Got a bit of a surprise this evening with a report that Conference USA was not only adding UNT, FIU, Louisiana Tech and UTSA, but also Old Dominion and Charlotte. Charlotte's name has popped up in many rumors, but Old Dominion was not on the radar. So today, it appears this is going to be a 14 team conference.
Fourteen is kind of a strange number. I love 12, it just balances so well. Five games in division and three across division, playing those teams every other year. I don't really understand exactly how 14 will work, but I am sure the SEC and ACC will show us, now that they are also at that number. Either way it means that Louisiana won't be split, La Tech and Tulane will both be in the west. I like being in a division with Tulane, not necesarrily for status, but for New Orleans.
So in case you are keeping score at home:
CUSA West: UTEP, UTSA, North Texas, Rice, Tulsa, La Tech and Tulane
CUSA East: So Miss, UAB, FIU, Marshall, East Carolina, ODU and Charlotte
The more I look at it the more I am falling in love with it. My eyes look more at the division as these will be our rivals, the east has a couple of cool cities, but the schools themselves don't mean all that much to me. Southern Miss and especially East Carolina seem to have an attitude on their stature, which I don't think is as impressive as they do.
Here is a map that was created by a poster on the csnbbs.com message board:
Looks great, I love how tight our division is geographically.
I had read a lot from the ECU AD that getting some geographic foes for a divsion near them was the upmost importance. That was why I was surprised when the inital rumor mill only talked about FIU. Look at the map, FIU is far from Marshall and ECU, not really a help. Now we get the rest of the story. I think this addition really satisfies what used to be northeast outliers of Conference USA.
So this is where things seem to stand right now, with official announcements coming Friday. Sounds like ODU may not make that committment quite yet via This. If they decide they don't want to make the jump, maybe sub in MTSU, they are the same to me, don't really care. Some UTEP folks think they may still shift to MWC along with one other school to get to 12 (along with SJSU and Utah St). This assumption is associated with some kind of merger still being in place. However, it sounds like that may be totally off, each league doing it's own thing. That is what I am hoping for, a CUSA west division with 4 Texas teams, 1 Oklahoma and 2 Louisiana teams, awesome. This seems what is to happen, but this story is always jumping up to surprise so we will see what happens at the end of the week, and what is actually announced.
Follow me @thebarrycoker on Twitter.
