San Marcos — Consider it a done deal.

Texas State will receive an invitation to join the Western Athletic Conference within the next 30 days — or sooner — along with Denver, Seattle and Texas-San Antonio. Montana has gone from a sure bet to sitting on the fringe, at least for the time being.

WAC Commissioner Karl Benson has stated he’d like the conference to get back to having at least eight football-playing members and with the immediate addition of Texas State and UTSA, it would bring the WAC to eight. When Montana finally gets around to declaring itself ready, it would bring that total to a favorable nine.

“It’s pretty obvious at this point,” WAC Senior Associate Commissioner Jeff Hurd said. “You know who the football playing schools are and you know who the non-football playing schools are. I don’t know if you can say it’s automatic but if you’re looking at a probability, it’s pretty high.”

Yet according to sources close to the situation — since Montana is in currently in a transition mode — Texas State and UTSA will be invited into the conference for all sports while Denver and Seattle will join for all but football.

To many, Montana was a no-brainer to receive an immediate invite to the WAC but since the school just inducted a new president Monday afternoon and has yet to complete its Football Bowl Subdivision feasibility study, it wouldn’t be in a position to accept an invitation in the conference’s time frame.

“After our meetings yesterday with the remaining athletic directors, we decided the bottom line was that we need to move forward sooner rather than later,” Hurd said. “If we invited School A, we want to make sure they accept the invite before we go public with it.”

Currently the WAC has nine members but once Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada bolt for the Mountain West Conference, the conference will be left with Hawai’i, Idaho, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State, San Jose State and Utah State.