I wonder if CUSA could get both USF & UCF back?
I wonder if CUSA could get both USF & UCF back?
You only have to have 8 to play football...
''Don't be a bad dagh..."
I don't think they (Houston & SMU) will stay if it looks like the rest of the conference is going to implode
Why do people on this board keeping attaching USM to this? I've never seen a link connecting USM and the Big East ANYWHERE? Why would the Big East be interested in a "mid major" (sorry boys) school from a small southern town in the state of Mississippi? USM obviously doesn't fit the "Big Market" profile. Do you have a link?
HD
But SMU isn't a basketball school. Unless you count those basketball attendance figures numbering less than 1K per game. I've never see a worse basketball school.
Here's a pic of the SMU crowd when LA Tech played basketball there back in Jan. Couldn't have been more than 300 people in attendance. See for yourself!
SMU-LA Tech Basketball Game - 01-2012.jpg
HD
..... and Moody was generally packed in the old SWC.
It probably all comes down to BCS money. If it's there, they will stay. If not, I can see Houston getting out. SMU alums want to be in a BCS conference because TCU is in one, so they will not leave. No way they will admit that TCU has something they don't have.
I would love to see Houston and UCF in CUSA, but I don't expect them back unless the money dries up in the BE. I could see the Big East potentially going after ECU, but I agree with HogDawg that USM doesn't make sense. I think Dwayne is much closer to being correct when he says that the BE would go after Villanova and UMass. Didn't they try to get Nova to move their football team to D-1A this time? They would probably just push harder next time.
By dividing itself into football and basketball schools, the Big East now has the problem that CUSA used to have. The football schools want to go one direction, and the basketball schools want to go another. With the ousting of the Commish, we see who has the stroke....basketball schools. That means that the next commish will be one of "their guys" and it means that they call the shots for the forseeable future. That means that schools like USM will not be considered, and they will likely look at other schools that share their vision of the Big East, which is much more likely to be Villanova and UMass than ECU and USM. When CUSA was split into football and basketball schools, it constantly faced the problem of breaking up, which it eventually did. Now the Big East faces the same problem and will likely break up one way or another. I can see the basketball schools forming their own conference, separating themselves from the football schools, and claiming that it was done for academic reasons and to put academics ahead of the "arms race" of college athletics. That's just a hunch, but it will be expidited if the BCS money goes away.
I didn't say they were a basketball school - I said they were more of a cultural fit and had a "similar" mindset with those catholic basketball schools -
And I don' think BE football falls totally apart, I just don't think they look to replace BSU & SDSU with ECU, USM or Tulsa if the two western schools don't follow through with the experiment -
With the 8 football playing schools they have the "catholic block" will force Nova and UMass football on the remaining basketball schools instead of picking up more "southern" basketball schools
''Don't be a bad dagh..."
I disagree with you guys on that one somewhat because Texas is a football first state and Texas's fans are football first fans as well. And Houston and SMU have seen how Baylor was able, in a relatively short amount of time, hit the Top 10 in both basketball and football as a private school in Texas as well as what a Boise St was able to do. If either could be a consistant lead dog and possible undefeated lead dog at times, in a CUSA or a CUSA/MWC, the next step would quickly be a Big 12 invite.
I've never believed that Boise and SDSU were going to jump to the BE. They lose all their rivals for all their sports when they do this. It's 2500-3000 miles from Boise and San Diego to the teams on the east coast. That's at least 6-7 hours of sitting on a plane. As the old saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. This move could really cost Boise. Counting Navy, the BE still has 11 teams. They won't take USM or ECU. They'll take the big markets on the east coast, afterall, that's what CUSA just did except for Tech.