While it appeared from the outside that C-USA was scrambling amid realignment last fall, there was always a plan and a list of scenarios gamed out. Now it’s far from the top of the Group of 5 in football, and successful programs like UTSA and UAB are on their way out. There was a period when it was arguably the top non-BCS football conference with teams like TCU, Southern Miss and East Carolina. It used to be headquartered in Chicago but has since moved to the outskirts of Dallas.
None of the original members will remain. It’s the largest reshaping of a conference since the Big East split in half and became the American Athletic Conference.Ĭonference USA was founded in 1995 largely as a basketball league, the result of a merger between the Metro Conference and the Great Midwest Conference. Only five of those 14 will remain - Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee, Louisiana Tech, FIU and UTEP - and four new members will join next year: Liberty, New Mexico State, Sam Houston and Jacksonville State. It has 11 this year after Marshall, Southern Miss and Old Dominion sued the conference to leave early for the Sun Belt, and it will have nine next year. It had 14 football-playing schools last year. But you have to shift your perspective sometimes.”Ĭonference USA has felt like a random grouping of schools without a collective identity for several years. “Personally, I’m the kind of person that wants to trust people until they give me a reason not to.
“That was written very early during realignment and I’ve never erased it,” MacLeod said.
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