Tulsa fans are sounding pretty sure that UTEP and Tulsa will announce MWC this week.
http://csnbbs.com/showthread.php?tid=604892&page=4
Tulsa fans are sounding pretty sure that UTEP and Tulsa will announce MWC this week.
http://csnbbs.com/showthread.php?tid=604892&page=4
Well, neither us nor Southern Miss have any bowl distractions, so we should be meeting now. If we team up as a package deal, we could make this happen. In many ways, it will be a semi regional conference. Houston, SMU, Tulane, Southern Miss, E. Carolina, one of the Florida schools that I can't tell apart....
In the event that Boise, SDSU, Tulsa, and UTEP join the MWC, I may start hoping that UH/SMU join them.
University of Houston '01. Any references to "we" or "us" likely refer to UH. Cheers!
To MWC or back to CUSA? In my opinion, UH, SMU, E. Carolina, and Tulane should re-evaluate QUICKLY and come back to CUSA. It would destroy Big East Football. My only question is if our 2 newest members make us too large if they returned.
There are 2 choices here - we try to get in the Big East or we work on the merger of CUSA and MWC quick.
MWC. Returning to Conference USA is not really an option or is a near-last resort. A 16-team MWC has greater allure, if things don't work out with C*USA.
I have a theory that the MWC-CUSA merger was a con job that Britton Banowski ran on Craig Thompson. Just speculation, but it's the sort of thing a sly cat like CBB would do.
University of Houston '01. Any references to "we" or "us" likely refer to UH. Cheers!
This is an honest question, because you know I respect your posts. Why did SMU and Houston bolt? The Big East was not stable at all and CUSA was looking pretty good. I could understand if they were aq with no playoff system coming, but it seemed like a very lateral move. It started a landslide that has really hurt CUSA. So, just wondering why move from CUSA to the Big East. BBall units would be great, but it was already known that the conference was going to fall apart with that, as well - at least, it appeared that way. Just wanted to hear your take on it.
The administration(s) had countless reasons. Things were such that even the *chance* of things not falling apart was worth it. If the Big East lost schools, you're likely be replacing them from a better group of candidates than C*USA could. Even if all the conference were left with was UH/SMU/Temple/UCF/USF/Memphis, that represents to us a group of solid, peer institutions (for us, though not SMU) from which to rebuild. At the moment, we're still better off than we were in Conference USA.
For me personally, the big selling point was that if we didn't go, UCF and ECU would have. That would have been a major blow to the conference. The conference as we knew it was in danger regardless of what we did. And SMU was going with or without us, and we weren't going to be left behind by SMU in favor of North Texas. What was the source of SMU's enthusiasm? TCU-envy might account for part of it. Or the idea of being associated with the private BBall schools. But the big thing for me, and it probably had not escaped the attention of the AD's, is that some of the conference's key programs were right in the Big East's footprint or not too far from it, and they were as good as gone if we hadn't said yes.
University of Houston '01. Any references to "we" or "us" likely refer to UH. Cheers!
We're evaluating what's on the table and I assure you that coming back to C-USA is NOT one of them. All I'm gonna say is that we have some bigger fish to fry and I'll leave it at that.
That is the best explanation I have seen on it. It does seem to me that it would be smart to settle into a good stable non-aq conference, unless an aq comes calling (or now a playoff eligible conference). The non-aq's are jumping from conference to conference with lateral moves. I wish we could all settle on one good one that we stick with (unless the B12, ACC, B10, or SEC comes calling). Seems we are hurting ourselves by jumping around so much. It weakens us. Just my opinion.