(03-16-2014 09:49 PM)CajunExpress Wrote: Large sample CajunFanatico, large sample. WKU good at all sports and football. Southern Miss has a long, long, long history of great football. LTU great history, Middle pretty solid. North Teas coming back. Wat am I missing? Oh yea, UL and ASU want to be there. That makes it a lot better.
Rice great baseball, UTEP has a national championship in their history basket ball and ok football. Rice Ok football. So you base every thing on Troy, two newbies, ULM thats it.
I've seen your argument laid out over and over, agree with some of it, but it mostly points to
potential and contains lots of history.
Here are my comebacks.
USM, as much as I admire and respect what they've done in the past, is in a DEEP HOLE in many of their sports and the landscape has changed so much around them, that I'm not convinced they'll ever climb back out of it.
Rice will bolt C-USA quicker than a cat can lick his ass. Of that there is no doubt.
La Tech seems to be hot and cold and while they've been a great rival for the Cajuns, have you really seen them build on what they've accomplished in football? They were terrible this past year, terrible.
North Texas had one good year, this past one, out of the last how many? I'm not convinced that they'll be able to leverage that into anything next year. They claim they're reloading. I'm thinking their fans might just be loaded and not realize how much graduation has cost them.
UTSA? Great add. Respect their football and wish we had them in the Belt. Basketball, they suck, but so do most of the Belt teams.
WKU I hate to lose for many reasons. They're definitely a plus for C-USA.
But then there's the F_U's, UAB, UTEP, and a host of newbies with virtually no history in football.
The Belt was the top-rated non-AQ football conference this past year....not 2 seasons ago, this past year with most members finishing bowl-eligible. That's something very positive to build on.
Arkansas State has consistently shown that it's a winner in football despite overcoming the huge obstacle of yearly coaching changes.
And if you wish to talk history, are there any better programs than App State and Georgia Southern when it comes to college football? Anyone who doubts that they won't make every effort to replicate in FBS what they did in FCS better watch out.
If stAte and the Cajuns leave for C-USA, it will definitely make that conference better and hurt the Belt. But again, in my personal opinion it'd amount to a lateral move. I hope we stop this realignment madness for a while and settle in to making our programs better where they are today.