(04-24-2017 01:06 PM)Duke Dawg Wrote: (04-20-2017 08:59 AM)cmett003 Wrote: My beef with C-USA is they dont schedule any existing/potential rivalry games during rivalry week. I mean thats a no brainer and C-USA cant get the simplest things right. Its annoying as hell. We have played FAU each of the last 3 years and now we play Middle this year. While Middle is better than FAU, FAU is playing WKU which make zero sense. C-USA is doing no favors for schools during rivalry week. IMO C-USA is doing a terrible job building a brand, its supposed to be that if you are in dead last and you play your arch rival at the end of the year thats the only thing that matters and everyone goes to attend the game. While I know C-USA is growing and they are not like Ohio State vs Michigan. At least give the teams a chance to develop a rivalry instead of scheduling these bogus matchups that make no one care about the last game of the year.
C-USA games that need to be played during rivalry week:
Marshall vs WKU
ODU vs Charlotte
FAU vs FIU
Southern Miss vs La Tech
NT vs UTSA
Rice vs UTEP
Middle vs UAB
I mean come on this is not rocket science and C-USA screws it up every year.
MTSU and WKU are bitter rivals. That game should be played the last week.
Other than that and the F_U's there are no real rivalries in CUSA. It's a major flaw within the league IMO.
I think that's also a lacking feature with G5 conferences as a whole. I can't think of any traditional blood rivalries in the AAC outside of USF-UCF, for example. The Sun Belt has, what, ULL-ULM and App State-Ga. Southern, the latter being a carryover from the SoCon? The MAC does better because of its relatively tight footprint (though they basically exist only in their footprint) and the Mountain West benefits from being in essence the only G5 conference for two time zones, which provides for more opportunities (Nevada-UNLV, Front Range school rivalries).
Realigning the Sun Belt and CUSA along geographic lines saves money but doesn't really do that much to gin up rivalries for ODU. Perhaps it's more likely that Coastal Carolina or Georgia State fit that role as opposed to FAU or UAB, but it's far from a certainty. I think ODU fans would *like* to have ECU and Navy as rivals based on aspirational goals and geography (and the obvious Navy connection in Tidewater), but there has to be mutual interest and I doubt there's much from ECU or any from Navy.
Liberty will probably show up on the schedule, but building something with them based on geography is like an Indiana school having a rivalry with Notre Dame because hey, Indiana (the comparison being that Liberty is a school in Virginia as opposed to a Virginia school, not that Liberty is equivalent to Notre Dame in any meaningful way).
The most obvious would-be rival is JMU, but there's that whole monitoring thing ...
So rambling story somewhat more concise, I think ODU fans have to be patient in developing rivalries either within CUSA or outside it. Because even if ODU finds itself in the AAC, it's not as though the ECU game immediately becomes The Battle Of The Crappy Barbecue.