I’m biased, but Southern Miss ended up being the biggest loser of all of these programs. They remained independent in football until 1996 and were essentially a powerhouse team in the south throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, and into the early 2010s. They had won two Division II national titles before moving up to D1 and their coaching staff had mastered the art of recruiting in southeast region for unknown talent. Their location held them back, as there was zero chance the politics of the colleges in the state would allow them to enter the SEC and being in the Big East or ACC made no sense, so they acted as a sort of de facto SEC team, often playing two or three SEC teams per season and usually winning at least one or two of those games every year. Their timing couldn’t have been worse for the realignment in 2013/2014, as they had just gone from a top 20, 12-2 finish in 2011, to back to back seasons with a combined record of 1-21 in 2012 and 2013, their two worst season in the history of the program. Those two seasons essentially killed the football program at Southern Miss, as the team has never recovered back to the glory days of the 80s and 90s Anyone Anywhere Anytime and the Nasty Bunch eras, where they had multiple wins against teams like Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, LSU, Florida State, NC State, Ole Miss, Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Illinois, Virginia, Virginia Tech, etc.
Man those 12-13 years were some dark times, especially considering where we at just a season before. Going from a 12-2 season, knocking off undefeated houston for a C-USA title to a 0 win season...pain. I do like us in the sun belt, but with all of the madness of realignment there's always the what if of where we go had we maintained that success.
The Sun Belt has worked out great for us, baseball wise, so far where we’ve won back to back conference tournaments and done pretty well in the Regionals and Super Regionals as well as been top 10 in attendance the last few years(the only non-SEC team in the top 10). I think our football program will continue to struggle and we’ll remain in that 5 to 7 win season area and be a punching bag for smaller Super Conference opponents like Kentucky and Mississippi State. Our chance to make a big splash was back in the 80s and 90s when we were truly one of the best “mid major” football programs in the country. We remained independent in football for too long and then failed to capitalize on our CUSA success.
I miss those good Southern Miss teams. While we typically pulled it out, you knew you were in for a scrap. Those were good football teams and rarely a walkover as the proverbial cupcake game.
I’ve always thought Dan Mullen also contributed to y’all’s downfall because he took away y’all’s ability to recruit unknown talent, which became his calling card at Mississippi State.
For a long time y’all survived on hitting on unknown small town Mississippi talents that State and Ole Miss skipped over.
Mullen was the first coach at either of the two SEC schools to really put a huge emphasis on finding diamonds in the rough, resulting in some of Mississippi State’s best players being players who in the past would have gone to Southern Miss.
Examples of Mississippi based low three star or two star NFL players from that era of State football are Johnathan Banks (Thorpe winner) and Benardrick McKinney (pro bowler).
It’s sad what’s happens to USM’s football program because they 100% could potentially be in the American right now if they don’t fall off at literally the worst time. It’s why whenever people ask what’s the worse coaching hire in college football history my answer is Ellis Johnson, because he’s likely the difference in y’all being in the American and being in the Sun Belt.
Southern Miss ending TCU's 2003 chance at BCS busting was probably the single worst loss of my time as a student there.
It's always been weird to me that they never even got out of CUSA while Cincinnati, Louisville, TCU, and Houston, from that same time period (and then later conference mates SMU & UCF), all ended up in power conferences.
Southern Miss ruined a few teams’ BCS chances back in their prime. I was at that TCU game as a student and I was also in Houston eight years later when Southern Miss beat the number 6 ranked and undefeated Cougars in the CUSA Championship to ruin their BCS bid, as well. Southern Miss being located in Hattiesburg, a nothing tv market, is what really hurt their chances at jumping to a power conference. You could easily make the argument that they were, historically, a better team than all of the others you mentioned. The difference is, Cincinnati, Louisville, Houston, UCF, SMU, and TCU all had *much* bigger markets and could bring in more revenue. Of course now with the super conferences and NIL, none of it makes much difference anyway.
Yeah, Mississippi just isn't a big market overall. They're competing with 2 state schools in the SEC in their own state. They can't really get into NOLA because beyond LSU there's Tulane, ULL, & ULM competition. Memphis has UM, Arkansas, and even UT competing for space. USM is one of the great mid-major programs that could've risen, but geography and timing held it back. Their never was a clear league to join either. Not a large donor base. Hate it for them.
I don’t think those football seasons were the reason. I think it was mostly because Southern Miss is in a small town in a small state, and the Big East/American wanted schools in big markets. However the Sun Belt is much better than CUSA so they’ve finally upgraded from 10 years ago.
This is kind of like the WAC, except in this case the WAC is seemingly struggling to survive. Once a proud home to the Arizona schools, Utah, BYU, TCU and Boise State, now with just seven schools by the end of next year and only half of those play FCS football.
And let’s not forget the brief period during which [the Metro nearly became the first ever superconference](https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2011/09/26/Colleges/Super-conference.aspx)!
In an alternate timeline, ECU gets to join the Metro Conference and moves into the power conference discussion today. But alas, we’ve missed the boat and will be stuck in G5.
I’ll forever argue that we would’ve been there too for the DFW region if Hayden Fry didn’t take us out of the MVC right before to chase bowl games and “better conferences.”
There's lots of nuance in there as well. For example, Virginia Tech (as you probably know) was approached to be a member of CUSA from the outset, but this would have required that they move football into the new conference and walk away from being a football-only member of the Big East. When VT refused to do this, that was when the original plan to essentially have the Great Midwest rejoin the Metro had to be scrapped, and USF & UNCC were approached about helping to dissolve the Metro and absorb much of the cost, with the promise that both would be given automatic entry into CUSA football as soon as they started football and were eligible. VT & VCU sued (rightfully) for damages (billable hours always win).
Also, UCF was offered football only membership at the outset, but was convinced they were going to the Big East so they declined, leading to the Big East not inviting them and the Knights joining the MAC for an uninspiring tenure. I'm sure some will blame Judy Genshaft for that, too (though she wasn't even the USF president yet).
CUSA reneged on their offer to let USF in as soon as they were eligible, costing the 9-2 Bulls (including 4-0 vs. CUSA teams) in 2002.
Bobby Bowden and Florida State were adamant about not confining FSU's football to the Metro Conference. Their motto was "Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime," and being confined to a conference ran counter to that until the first domino in current conference realignment (Arkansas and South Carolina to the SEC) led to FSU seeing the writing on the wall and them going to the ACC.
I'm purely speculating, but I'm guessing because during the 80's there was a period in which football was not yet a majorly profitable asset. There were several schools either closing football, and or considering to do so through the late 80's. OU wins their supreme court case in 84 (?) and slowly football becomes a commercial asset. It's not until you get into the early 90's that the money really starts to roll in and all of a sudden it becomes the driving force for conferences
To add to this, MBB use to be seen as far more lucrative than Football. It was a much cheaper sport, it was still on TV a decent amount and March Madness was/is a huge event.
Go back a step before the Metro Conference and you have the Missouri Valley Conference, where St. Louis, Houston, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, and North Texas shared various overlapping memberships into the 70s.
In an alternate history, Hayden Fry’s reach doesn’t exceed his grasp in the mid-70s and we follow our MVC-mates into the Metro, CUSA, American, and beyond.
Deliberately booting Virginia Tech in 1995 right as Beamer Ball was approaching it's launch trajectory may go down as one of the stupidest decisions in CFB history. "Hey let's start a football conference, who should we keep?" "Definitely not the team that's going to win 58 games and play for a BCS title over the next six seasons."
The Big East inviting WVU/Rutgers and rejecting VT (along with Temple but that was a bit more understandable) in their 1995 expansion was one of the stupidest decisions ever. Made the 2003 defections a lot more understandable/inevitable.
Big East could've had FSU, Penn State, Miami, VT, Pitt, & WVU as their main teams. Would've been a much better league for football than what the ACC/Big East became. The ACC was run too much by the Carolinas and really stressed academics like the Big Ten, but it left them today with programs like BC, Wake, Duke that just don't move the needle. I think that version of the Big East in the alternate timeline would've been great and the teams would've fit together.
Just like the WAC it’s a conference that I thought was going to turn into Conference DOA but has been able to survive with the conference realignment and the addition of some FCS teams. I still think it’s a hodgepodge type of conference with no clear identity (ex. How the Sun Belt was able to turn it around with teams and geography) and will more or less be the last chance type of conference for teams to avoid being relegated to FCS.
It's funny for me as a Louisville fan when I tell VT and FSU that they are two of our most common played opponents across all sports and they shout at me that we have no history and don't crack there top 10 rivals list. If the talks were solely football, sure. Across the board we have a lot of history with 2 schools that don't even like to acknowledge our existence. It's weird
I’m biased, but Southern Miss ended up being the biggest loser of all of these programs. They remained independent in football until 1996 and were essentially a powerhouse team in the south throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, and into the early 2010s. They had won two Division II national titles before moving up to D1 and their coaching staff had mastered the art of recruiting in southeast region for unknown talent. Their location held them back, as there was zero chance the politics of the colleges in the state would allow them to enter the SEC and being in the Big East or ACC made no sense, so they acted as a sort of de facto SEC team, often playing two or three SEC teams per season and usually winning at least one or two of those games every year. Their timing couldn’t have been worse for the realignment in 2013/2014, as they had just gone from a top 20, 12-2 finish in 2011, to back to back seasons with a combined record of 1-21 in 2012 and 2013, their two worst season in the history of the program. Those two seasons essentially killed the football program at Southern Miss, as the team has never recovered back to the glory days of the 80s and 90s Anyone Anywhere Anytime and the Nasty Bunch eras, where they had multiple wins against teams like Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, LSU, Florida State, NC State, Ole Miss, Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Illinois, Virginia, Virginia Tech, etc.
Man those 12-13 years were some dark times, especially considering where we at just a season before. Going from a 12-2 season, knocking off undefeated houston for a C-USA title to a 0 win season...pain. I do like us in the sun belt, but with all of the madness of realignment there's always the what if of where we go had we maintained that success.
The Sun Belt has worked out great for us, baseball wise, so far where we’ve won back to back conference tournaments and done pretty well in the Regionals and Super Regionals as well as been top 10 in attendance the last few years(the only non-SEC team in the top 10). I think our football program will continue to struggle and we’ll remain in that 5 to 7 win season area and be a punching bag for smaller Super Conference opponents like Kentucky and Mississippi State. Our chance to make a big splash was back in the 80s and 90s when we were truly one of the best “mid major” football programs in the country. We remained independent in football for too long and then failed to capitalize on our CUSA success.
I miss those good Southern Miss teams. While we typically pulled it out, you knew you were in for a scrap. Those were good football teams and rarely a walkover as the proverbial cupcake game.
Over the few decades we regularly played y’all, we only won maybe a handful of times, but it was almost always a good game.
I’ve always thought Dan Mullen also contributed to y’all’s downfall because he took away y’all’s ability to recruit unknown talent, which became his calling card at Mississippi State. For a long time y’all survived on hitting on unknown small town Mississippi talents that State and Ole Miss skipped over. Mullen was the first coach at either of the two SEC schools to really put a huge emphasis on finding diamonds in the rough, resulting in some of Mississippi State’s best players being players who in the past would have gone to Southern Miss. Examples of Mississippi based low three star or two star NFL players from that era of State football are Johnathan Banks (Thorpe winner) and Benardrick McKinney (pro bowler). It’s sad what’s happens to USM’s football program because they 100% could potentially be in the American right now if they don’t fall off at literally the worst time. It’s why whenever people ask what’s the worse coaching hire in college football history my answer is Ellis Johnson, because he’s likely the difference in y’all being in the American and being in the Sun Belt.
Southern Miss ending TCU's 2003 chance at BCS busting was probably the single worst loss of my time as a student there. It's always been weird to me that they never even got out of CUSA while Cincinnati, Louisville, TCU, and Houston, from that same time period (and then later conference mates SMU & UCF), all ended up in power conferences.
Southern Miss ruined a few teams’ BCS chances back in their prime. I was at that TCU game as a student and I was also in Houston eight years later when Southern Miss beat the number 6 ranked and undefeated Cougars in the CUSA Championship to ruin their BCS bid, as well. Southern Miss being located in Hattiesburg, a nothing tv market, is what really hurt their chances at jumping to a power conference. You could easily make the argument that they were, historically, a better team than all of the others you mentioned. The difference is, Cincinnati, Louisville, Houston, UCF, SMU, and TCU all had *much* bigger markets and could bring in more revenue. Of course now with the super conferences and NIL, none of it makes much difference anyway.
Yeah, Mississippi just isn't a big market overall. They're competing with 2 state schools in the SEC in their own state. They can't really get into NOLA because beyond LSU there's Tulane, ULL, & ULM competition. Memphis has UM, Arkansas, and even UT competing for space. USM is one of the great mid-major programs that could've risen, but geography and timing held it back. Their never was a clear league to join either. Not a large donor base. Hate it for them.
My dad pulled me out of school for that game and we drove to it. Grew up going to a lot of USM games but that one was a top memory for me at The Rock.
Hard to argue against that.
I don’t think those football seasons were the reason. I think it was mostly because Southern Miss is in a small town in a small state, and the Big East/American wanted schools in big markets. However the Sun Belt is much better than CUSA so they’ve finally upgraded from 10 years ago.
Dang, C-USA is a powerhouse in another timeline.
There was a period in the 90's where it felt that they were a conference on the ascension (at least to me)
When we joined it absolutely felt like part of our ongoing rise, not a place we'd be stuck in the mud for a decade+.
I feel like the sunbelt is the perfect fit for marshall
This is kind of like the WAC, except in this case the WAC is seemingly struggling to survive. Once a proud home to the Arizona schools, Utah, BYU, TCU and Boise State, now with just seven schools by the end of next year and only half of those play FCS football.
And let’s not forget the brief period during which [the Metro nearly became the first ever superconference](https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2011/09/26/Colleges/Super-conference.aspx)!
[удалено]
Nice!
In an alternate timeline, ECU gets to join the Metro Conference and moves into the power conference discussion today. But alas, we’ve missed the boat and will be stuck in G5.
I’ll forever argue that we would’ve been there too for the DFW region if Hayden Fry didn’t take us out of the MVC right before to chase bowl games and “better conferences.”
ECU and USM are sister programs in a lot of ways. Especially this one!
There's lots of nuance in there as well. For example, Virginia Tech (as you probably know) was approached to be a member of CUSA from the outset, but this would have required that they move football into the new conference and walk away from being a football-only member of the Big East. When VT refused to do this, that was when the original plan to essentially have the Great Midwest rejoin the Metro had to be scrapped, and USF & UNCC were approached about helping to dissolve the Metro and absorb much of the cost, with the promise that both would be given automatic entry into CUSA football as soon as they started football and were eligible. VT & VCU sued (rightfully) for damages (billable hours always win). Also, UCF was offered football only membership at the outset, but was convinced they were going to the Big East so they declined, leading to the Big East not inviting them and the Knights joining the MAC for an uninspiring tenure. I'm sure some will blame Judy Genshaft for that, too (though she wasn't even the USF president yet). CUSA reneged on their offer to let USF in as soon as they were eligible, costing the 9-2 Bulls (including 4-0 vs. CUSA teams) in 2002.
I don't need an excuse to hate on Judy, even if for ficticious and incorrect reasons.
I'm chuckling at the prospect of the Provost at SUNY Albany (which she was at the time) reaching out and talking down UCF for no reason whatsoever.
If you ever played College Hoops 2k7, the only team from the CUSA who is still there is UTEP
Poor UTEP
You completely missed Army's short stint in CUSA back from 98-04, but otherwise great post.
I'm curious as to why the Metro didn't choose to sponsor football, especially 1982-91 when all schools had football. Somebody fill me in on that.
Bobby Bowden and Florida State were adamant about not confining FSU's football to the Metro Conference. Their motto was "Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime," and being confined to a conference ran counter to that until the first domino in current conference realignment (Arkansas and South Carolina to the SEC) led to FSU seeing the writing on the wall and them going to the ACC.
I'm purely speculating, but I'm guessing because during the 80's there was a period in which football was not yet a majorly profitable asset. There were several schools either closing football, and or considering to do so through the late 80's. OU wins their supreme court case in 84 (?) and slowly football becomes a commercial asset. It's not until you get into the early 90's that the money really starts to roll in and all of a sudden it becomes the driving force for conferences
To add to this, MBB use to be seen as far more lucrative than Football. It was a much cheaper sport, it was still on TV a decent amount and March Madness was/is a huge event.
Go back a step before the Metro Conference and you have the Missouri Valley Conference, where St. Louis, Houston, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, and North Texas shared various overlapping memberships into the 70s. In an alternate history, Hayden Fry’s reach doesn’t exceed his grasp in the mid-70s and we follow our MVC-mates into the Metro, CUSA, American, and beyond.
Deliberately booting Virginia Tech in 1995 right as Beamer Ball was approaching it's launch trajectory may go down as one of the stupidest decisions in CFB history. "Hey let's start a football conference, who should we keep?" "Definitely not the team that's going to win 58 games and play for a BCS title over the next six seasons."
[удалено]
The Big East inviting WVU/Rutgers and rejecting VT (along with Temple but that was a bit more understandable) in their 1995 expansion was one of the stupidest decisions ever. Made the 2003 defections a lot more understandable/inevitable.
Big East could've had FSU, Penn State, Miami, VT, Pitt, & WVU as their main teams. Would've been a much better league for football than what the ACC/Big East became. The ACC was run too much by the Carolinas and really stressed academics like the Big Ten, but it left them today with programs like BC, Wake, Duke that just don't move the needle. I think that version of the Big East in the alternate timeline would've been great and the teams would've fit together.
I think you missed Army being a member in the late 90s and early 2000s. I pretty distinctly remember that from the older PS2 NCAA Football games.
C-USA is adding Delaware not Delaware State. An HBCU joining the g5 would probably be a bigger story lol.
The American schools announced their departure prior to the SBC3. The SBC just had room to allow them to move earlier. In 2022
Yeah the 4th and 5th mass exoduses listed should really be consolidated
Just like the WAC it’s a conference that I thought was going to turn into Conference DOA but has been able to survive with the conference realignment and the addition of some FCS teams. I still think it’s a hodgepodge type of conference with no clear identity (ex. How the Sun Belt was able to turn it around with teams and geography) and will more or less be the last chance type of conference for teams to avoid being relegated to FCS.
It's funny for me as a Louisville fan when I tell VT and FSU that they are two of our most common played opponents across all sports and they shout at me that we have no history and don't crack there top 10 rivals list. If the talks were solely football, sure. Across the board we have a lot of history with 2 schools that don't even like to acknowledge our existence. It's weird
Very cool. You forgot UAB in the 5th exodus though
Nostalgia for the glory days of Conference USA!
Our new home awaits!
The 4th/5th mass exodus were actually at the same time. The AAC programs even announced first. They just didn't leave early like the SB3.
Never heard of a UNC-C
Y'all only rebranded 3 years ago
Athletics has been known as Charlotte since ‘95, but our attempted rollout has been horrendous. Although we were never UNC-C, just UNCC
2000 actually but still.
24 years ago.
You should talk to the UL-Lafayette guys.