(06-26-2014 07:38 PM)WKUYG Wrote: (06-26-2014 12:32 PM)AndreWhere Wrote: (06-25-2014 10:51 PM)stanman505 Wrote: (06-25-2014 06:21 PM)AndreWhere Wrote: (06-24-2014 11:31 PM)WKUYG Wrote: Me and you are going to clash ...forever. It's statements like above that either you just don't care or don't think but puts down every school that joined this conference....
"I'm pretty sure he's party to some kind of gentleman's agreement among commissioners that prevents him from adding anyone decent."
To be perfectly honest..he probably got the best schools he could get. Not only that thank your lucky stars...UNT and FIU said yes. If they hadn't and the SBC stayed together C-USA would be back filling with Liberty and EKU and Idaho and NMST, along with G. Southern and App....
after the SBC picked off 2 or 3 C-USA schools.
USM would have been one of those "2 or 3 C-USA schools" picked off by the SBC, so it's pretty immaterial to me.
And I don't think Banowsky added the best schools. He followed his usual modus operandi, which is to add 1) urban commuter schools that will be gone in 10 years and 2) warm body opponents for these schools that won't complain to him too much.
What about NMSU? They've got a $30 million annual budget, and they've been FBS / I-A forever. They're also near UTEP.
How about ULL? To me, they show every indication of growing into Louisiana's second team.
Arkansas State is a state flagship (sorely needed in this conference), and has a strong track record in SBC football.
We had opportunities with Army and UMass as well. Banowsky never pursued these opportunities seriously, nor did he pursue the MWC merger.
And I'm not going to discount the hybrid model. This conference was a hybrid conference during its best years. Teams like St. Louis, Marquette, DePaul, and UNCC brought national attention to the conference when the all-sports members just couldn't do that. Of course, that was when Mike Slive was the commissioner, not Banowsky.
I defended Banowsky a couple of months ago when USM's administration started giving him a hard time. USM's problems are of its own making.
But Banowsky has never been good at promoting C-USA per se. He's never cared about that. Banowsky takes crap programs and gives them an opportunity to get to the point where they never have to be in some stupid, fly-by-night conference ever again. But he has no vision beyond that. C-USA will always be irrelevant while he's around, and he picks schools that fit in with his process.
I can tell you that UTEP will do everything in its power to block NMSU from being in the same conference. The only way NMSU comes to CUSA is if UTEP leaves.
You say that, but I wonder how a crappy hire at the AD or President position might affect that. If you hire some bean-counter who's worried about travel costs, he might think they look pretty damned good. And I'm not going to call anyone out, but at least I'd heard of NMSU before the last round of expansion. Everyone here seems to focus on recent football performance and facility upgrades, but if the general public looks at our lineup and sees a bunch of schools that they didn't even know were FBS, that's a problem. Both of our schools ought to be better than that.
When you go 1-23 over the last two years no one is thinking about your history
When you play D1/FBS football for over 40 years and having a winning record...FOUR TIMES. No one cares about your name.
you whine and cry 100x more than any female I know.
Screw the last two years. History matters. You'll never have our history because the bowls we've been to won't even talk to this crap-ass conference.
USM was good when it mattered, i.e. when we got to play Louisville, Bama, etc. and a conference championship meant going to the Liberty Bowl. When we were independent, we played our way into the Capital One Bowl, the Independence Bowl, and the Sun Bowl. You're never going to ANY of those bowls.
Nowadays, if we're good, we go to some made-up bowl that's been around 2-3 years and play some MAC school, or some regional college that should be FCS.
Honestly, I just don't think that's enough motivation to get kids from Mississippi to come to USM and play hard. It's not motivation enough to get fans to our games. That's where 0-12 came from. Those kids pulled out all the stops, as did our donors, coaches, etc., and it translated in a miserable bowl game against a Big West team.
So we quit: fans, administration, students... everybody. WE QUIT. Your presence is prima facie evidence of that. Congratufuckinglations.
We quit. We let out million-dollar coach go, and hired a clown who made a lot less, and his drunk, pill-popping buddies. Our players stopped playing hard. We stopped talking about facilities, or moving up in class.
Should we have done this? Maybe not. But maybe so... you've got to pick your battles. FBS football is just not one we're allowed to win anymore. If you wake up one day and you find out that you've become the Washington Generals, you've got a decision to make. We decided to have some noodle salad and play some frolf instead of playing football.
And who had 4 winning seasons in 40 years? That's stupid. I don't know any team like that... maybe Tulane?
