re: Missouri State joining CUSA in 2025

quote:

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CUSA is a better football and basketball conference than the MAC even with the recent FCS callups.

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I haven't whipped out the Sagarin ratings or anything, but I do remember hearing (and probably even saying) shite like that back when USM was still in CUSA and in hindsight it's total crap. Anything CUSA is "better at" compared to anyone else in FBS is noise. The real signal tells us that CUSA was a parking spot for a few legit schools, like Louisville and TCU, and for everyone else it's a program-killer. I saw it at USM and I feel bad for the semi-legitimate programs that have burned bridges with the Sun Belt and/or MAC and can't get out.

CUSA was a slow-motion death sentence for USM from its initial conception. Howard Schnellenberger trashed CUSA and USM when it was created, and we despised him for it, but he was 100% right. USM wound up in CUSA because it was convenient for our administration. Very difficult scheduling tasks suddenly became very easy. That's why USM wound up in CUSA (and never made a serious effort to get out until very recently) in spite of our entire identity being succeeding as a football independent.

Most of us resisted the Sun Belt move until it just became so painfully obvious that it was necessary, but the Sun Belt is 100% better. So is the MAC. CUSA is a joke, and in fact I don't even think of it as a real conference.

A real conference would have penalized Louisville, TCU, etc. for leaving, and there was never anything in CUSA's bylaws to allow for that. That meant that our AD had put USM into a "conference" in which it was a second-class citizen from day one. We figured it out years, even decades later, when people started talking about "muh exit fee windfall."

CUSA and the people who put USM in it can go frick themselves.