Instead of a merger, how about just splitting conference into 2 conferences? You need 8 teams for a conference. Just add liberty to cusa east and new Mexico st to cusa west. 2 auto bids and reduced footprint. Thoughts?
SOUTH ATLANTIC.
Old Dominion.
Marshall.
Western Kentucky.
Middle Tennessee.
Charlotte.
Florida Atlantic.
Florida international.
Liberty.

SOUTHWESTERN CONFERENCE
UAB
Southern Miss
Louisiana Tech
Rice
UTSA
UTEP
North Texas
New Mexico State

Less money to split also.

I think you would have a hard time convincing UAB to go along with that. I I think in this scenario UAB would, hopefully, try to stay with the eastern teams. I would also hope we try and convince USM to go with us.

I agree, UAB would be more comfortable in the East, necessitating at least 2 Western adds.

Texas St and NMSU would say yes in a heartbeat but ULL and Arkansas St would be better adds.

Would both have autobids? You might need to expand and just have both divisions act independently of each other in olympic sports and only meet during tournaments to retain the 1 autobid. I don’t think it’s as big of a deal for football.

(02-06-2021 08:50 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I agree, UAB would be more comfortable in the East, necessitating at least 2 Western adds.

Texas St and NMSU would say yes in a heartbeat but ULL and Arkansas St would be better adds.

I think A-State and Louisiana would turn it down. Texas State might could be convinced and the Sun Belt would either stay at 9 or try to court USM to join us.

You would have to convince 7 of these schools to leave to form a new conference and you assume the 8th school would join them. The question then would be who would get the Conference USA name and the NCAA men's basketball tournament automatic bid (along with the other tournament bids)? I doubt it will be as clean a breakup as the Catholic 7 and the football playing Big East schools. Unless both sides were guaranteed an automatic bid, both sides are better off just staying together and the NCAA has little incentive to grant both sides here an automatic bid.

The WAC should have listened to NoDak.

NMSU + Seattle and GCU adds UNT, LTU, Rice, UTSA, TxSt, UTEP, UTA, and Idaho. Idaho and Seattle would work okay for travel partners.

That's 8 FB, 11 Oly and you could work on getting UTA up and running for a 9/11 split. Perfect sized conference to do a round robin, host a CCG and have 4 OOC games in FB along with 20 conference games in BB.

UAB would strongly oppose this hypothetical arrangement and UAB is perhaps one of the three to four most important C-USA members when you consider its overall combination of men's hoops, football, academics (UAB has a med school), location (basically in the epicenter of C-USA territory) and history.

(02-06-2021 10:24 AM)schmolik Wrote:  You would have to convince 7 of these schools to leave to form a new conference and you assume the 8th school would join them. The question then would be who would get the Conference USA name and the NCAA men's basketball tournament automatic bid (along with the other tournament bids)? I doubt it will be as clean a breakup as the Catholic 7 and the football playing Big East schools. Unless both sides were guaranteed an automatic bid, both sides are better off just staying together and the NCAA has little incentive to grant both sides here an automatic bid.

Agree.

With CUSA already at 14 members they should expand by 2 or 4 and just run their divisions like mini-conferences and have cross-division games if the schools want to schedule them, but not be forced. Then use the Conference Tourney or CCG to determine champ/auto-bid.

Beefing up the divisions would allow for more regionalism to help bolster new rivalries without "giving up" on CUSA.

Jesus. No.

(02-06-2021 10:39 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  With CUSA already at 14 members they should expand by 2 or 4 and just run their divisions like mini-conferences and have cross-division games if the schools want to schedule them, but not be forced. Then use the Conference Tourney or CCG to determine champ/auto-bid.

Beefing up the divisions would allow for more regionalism to help bolster new rivalries without "giving up" on CUSA.

Seems like the least disruptive way to do that would be to add indies Liberty in the East and New Mexico State in the west.

If CUSA is going to split, wait for the OVC or Southland to fall below the point of viability. Round up 8 FBS members and move to the OVC or Southland.

If the OVC gets taken over:
WIU stays in the Summit, takes SIUe and EIU with them
Murray State and Belmont to the MVC
Tennessee FCS schools to A-Sun or Southland
Morehead State to Horizon League

If the Southland gets taken over:
HBU, UIW, TAMUCC to Summit
Louisiana FCS schools to OVC (or WAC if they lose members in the backfill process)

Hell no. UTEP and Rice still have nightmares of the WAC-16. Sixteen might work for a P5 but definitely not for a G5. Same with 14. The B1G and SEC can make it work. C-USA with 14 is a disaster.

(02-06-2021 01:42 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  Hell no. UTEP and Rice still have nightmares of the WAC-16. Sixteen might work for a P5 but definitely not for a G5. Same with 14. The B1G and SEC can make it work. C-USA with 14 is a disaster.

It's more difficult to split a large conference now than it was when the MWC did it. The old WAC had no exit fee for departing members, and the MWC had no trouble at the time getting an autobid for themselves. The NCAA has since made it very difficult for a new conference to get autobids, plus CUSA has an exit fee.

Even so, the WAC-16 is a warning that if half of a league that large decides to split off, whomever remains might be screwed just by being left in an odd collection of schools that don't fit well together as an athletic conference.

Yes, that’s the ticket. Destroy the already pathetic tv deal for a worse one and they’re is no guarantee for two auto bids. Geezus people.