UTEP has always been, is and will always be a Western school trying to be a Texas school. Although C-USA has been really nice to UTEP and it's nice the conference wanted us back in 2004, I think this C-USA experiment should come to an end. Yes, we would lose our ties to DFW, Houston and San Antonio but hopefully our new coach will be able to recruit good players from Texas and California. Look at Boise State, they're in a region that offers little to no recruits at the FBS level but they have had coaches who win so that's why they're having winning seasons well over a decade now.

We belong in the Mountain West. They have like minded institutions and their basketball brand is strong, I would say most years they will be about the same or even better than Pac-12 basketball. The MWC dominates its region and the only power conference that's in its footprint is the Pac-12 which will leave the MWC alone for the next few decades. The WAC which was a competitor is dead after this year so the MWC and Pac-12 are the only two conferences left in the Mountain and Pacific time zones. And let's not forget our biggest rival New Mexico is there, I'm sure Floyd vs Alford would be an interesting rivalry in the MWC.

If we stay in C-USA then fine. But playing football and basketball with the likes of:

New Mexico
Air Force
Colorado State
Wyoming
Fresno State
Hawaii
San Jose State
Utah State
UNLV
Nevada

is much better than the alternative we have now. The only two schools I really care about in this conference are Tulsa and Rice and hopefully they can come with us or if they don't, I hope we would play those two in a regular basis in OOC, especially Rice.

I'm not dogging the other C-USA schools or the new additions. Each one of them old and new bring positives and will contribute to the conference one way or another. Like I said, if we stay here fine but I think long term UTEP will be better off in the MWC.