As usual, some of the best sources on all things C-USA can be found in the Denton Record-Chronicle and the Virginian-Pilot.
Volleyball tournament reduced to 4 teams. 
Could be a lot of tanking in the latter part of the season, as many teams will be out of the running and just playing out the schedule. Oh, well.
I think tanking would be a bad move when it came time to do your annual review with Mike Hill.
Not sure college players do tanking
Did you watch any of the Alan Major years? 
I think you are right. My comment was not necessarily directed at our program specifically and I was thinking more of the athletes than the coaches. One motivation a coach can utilize when her team is in 9th place is the chance to move up to 8th. Not nearly the reward for moving up the standings when only 4th gets you to the tournament.
From the standpoint of the league, there is no chance in Hell that over 2 teams are going to make the NCAA and there’s only a snowball’s chance that a team outside the top 4 is going to win the conference auto bid. So from a pure cost saving perspective, this is a good move. From a pure cost saving perspective, this league should abandon volleyball altogether. Along with women’s soccer, softball, and probably some other sports. Before someone objects, bear in mind the words “from a pure cost saving perspective”
Of course, Title IX prevents that sort of thing, so the next best strategy is to continue these money losers and try to make the losses less, which is what is being done.
No. When? Just saw clapping.
Somewhat contradictory pieces here. Marshall AD says no discussions between C-USA and SBC while UTEP AD mentions a scheduling alliance.
actually i believe that both sources could be correct in this case. the marshall AD says that there is no talks about a c-usa/sbc MERGER happening, but he never says anything about a scheduling alliance. the utep AD actually says the same thing, but speaks more about this scheduling alliance than the marshall AD does.
A schedule alliance with SBC doesn’t do UTEP any favors. I honestly don’t know why the AD at UTEP would won’t to remain in CUSA given the travel costs they face. The closest SBC school Texas State is still an 8 hour drive so I’d assume most trips they are flying to.
Lets get real UTEP is near nothing, going to be hard for them to belong anywhere with how bad they’ve been in sports recently.
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When Hamrick says that “has been zero talks” about a C-USA and SBC merger it makes me wonder, why not? Shouldn’t there have at least been a discussion to determine whether a “merger” made sense? The fans are talking about it, and the media it talking about it, why would the ADs and Conference officials not be talking about it too? Isn’t it their responsiblity to look at all options?
Maybe Hamrick and his cohorts are playing word games here. Maybe they didn’t talk about a “merger”, but did talk about “realignment”. Or maybe they didn’t talk about C-USA and SBC, but did about Hypothetical Conference A and Hypothetical Conference B. It could be the same game they all play where coaches are never offered a job until after they work out the terms and agree to accept it (unless you are Mike Houston).
If they have been tasked with coming up with a plan to build better rivalries, cut team travel costs, and provide fans with more opportunities to attend away games then reshuffling conference membership should absolutely be a topic of discussion. I hope they are lying to us, and not inept.
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“Merger” is the key word there, a merger makes no sense. Now if the Eastern teams can get the auto-bid moved up a split and formation of a new conference could better things if the exit fees are lowered. I’m almost certain ODU and JMU have been investigating this, and of course it would depend upon who you could add.
Also making CUSA football only would make sense as well if you want a partial split.
Neither would be a merger so technically they would be telling the truth.
Yeah a merger is definitely a bad idea but taking basically the same group of universities & splitting them into an Eastern & Western conference makes a lot of sense. It gets tricky with some of the Western most Sunbelt schools not having football but there has to be something better than the current situation.
I am not sure what you would call it other than a merger, but put both divisions together and create two separate conferences. It would save tons of money and be better for the fans as well so they could travel to some games.
To me, a merger is when you take two and combine them to make one. Keeping two and reshuffling the teams is realignment.
This is what I was saying. I wouldn’t want to take all of the teams and merge them into 1 giant conference. Realigning the teams based on geography and remaining 2 separate conferences would make the most sense in my opinion.
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Making (3) out of them (at least for the non-football sports) would make the most sense, then you’re not splitting the NCAA credits unnecessarily in one bid leagues.
Webster’s dictionary endorses this post
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Never thought the merger rumors made any sense as a 28 team conference would be unwieldy in so many ways. If looking to cut costs - especially travel - then a geographical realignment is the way to go.
Anyway, expect to see more non-P5 moves like FAMU to the SWAC and RMU to the Horizon.
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