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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; UMass will no longer be a football-only member of the MAC after the 2015 season. (Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Massachusetts will no longer be a football-only member of the MAC at the conclusion of\u00A0the 2015 season, the conference revealed on Wednesday. The league\u00A0exercised a contractual clause which offered\u00A0UMass a choice: Become\u00A0a full member or begin\u00A0a two-year football-only provision after which the school will be free to join another conference.\u00A0The clause was exercised on Feb.\u00A017\u00A0during meetings with the MAC\u00A0Council of Presidents. UMass declined full membership, putting\u00A0the two-year time limit into effect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This comes as a byproduct\u00A0of\u00A0Temple's decision to leave the MAC as a football member and join the Big East -- now the American Athletic Conference -- in 2012. When that happened, the MAC dropped down from a balanced 14 teams to an uneven 13, which made\u00A0scheduling difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\"This has really been a multi-year effort at taking a look at what we want to do moving forward,\" MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher told SI.com. \"You can call this an aftershock from the departure of Temple.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\"Both Temple and UMass wanted deals which didn't have a sunset attached to them when we negotiated. They were not sustaining deals. We were willing to do so, but we also wanted some protection in case one of the football-only members left. We built in a clause that if one of the football-only members left, we could convert the contract to a term contract.\"&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discussions surrounding the Minutemen's future\u00A0in the MAC began in October and continued into the Council of Presidents meetings in February.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\"We got to the point where we decided we wanted people all-in, so we acted accordingly,\" Steinbrecher said. \"We've had a great association with the University of Massachusetts and we look forward to the next two years with them. But it was time for us to move forward.\"&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;UMass, which agreed to join the MAC in 2011, began the NCAA's two-year transitional period and played its final season\u00A0at the FCS level in '11. The Minutemen went 1-11 (1-7) in both '12 and '13. Steinbrecher said he believes UMass will make \"a good member for whichever conference they end up in.\"&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This move will\u00A0bring the MAC to 12 members beginning\u00A0in the 2016 season.\n\"I'm not going to hypothesize or speculate on what the future holds membership-wise,\" Steinbrecher said. \"We like the 12 full members we have very much. We've been as stable a group as there's been. We'll look forward to building upon that.\"&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/college-football/campus-union/2014/03/26/umass-mac-football-conference-membership>