Without football, UTA will never get an invite to a football conference. Even the slc is getting frustrated with UTA no no no, yes yes yes, no no no to football. Maybe a basketball conference with UALR, UNO, UTA, A&M CC, UTPA, Denver, ORU, Centenary, and HBU

The new CUSA
Georgia Southern
South Alabama
Troy
MTSU
App st
ULL
UCF
Southern miss
Tulane
FIU
FAU
UAB

With the lack of basketball automatic berths for new conferences, it will be some time before any new conferences are formed. Add the moratorium on D1 upgrades and it equals a pause in any drastic changes. If the NCAA expands the basketball tourney and OKs autoberths for new conference,s that might change.

In the meantime, I wouldn't expect to see anything more than a few teams making a few small shifts. With the potential upgrades like Tex St., SHSU, GSU, etc, there are some schools in the region who would fit into the current Sunbelt or CUSA.

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I have a question for you, Quinn, that I don't KNOW the answer and you probably do. I think I might though.

The 6/5 rule as I understand it states that any 6 Div 1 schools playing together for 5 years can start a conference and have an automatic tourney bid (based presumably off the MWC retreat out of the WAC). Based off of that I would take it that the CUSA West could breakaway after UTEP has been a member 5 years and (barring any other defections) CUSA West (or the SWC or whatever) and old CUSA would both have automatic bids. Not the case? UTEP accepted a bid to start playing in CUSA in 2005, so 2009 would be their 5th season. That would mean this could go down in 2010, right?

Even if not, I have to think with a member like regular power like Tulsa mowing down a weaker feild, and tom penders at UH, CUSAWESTSWC is almost definitely going to have at least one team in the tourney auto bid or not.




In the short term I agree. 2010 will be the next interesting year.

I am going to disagree. I have no ties to UTA, I don't even really like the school in general, but there is a world of logic in it's inclusion as a non-football member of a FBS conference.

UTA has very good media value.
UALR, UNO, Denver have noteworthy to good media value.
A&M CC, UTPA, ORU, Centenary, and HBU have marginal media value.

UTA is a large unversity located dead center between two major cities in the same media market. Their graduates stay in DFW. That is great news for media markets.

UALR, UNO, and Denver are smaller Universities, but like TCU and SMU, they are local and noteworthy in their local markets.

The other schools are either in insignifigant markets, have the academic reputation to be noteworthy (ala Rice) or do not produce the number of graduates.

UTA expends about 6M a year in their athletic budget. 6 teams spend less in the SLC, 5 teams spend more and no one spends more than 10.5M (football school texas state).

That is more than Saint Bonaventure in the A-10 and 55 other Div 1 schools. Small budget? sure, but you can survive that. The A10 has. As I have said before UNT and UTA in the same Div 1 conference makes a ton of TV sense.

In a sub-FBS conference it has no TV value, so I can understand the criticism.

It is a lot similar to Temple. Sure you don't REALLY want a school that can't handle their athletic business in your conference, but the market they give access to and provide a solid TV toehold in is more than signifigant.

The current trend is to shun the hybrid conference because football and basketball schools pull in different directions and because it is seen as unstable. I think a number of conferences could profit hugely off of adding a small handful of schools to augment their FBS footprint.