CUSA on Life Support

Thanks to the second ever mass exodus of schools out of Conference USA, in the short history of the conference, Conference USA may be disbanded. In the summer of 2013 four schools (Houston, SMU, Memphis, and UCF) will be headed into the riches of the Big East Conference. There really is no way the remaining eight schools can maintain the now fledgling conference, because there are no big draw schools and no large TV markets.

In January presidents of 16 schools met in Dallas to discuss a merger between the remaining schools in Conference USA and the Mountain West Conference, which is also losing member schools. What came out of those meetings? Only the fact that talks would have to continue in order to “hammer out” the details. One of the main issues talked about in this meeting was membership into the “to be named later conference”. With massive conference realignment and a number of teams jumping into D-1 in football, the possibility of an 18-24 member conference could be on the horizon.

The other possibility for Conference USA would be expansion. This, of course, would mean a raid of the Sun Belt Conference and the Western Athletic Conference. This scenario seems to make the most sense but is unlikely to happen. The biggest concern at staying put with the current 8 schools is that UTEP and Tulsa do not have a baseball program which leaves Conference USA with only six schools in baseball. Rice, East Carolina, Tulane, and Southern Miss could possibly carry CUSA in baseball. The Patriot League right now is the only conference in the NCAA that has six baseball schools.