The Mid-American Conference board voted to add UMass as an all-sports member beginning in 2025-26, a person briefed on the discussions said.

UMass was previously in the MAC as a football-only member from 2012-15. The school and the conference parted ways because UMass declined to bring all of its sports to the conference. The school has been hesitant to leave the Atlantic 10, a conference in which it was a founding member.

UMass football won an FCS national championship in 1998 and reached the championship game in 2006, but it has struggled since moving up to FBS in 2012, never winning more than four games in a season. Coach Don Brown, who led that 2006 team, is 4-20 in two seasons in his second stint leading the program.

The men’s basketball team, which is led by former South Carolina coach Frank Martin, hasn’t reached the NCAA Tournament since 2014. They’re 17-10, the program’s most wins since 2015. The women’s basketball team won 53 games in the previous two seasons but is currently 3-26. Ice hockey plays in the Hockey East Association, separate from any A-10 to MAC move.

This will be the first full membership addition for the MAC since 1998 when it added Buffalo. The conference briefly had UCF, Temple and UMass as football-only members since then.

The MAC considered…

A lot can change over the course of a week in the world of women’s college basketball. Some teams that looked as though they might limp into the field last week have fallen completely out of the running for an NCAA Tournament bid. Other long shots, like West Virginia, have inched in.

There are only a few more days to go until Selection Sunday, which means there’s plenty of bubble drama to come. And with a handful of conference tournaments still left to play — including the Big 12 — more changes can happen.

Here’s our latest Bubble Watch:

Sitting pretty

Kansas (19-10, 9-9 Big 12; NET: 35, SOS: 47)

A stretch of three straight losses to West Virginia (NET: 61), Oklahoma (36) and Kansas State (67) looked dicey. But Kansas rebounded at just the right time with three consecutive wins, including a 98-93 win over Iowa State (14), to close out the regular season. Despite only two total wins against high-quality opponents, the Jayhawks’ strength of schedule has put them in a great position heading into the Big 12 tournament, where they will face TCU in the first round — an opponent they recently clobbered 84-61. Another win against the Horned Frogs, along with an upset or a solid game against Oklahoma in the second round, and Kansas can rest easy and prepare for the Big Dance.