Long-time readers know that Conference USA’s headquarters are great. Just check out this review from a satisfied customer:
Frequent readers may also know that Conference USA’s undergoing a bit of realignment. To be honest, I haven’t followed it closely. It’s been a busy fall. But to my credit, I’ve maintained a vague awareness that something very bad is happening to Conference USA, and as someone who habitually makes some variant of the “Conference USA’s champion is a national champion by definition” joke and as someone enamored with Conference USA’s headquarters, this of course concerns us all greatly.
This morning, I finally figured out what all went down, and whoa. It’s bad. From ESPN:
C-USA subtractions: Alabama-Birmingham, Florida Atlantic, Charlotte, Marshall, North Texas, Old Dominion, Rice, Southern Miss, Texas-San Antonio.
C-USA additions: Jacksonville State, Liberty, New Mexico State, Sam Houston
We’ll get to the additions, but the subtractions…whoa. That’s a lot of teams. That’s a ton of teams. That’s nine teams! And while Conference USA isn’t a twelve-team league, like you may be wondering, nine still constitutes the heavy majority of the league. Conference USA lost nine of its fourteen members. A healthy quorum. Gone. Sparsened. Scattered.
Well, not exactly scattered. UAB, FAU, Charlotte, Rice, UTSA, and North Texas are off to the American Athletic Conference, which we still haven’t figured out how to uniformly address colloquially (“The American?” “The AAC?”) but is clearly trying to steal the national champion joke from C-USA. If your response to this is to ask whether this basically makes the American just Conference USA, you’re not alone. The AAC is going to kind of stink once all this actually happens, in…2023? Unless UTSA becomes dominant, that is. UTSA could, I suppose, become dominant. The other three—Marshall, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss—are going to the Sun Belt, which took a distinct approach from the American in that it tried to make its league better rather than trying to make its league have schools in Texas. Poor Memphis, man. Although as we’ve pointed out before, they’re definitely too dirty for conferences to work with, right? That’s what’s going on here?
With the Sun Belt, the American, and even the MAC evidently ahead of them (the MAC almost claimed Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee State), Conference USA had to go places no one else would go. They took on New Mexico State, whom nobody wants because they’re in the middle of nowhere and aren’t competitive in football. They took on Liberty, whom nobody wants because they’re plagued by scandal. They grabbed the spring FCS champion, Sam Houston State, giving them a foothold in East Texas in addition to UTEP’s space out past West Texas (El Paso is, by my understanding, not in West Texas so much as it is its own entity beyond West Texas out at the edge of the known universe). They grabbed another FCS program who may have tricked the league into thinking they were good, in Jacksonville State. Sam Houston State and Jacksonville State might sound like fine additions, and they aren’t terrible (they make sense geographically), but Conference USA didn’t go get the Dakota schools. Conference USA didn’t go get the Montana schools. Conference USA didn’t go get Eastern Washington or James Madison or even UC-Davis. It got two fine FCS programs. It did not get two great FCS programs.
Now, the league looks like this, more or less from West to East:
- New Mexico State
- UTEP
- Sam Houston State
- Louisiana Tech
- Western Kentucky
- Jacksonville State (Jacksonville State is in northern Alabama, not the massive, pointless city in Florida)
- Middle Tennessee State
- FIU
- Liberty
The league’s geographic center moves more of less to Jacksonville (the one in northern Alabama, not the massive, pointless city in Florida), but I’m assuming they’re keeping the headquarters up by Dallas. So that, at least, is a silver lining. But man…Conference USA really did get wrecked.
Listing off all those FCS teams Conference USA could have targeted (and maybe did contact), the idea does spring to mind of Conference USA trying to be an FCS super league. Going by the Sagarin ratings, the top fourteen FCS squads this year have a median rating of around the 100th-best Division I football team. For Conference USA, the median’s back around 120th. Maybe Conference USA thought of this. The Sun Belt poached James Madison before they got a chance. But the FCS super league could be fun, guys. Future idea. Since if your new league gets good you’re going to be doing this again pretty soon.
I guess our last question is who has it the worst within Conference USA. FIU did this to themselves—that place has plenty of advantages. Western Kentucky’s still on the come-up from the FCS, so while this stings, it’s not a disaster. Middle Tennessee State had a few years of great basketball, so I guess they could be hurting, but I really only think of their logo when I think of them and the logo is staying. UTEP’s in El Paso, and this is not a knock on El Paso from me, personally, but society does not like El Paso (so it’s a knock on El Paso from society, personally). I think, then, it’s Louisiana Tech. You won the old WAC once. You got leapfrogged by Louisiana-Lafayette. You seem to have been leapfrogged by Louisiana-Monroe. Your buddies at Southern Miss up and left you. No, you’ve never been awesome, but you made seven straight bowl games before this year, you won the first six, you’re in Louisiana, and the AAC took Charlotte while the Sun Belt took Old Dominion. That’s gotta hurt.
Again, though, I think they’re keeping the headquarters. We’ll always have that little trail by the lake.
