By Alan Schmadtke | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted February 28, 2004
Where it falls in the landscape of major-college athletics has yet to be determined -- probably by TV partners -- but these days Conference USA has had its confidence rebuilt.
Anxiety regarding the exits of Louisville, Cincinnati, USF, DePaul and Marquette to the Big East, Saint Louis and Charlotte to the Atlantic 10 and Army to the Division I-A independents was calmed by a mixture of cash and schedule settlements. And any animosity about TCU's departure to the Mountain West Conference -- only a couple of months after it was among the schools that voted five new members into C-USA -- is buried beneath a veneer of optimism.
"I don't think anybody holds any grudges. I think everybody's really excited about where we are, where we're going," UAB Athletic Director/football coach Watson Brown said.
Added Southern Miss Athletic Director Richard Giannini: "Everybody's together. Everybody's got the same common purpose. That hasn't always been the case, but it is now."
Starting next year, a mixture of football-only members, no-football members and all-sports members is history, replaced by six holdover schools, five new members and . . . well, stay tuned.
Within three months, UCF and its 10 new conference brothers will decide their favorite number: 11, 12 or 14.
C-USA will have 11 schools for 2005-06, all of which play I-A football. That leaves the league one school shy of the 12 needed to stage a conference championship game in football and two shy of being the nation's largest I-A football conference.
"We'll take one, three or none," Houston Athletic Director Dave Maggard said. "Those are the options."
Athletic directors hold conference calls every two weeks, as do the league presidents. Specific options include Miami (Ohio), Toledo, Temple, North Texas, Louisiana Tech and UTEP.
League spokesman Russ Anderson said there is no expansion timetable, that members are committed to acting as quickly as they can without sacrificing evaluation quality. Maggard, who heads the group of athletic directors, said he'd be surprised if ADs didn't give a recommendation to presidents after an April meeting in Dallas.
Unlike last year's C-USA expansion, this time UCF will have a hand -- and a voice -- in the process.
The Golden Knights will play one more academic year in the Mid-American Conference (in football) and the Atlantic Sun Conference (in all other sports except rowing), but they're fully immersed in C-USA.
A slew of defining decisions lie ahead for the conference: how to market itself to TV, how to schedule, how to share revenue, how to keep five bowl bids, whether to take a stand on academic non-qualifiers.
But all of those issues are on the back burner. On the front, membership issues are at a nice boil.
"Membership pretty much dictates our decisions on a lot of things," UCF AD Steve Orsini said. "We need to know exactly who we are before anything else, and that's what we're going to decide."
That process, Maggard, Giannini and other ADs said, almost is identical to the one C-USA went through in 2004 when UCF, Marshall, SMU, Rice and Tulsa were brought in.
When he introduced his five incoming members in November, Commissioner Britton Banowsky said the league's goal was a 12-team, two-division, all-sports conference that would stage a football championship game.
If league members determine 11 as the magic number -- the same membership total, some point out, as preferred by the Big Ten -- then none of those goals is attainable. The NCAA recently shot down a proposal from the Atlantic Coast Conference that would allow leagues to have a football title game with 11 members.
Banowsky is putting together information packets on schools under consideration, and they began arriving at schools this week. Presidents have the final vote, but the ADs' recommendations will carry weight.
By all accounts, no school -- and no mix of schools -- is off the table. And no single factor overwhelms others by priority.
Geographic proximity, like-mindedness, financial similarity, specific sport sponsorship and other areas will be blended to form a final impression.
"You want the best fit. But you always want that," UCF President John Hitt said.
There's a growing sense that any additional member must be able to pay for itself. UCF was told to expect between $750,000 and $1 million a year from conference revenue sharing. That becomes the financial starting point.
"They key is that we need to add value to the league," Giannini said. "I'd like to get some geographical balance. We've got East Carolina and Marshall sitting way over there in the East, which isn't fair for travel if we go East-West [in a divisional format]. But for me the value is the big thing."
Louisiana Tech and North Texas have the most ideal locations, both within C-USA's current geographic footprint. Louisiana Tech is the only school lobbying publicly to get in, but no one in C-USA really is advancing the Bulldogs' cause.
UTEP has a solid fan base and a Dec. 31 bowl (Sun Bowl) in its backyard, but, according to MapQuest.com, El Paso is closer to San Diego (724 miles) than to Houston (745).
Temple would add strength to C-USA's basketball lineup -- something basketball-minded Memphis likes -- and the Owls desperately want a conference for their exiled football program. But Philadelphia is close to only one C-USA school (Marshall), and longtime Owls basketball Coach John Chaney will fight any effort to take his program out of the basketball-rich Atlantic 10.
Moreover, without revenue-sharing from Big East football, Temple has some serious financial issues with which to contend. Joining C-USA doesn't solve them.
Miami (Ohio) and Toledo are longtime MAC members and are part of the league's fabric. They are two of the MAC's top remaining football powers, and both also have some basketball tradition.
For now, C-USA -- which officially moves its base of operations from Chicago to Dallas in July -- has time on its side. Until the Bowl Championship Series situation is sorted out, which doesn't appear to be imminent, there's no mandate to expand. But it's clear officials at longtime C-USA schools like the idea of 12 teams and two divisions.
"I'd say there's one thing we all seem to agree on, and I'm not speaking in terms of expansion, and that is status quo is not an option," Orsini said. "We subscribe to the theory that if we're not moving forward, we're moving backward. What we're deciding is how to move forward."
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