re: C-USA Major Financial Issues: Marshall Leaving?

CUSA is a whole conference of schools who, like the MAC, make their bread and butter on body bag games. And those games didn’t happen this year.

Johnson screwed us for a bit but Monken brought us back to respectability. The hiring of Hopson is what put this program in the grave

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Add Marshall, Army, UConn (football only) and Liberty.

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Marshall is the only good fit of this group. The MAC already tried UMass as a football only member, and they couldn't wait to separate. UConn would be an equally disastrous marriage.

Army has done conference life once before. They quit after 6 years, and there's really no incentive for them to try it again.

Posters have said the Sun Belt wants nothing to do with Liberty, so I'm not sure why the MAC would. If Liberty has bigger aspirations for their football program down the road, they'll just leave the MAC for greener pastures like Marshall did before.

The Sun Belt didn’t want Liberty for 1- as a private school they have way more resources than every other member which is public, and 2- jerry Falwell Jr was a major risk factor. The second item has worked itself out, but it is clear that Liberty is happy to throw beaucoup bucks at its program.

C-USA was a solid conference in the late 90s/00s. USM was usually ranked

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The MAC already tried UMass as a football only member, and they couldn't wait to separate. UConn would be an equally disastrous marriage.

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UConn and UMass should go back to the old Yankee/Colonial conference and play New Hampshire, Maine, and the other New England schools. Make geography great again .

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The AAC is $7 million per school

The MAC is like $750k per school

The CUSA is $400k per school

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Mountain West new deal is around $4 million with Boise St. still getting a little extra and Fox getting rights to Boise St home games, specifically. If they end up leaving for the AAC that creates a pretty massive gulf between the AAC and rest of the G5.

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it makes one wonder if they would consider Marshall in the AAC?

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No. Just another mouth to feed. AAC isn’t in a hurry to offer Boise who could actually add to the bottom line.

Plus, Marshall is hard to get to especially if you’re talking all sports. AAC has football-only member Navy and everything-but Wichita State and would need a special case for an addition. Boise football makes sense - they can park other sports in the new WAC.

That’s not what happened. Replacing Bower with Fedora was a good move. Hiring Ellis Johnson was the problem.

There have been rumblings of a new conference / CUSA split with the west foundation being:

UTEP
UTSA
Rice
North Texas
Louisiana Tech
Southern Miss
NMSU
Ark State
UL-L

This was discussed pre covid - appears it is gaining traction due to covid.


The east CUSA would be:

UAB
Marshall
ODU
WKU
Charlotte
FAU
MTSU
FIA
Troy


The issue is Marshall wanting completely out - and USM deciding if they want east or west.

Also - baseball requirements have been a big issue - no baseball, no go. That puts UNT on the hot seat for sure.


Edit - and many of these schools are looking at going independent - covid has shed some light on the darkness of budgets...and believe being independent would allow for better football scheduling which would generate more revenue.

It is no secret that USM and LaTech have looked into rotational scheduling with Big12 and ACC teams in the past - makes sense as long as you can stomach 4 home games most years - but bring in much, much more money.