus wins going into the conference tournament.

Both leagues will still have a conference tournament, even though the winner won't receive an automatic bid. It could help a team like Fresno State, which hosts the WAC tournament, if it has 20 wins going into the tournament and comes out with 23 to bulk up its at-large portfolio. But it could hurt a third team from getting a bid. TCU coach Billy Tubbs said the WAC tournament will hurt, not help, the league because a potential NCAA team could be knocked out of contention with an early-round loss.

Utah coach Rick Majerus has been an outspoken critic of conference tournaments, claiming they don't help teams get into the tournament, take away class time and usually wear out the top team in the league.

But Thompson and WAC commissioner Karl Benson were adamant about hosting tournaments during the one-year hiatus. Benson said he didn't want to be silent during Championship Week. Thompson concurred.

"We have seven good reasons to hold one," Thompson said of the tournament in Las Vegas. "That's how many MWC tournament games are on ESPN. But more important than that we have kids on eight teams who want nothing more but to compete for that trophy. They don't care what's there at the end of the day. Kids want to play, and a tournament makes for a wonderful atmosphere."

And, in the end, the top two teams will likely be in the NCAA Tournament even without an automatic bid.

Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.