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TROY, Ala. – The Sun Belt Conference ended its annual spring meetings of presidents, athletic directors and basketball coaches on Tuesday in nearby Montgomery, Ala., having reached no definitive conclusion regarding whether or not it will invite a new member to join the league. According to a statement from conference, “discussion did include the potential for additional membership and expansion, but Sun Belt officials will not have further comment on the subject.” It’s believed the Sun Belt, which is looking to add one more program, is waiting to learn the fate of Alabama-Birmingham before making any firm decision regarding membership. UAB will soon decide whether to reinstate its football program, which it recently shut down. If the Blazers do not reinstate football and are booted from Conference USA as a result, it’s believed they would consider the Missouri Valley Conference and the Sun Belt as possible landing spots for their other sports program. Read more: http://www.theadvertiser.com/story/sports/college/ul/2015/05/19/sun-belt-may-waiting-uab/27625221/

Rick Stockstill was very disappointed to see UAB disband its football program, but that won't stop him from capitalizing on the situation. The Middle Tennessee State head coach sees less competition to recruit players out of Alabama now that UAB is without a Division I football program. With UAB out of the picture -- at least for now -- it creates an opportunity to recruit "15 to 20 kids who might have been interested in UAB but now they have to look somewhere else," said Stockstill. In a talent-rich state like Alabama, the loss of an FBS-level school could benefit numerous out-of-state schools. The downside for MTSU is it loses what Stockstill considered a burgeoning rivalry with UAB. When recruiting the state, MTSU doesn't end up in many battles with Alabama and Auburn for players. Going forward schools like Troy and South Alabama will be the Blue Raiders' biggest competition in Alabama. Stockstill expects the school's Conference USA affiliation to help beat those two Sun Belt schools on the recruiting trail. Read more: http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2015/05/how_one_cusa_school_looks_to_c.html

Conference USA's upcoming spring meetings should be more interesting than most. Thanks to UAB. Besides needing to select a host city, venue and format for the annual C-USA men's and women's basketball tournaments, the league's athletic directors have to discuss the ongoing situation with UAB's membership when the meetings commence Monday in Destin, Fla. It appeared the Blazers' swan song in C-USA would be the 2015-16 school year since embattled UAB President Ray Watts terminated the school's football program last December. Under league bylaws, UAB cannot remain in the league without a football program. So, it looked fairly cut and dried. Until last Thursday, that is. Read more: http://www.herald-dispatch.com/sports/x1641589675/C-USA-meetings-could-get-interesting

Conference USA needs to err on the side of caution in the UAB situation. I know, I know. There are some impetuous athletic directors in C-USA who would kick the Blazers to the curb lock, stock and basketball program during spring meetings later this month. To be kind, I think they are misguided. To be honest, they are misanthropes. A rush to judgment not only would be a mistake, it would be a crime considering UAB and Southern Miss are the longest-standing members of this plundered league. The Blazers simply deserve better. And it appears that's what UAB will get. Although C-USA reportedly has told UAB it won't amend the bylaws to keep the Blazers without football, the league also isn't treating UAB like it has leprosy. Read more: http://www.herald-dispatch.com/sports/x1641588487/C-USA-in-position-to-help-UAB-and-should

Alabama-Birminghams future in Conference USA will be decided on June 8 when the leagues executive committee meets in Dallas, conference officials decided during a conference call earlier this week. Yet the decision may be a foregone conclusion. Several conference officials, who asked not to be identified, said there appears to be a consensus that unless UAB does the unthinkable and announces it will revive football, the Blazers will be forced to leave C-USA. UAB officials announced on Dec. 2 that they were shutting down their football program. That violates Conference USA bylaws that requires schools either to field a Football Bowl Subdivision program or be in the process of starting football. Yes, UAB is coming off a wonderful basketball season, in which the Blazers won the C-USA tournament in Birmingham, defeating Middle Tennessee State before a frenzied crowd of more than 8,000. UAB then upset No. 3 seed Iowa State in the NCAA tournament. It was indeed a feel-good couple of weeks for a UAB fan base that has been put through the ringer. Read more: http://hamptonroads.com/2015/04/conference-usas-executive-committee-will-make-decision-uab-june-meeting-dallas

The 2015 signing class will be unveiled Wednesday, but La Tech is following the same approach with 12 of its 23 verbal commitments hailing from Louisiana. The other 11 are from Texas, Arkansas or Mississippi. The bigger question lies within how much does Tech spend recruiting in relation to its football and athletic budget. The answer is around 2.8 percent of the football budget and 1.8 of the athletic departments total expenses since 2009. In 2009, Tech spent $4.7 million on football. By 2013, that number increased to $5.8 million but that's due to Tech's athletic expenses increasing from $15.9 million in 2009 to $18.4 million in 2013. Tech's athletic budget is the lowest in Conference USA. Read more: http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/on-the-sidelines/2015/02/03/tech-wins-with-2nd-lowest-recruiting-budget-in-c-usa/22819385/

The Conference USA basketball season is officially a month old. For most teams, nine games have passed (Florida International and Florida Atlantic have only played seven; Rice and North Texas have only played eight) and the 14 teams in the league have started to separate themselves. Two weekend's ago, Conference USA's parity was on display with upsets and surprises galore. Even with that in mind, the group atop the standings — Louisiana Tech, Western Kentucky, UAB, Old Dominion, UTEP and Middle Tennessee — are all within three games of one another, meaning the next month should be highly entertaining. On Monday, Tech coach Michael White said close to half the league has a chance to win Conference USA's automatic bid when the tournament tips off in Birmingham, Alabama. THE BOTTOM TIER North Texas Record: 9-11, 3-5 NCAA RPI: 269 Overview: Louisiana Tech fell victim to North Texas' hot shooing two weeks ago, so it's a possibility another top team like WKU, UAB, Middle Tennessee or UTEP could do the same against the Mean Green. Senior Jordan Williams is capable or taking over a game but UNT lacks a championship roster to consistently compete. Read more: http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/on-the-sidelines/2015/02/03/analyzing-conference-usas-contenders-and-pretenders/22776925/

University of Texas at San Antonio's Lynn Hickey and other Conference USA athletic directors are meeting this week in Boca Raton, Florida, and one of the items on the agenda is the controversial cost-of-attendance athlete reimbursement model adopted recently by college football's so-called Power Five conferences the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference. Under the new system, athletes attending participating universities in those conferences may now receive enhanced scholarship support additional money covering expanded costs associated with attending school. Other Division I conferences are now tackling the issue, for fear they could be further relegated to second-tier status. Read more: http://m.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2015/01/28/c-usa-utsa-dealing-with-whether-to-pay-athletes.html?r=full

Conference USA will be patient in deciding whether to keep the University of Alabama at Birmingham as a member, C-USA commissioner Britton Banowsky said Thursday. UAB president Ray Watts gave a presentation to C-USA presidents this week during the conference's winter meetings in Boca Raton, Fla. UAB dropped football last month and C-USA bylaws require schools to play football to be a member. Since then, UAB has created a committee to reexamine its justification for dropping football, bowling and rifle. A new outside consultant is going to be hired to review financial numbers and assumptions from a previous consultant's report. “It's an extraordinary situation. It's not like any kind of membership transition,” Banowsky said. “We don't really have a timetable. I think our folks have a level of patience and are going to be pretty measured in the way we review it. We're going to stay in communication and monitor the situation as UAB tries to understand what it's going to do.” read more: http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/jon-solomon/25007043/c-usa-league-will-be-patient-on-whether-to-keep-uab

"There is going to be a couple of major issues that we're going to discuss," Massaro said about the meetings, which end Wednesday. "One is the autonomy and paying cost of attendance. Then the other one is UAB. "UAB will be there. The president of UAB will be there and he's scheduled to talk to the other presidents about their situation and, I think, their desire to continue on in Conference USA." Read more: http://www.dnj.com/story/sports/college/mtsu/2015/01/25/uab-watts-cusa-winter-meetings-mtsu/22319323/

C-USA officials proposed two options to make up for Alabama-Birmingham dropping football. The simplest would be to have teams play the same conference opponents as last season with the sites reversed. Charlotte, which joins C-USA as a football member in 2015, would assume the schedule UAB played. The other option would be far more complicated - redo the schedules from scratch. Doing so becomes thorny because the calendar next season leaves 13 weeks, not the usual 14, to play 12 games. The league must also account for non-conference schedules and requests from networks for TV games. And because there are an odd number of teams in the league, each week one would be off. Read more: http://hamptonroads.com/2015/01/loss-uab-football-might-be-one-odu-too

With the uncertainty surrounding the University of Alabama-Birminghams future with Conference-USA, it may be time for the Louisiana Ragin Cajuns athletic department to consider leaving the Sun Belt Conference. C-USA requires all of its members to carry football for full membership, but following the 2014 season UAB dropped football. UAB officials cited financial issues as the reason to end their football program, which began in 1991. With the addition of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Charlotte), C-USA will have 13 football playing members for its 2015 season. They havent officially announced they are looking for a replacement for UAB, but having even-numbered divisions could be a future goal. The Cajuns would be a viable option for C-USA if they consider adding schools. The Cajuns football program is coming off a fourth straight R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl win. This makes them the only school in the history of the NCAA to win the same bowl four straight years. In comparison to C-USA schools, the Cajuns would have had the fourth-best average attendance record in football with 25,775. Under current head coach Mark Hudspeth, the Cajuns are 8-3 versus current C-USA schools. Read more: http://thevermilion.com/?p=3100

According to the 247Sports.com ranking, Louisiana Tech (22 commitments) leads Conference USA and is 67th nationally. In descending order from there in league rankings, its Florida Atlantic (24) in second place, trailed by Marshall (18), Florida International (20), Old Dominion (26), Texas-San Antonio (26), Southern Miss (22), North Texas (18), Rice (14), MTSU (14), Western Kentucky (17), Charlotte (8) and UTEP (4). Read more: http://www.dnj.com/story/sports/2015/01/18/football-recruiting-rankings-still-inexact/21966045/

AMHERST – University of Massachusetts athletic director John McCutcheon may be in the process of looking for a new job, but for now, he's still at UMass. And since announcing that UMass football would be leaving the Mid-American Conference following the 2015 season and play the 2016 and 2017 seasons as an independent, that means fielding a constant barrage of questions about when and where and how the school will find a new conference home. The current flavor of the month is Conference USA, which earlier this week lost league member Alabama-Birmingham after UAB officials decided to kill the football program as a measure to help keep the athletic department financially solvent. Naturally, many UMass fans immediately zeroed in on C-USA as a potential landing spot for the Minutemen. The league, which for the moment has an even 12 football members, will have 13 again beginning in 2015 when Charlotte makes its Football Bowl Subdivision debut and that makes for considerable logistical problems. Read more: http://www.masslive.com/umassfootball/index.ssf/2014/12/conference_usa_umass_football.html

Why it could happen quickly They have already done all of their due diligence on these teams through the past couple of expansions/replacements. They know what is going on facility wise at say ULL or Arky State etc.. they don't need additional binders and site visits unless its a new team to the mix like say Liberty etc.. Why would you wait to add a team you know you need to add if adding them would help the team in recruiting? The sooner you can make the announcement the better it will help whatever team it is to finish up their recruiting class... You have a good window of media time attention between when the bowls are announced and they are actually played. It's a pretty dead time news wise. C-USA took a hit with the loss of UAB and the quicker you make a decision the sooner you put the UAB thing behind you Why it could take longer: The C-USA office will be busy with the bowl games and they have new ones etc.. plus it's the holidays... I think there could be some battles over ULL and Texas State from La. Tech and UTSA... I just don't think that giving a recruiting edge to a school in your backyard will be easy to sell to programs already in C-USA that you are trying to lift up. Certain C-USA programs have been around longer than others and thus have more leverage, ie Marshall and Southern Miss. The networks could be delaying clarity on which schools would impact the new contract. They may already know who they want but Benson (or another conference commissioner) is asking for more time so he can evaluate his replacement...

http://www.conferenceusa.com/genrel/120214aac.html Conference USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky Statement on UAB: "We are aware of the study but disappointed with the decision to discontinue the sport of football at UAB, particularly because of its effect on the lives of the student-athletes and coaches that have worked so hard to restore the quality of the program. We don't fully understand the decision, nor agree with it, but do respect it and the authority of the UAB Administration to make it. As a conference, we will move forward in our pursuit of excellence in athletics and academics, with the primary goal of providing a positive educational experience for all of our 5,000 student-athletes. Our universities have invested in athletics, and in facilities to support athletics, and are focused on their student-athletes and the contribution college athletics makes on their campuses and in their communities. UAB has been a contributing member to the Conference since its inception and has expressed a strong interest in remaining a member, a topic that the Conference's Board of Directors will take up in the months ahead. The Conference's current bylaws require all members to sponsor football."

Alabama-Birmingham officials are expected to announce this week that they will shutter their football program, USA Today and Sports Illustrated reported on Sunday. If true, it will be a blow to Conference USA, and as such, a blow for Old Dominion’s football program. UAB would be forced to withdraw from the conference, which requires schools to play football. First-year coach Bill Clark, who guided UAB to a 6-6 record this season and bowl eligibility, will have his contract bought out and athletic director Brian Mackin will be fired as part of a reorganization of the athletic department. UAB’s football program has struggled over the years, but the school is a large, urban university in a state that is football crazy. Birmingham is the nation’s 43rd-largest TV market. Read more: http://www.hamptonroads.com/2014/11/demise-uab-football-blow-conference-usa-and-thus-blow-old-dominion

...But beating UTSA in San Antonio would sure give me a big Mean Green boost heading into this offseason and recruiting, If we allow them to go 2-0 against us it would be a bitter pill. if we lose... well I hate to even think about that. I don't recall having this same type of interest in an otherwise meaningless game when we were on hind tit in the Belt years. Tells you that the Texas rivalries are a good thing for us in C-USA for sure.

Prior to the season, it was widely assumed that the West Division would be much better than the East in Conference USA. It appears that's not the case. Marshall, Old Dominion, Middle Tennessee, UAB and Western Kentucky have all been mostly solid early on in the East. In the West, North Texas and Louisiana Tech have been extremely erratic great one week and terrible the next. Defending C-USA champion Rice hasn't won a game. UTEP and UTSA have been fairly consistent while new West member Southern Miss is trying to pick itself up off the mat with a 2-2 record. The only thing I'm sure of this week is that Marshall is the clear No. 1. Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2014/09/23/5816041_c-usa-top-5-marshall-clear-no.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Freshman Dajon Williams made his first start at quarterback and could not have had an easier debut, completing 11-of-14 passes for 176 yards and three touchdowns and rushing four times for 68 yards and two touchdowns. The Mean Green averaged 11.9 yards per pass attempt and 8.5 yards per rush, and also notched two pick sixes and one punt return for a touchdown. Ironically, the Conference USA single-game points record North Texas tied was set against… North Texas. Rice set the record back in 2008 by demolishing then-Sun Belt member North Texas 77-20. read more: http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/09/21/old-dominion-north-texas-made-conference-usa-history-on-saturday/

UNT is off today, but there is always news on the football front. To start with, it looks like backup safety John Schilleci will be back for the Mean Green’s game this week against Nicholls State after some off the field issues resulted in a one-game suspension. There are a bunch of Conference USA teams in action today. Long story short — the league continue to looks pretty good. Read more: http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2014/09/saturday-night-notes-looks-like-schilleci-will-be-back-as-planned.html/

So what is a mid-major? It’s a question that nobody has been able to agree on a concrete definition. For some, a mid-major is any team that doesn’t play in one of the five biggest conferences. Others include basketball conferences like the AAC & the Big East, as teams like Georgetown and Connecticut clearly don’t recruit or play like scrappy underdogs. The definition that makes the most sense to me is to add two groups that aren’t often included and create four groups: Power, High-Major, Mid-Major, and Low-Major. While conference realignment has blurred the lines between some conferences, the moves between conferences also help to show where those lines are. Several conferences that are often called mid-majors don’t really fit the description. The Atlantic 10, Conference USA, Missouri Valley, and Mountain West all suffer from a lack of name programs that the power conferences have, but each of the four expects to send multiple teams to the tournament just about every year. The addition of BYU to the West Coast Conference lands them in this category as well. In stronger seasons, any of these conferences are capable of securing more bids than most of the Power Conferences, but as the C-USA and Missouri Valley found out in 2014, they can wind up with only one tournament bid as well. Read more: http://bustingbrackets.com/2014/08/20/mid-major-drawing-lines/

Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen is the new title sponsor of the Bahamas Bowl, it was officially announced today. The game will be called the Popeyes Bahamas Bowl and it will be played at Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium in Nassau, Bahamas. Teams from the C-USA and MAC will meet in the inaugural game on Wednesday, Dec. 24 at Noon ET on ESPN. “Popeyes is honored to partner with the Bahamas Bowl to bring this historic bowl game to college football fans everywhere,” said Hector Munoz, Vice President of Marketing for Popeyes. “Like college football, Popeyes enjoys a rich tradition and passionate fans, and we look forward to a great game and a lot of fun in the Bahamas.” Read more: http://www.fbschedules.com/2014/08/popeyes-title-sponsor-bahamas-bowl/

The 2014 Conference USA lineup could turn out to be deep if all goes according to plan. A 13-team league this season (Charlotte will join as a full-time member in 2015), C-USA should have no problems filling its five bowl tie-ins. The knowledge that those bowl spots are out there gives WKU added motivation seeing as it came from a league where two of the last three seasons it couldnt get a postseason spot despite a winning record. Theres a lot of stability now where were at, WKU coach Jeff Brohm said. Theres a lot of opportunities if we succeed and do well, so theres a lot of motivation to win, but we also understand that every week its going to be extremely tough and weve just got to take it one game at a time. You hear that a lot, but we have to do that and focus on that and becoming the best players and team we can be. Read more: http://www.bgdailynews.com/sports/wku/marshall-north-texas-frontrunners-in-c-usa/article_02d8d652-3804-547d-9f16-2a22af861d99.html?mode=jqm

To hear league commissioner Britton Banowsky tell it, Conference USA finally has reached stability for the first time in several years. The past couple seasons have seen the exits of several longtime conference members. Gone are Memphis, SMU and Central Florida. Joining the exodus are Houston, Tulane, Tulsa and East Carolina. In their stead, last year Conference USA added Middle Tennessee, North Texas, Texas-San Antonio, Florida International, Florida Atlantic and Louisiana Tech to the football mix. This season, the league welcomes two more additions to the fold — Old Dominion and Western Kentucky. Charlotte, although technically a member of Conference USA, won't officially join the league's football lineup until 2015. By and large, members — both old and new — believe Conference USA is set up for long-term stability and success. Read more: http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/story/sports/special-edition/2014/08/21/conference-usa-taking-shape/14374959/