(04-13-2017 10:50 AM)MT FAN Wrote:  We don't need to realign with the Sun Belt or by geography. The fact is we have too many teams in this conference. It is no longer advantageous to have as many teams as we do, in fact it puts us at a disadvantage. What we need to do is cut the dead weight and we instantly have a better conference. We saw what having so many bad teams did to our conference RPI in basketball this past season same for football as well. Are top teams are not the problem. It's the numerous bottom dwellers that are. My loyalty is to MT not CUSA and not to other programs in CUSA just because we happen to share a conference at the moment. Every school should have this same mindset. So, once we meet the 5 years together or whatever it is to keep an automatic bid MT, Marshall, Western KY, La Tech, Southern Miss, UAB, ODU, Rice, and Charlotte need to split away and form a new conference. This solves our problem. If we lose members in the future we can add the best Sun Belt teams if needed.

We are in this 14-team boat partially because others (ECU) were pushing a larger conference where we could schedule regionally. The university Presidents need to insist on that before we do a nuclear option like merge with the Sunbelt. I agree with you, by the way, on bottom feeders, and the merger does nothing to thin that herd.

I don't think you will see Rice going along with the smaller conference you envision above. We have now been with UTEP longer than anyone. No way do we willingly split from our friends in El Paso. UTEP, UTSA, and North Texas (as well as Southern Miss and Louisiana Tech) all have large alumni presence in Houston, and bring big crowds when they are visitors. This is exactly what we want. It is puzzling to me why the conference has not had us playing UTSA and UTEP home and home in basketball, but instead sends us to Charlotte and Norfolk every year.