It may take one or two C-USA teams deciding to leave to get realignment started because it doesn’t look like the conference, & some members, are ever going to admit that it can’t survive in its current form. Only question is can schools justify paying an exit fee when they are already losing money. I’m not sure how hard it is to get out but I wish some dominoes would start falling.
The reason CUSA specifically is facing issues is because we are a G5 conference with teams that are way too spread out. Right now they are putting on a bandaid, to actually fix the problem long term there needs to be some serious structural changes in the conference. As well as potential conference realignments
I hope that I don’t regret saying this, but would a good financial crisis help Charlotte in the long run? What if 30 of the 130 FBS schools had to make some hard choices, like dropping back to FCS because it costs much less, or maybe dropping football altogether? There are definitely FBS schools that cannot afford to be good at football, and it must be 30% or more of their total athletic budget. Tough choices. If the FBS universe was suddenly much smaller it might present some new opportunities for us.
If that were to happen, you could legitimately see an entire conference disappear from the G5. So long Sunbelt? Or at least it would lead to merger talks between the Sunbelt and CUSA.
I’ve thought about this too. I really have felt that eventually non-P5 schools would need to go to regional conferences to survive but this pandemic may not only expedite that idea but expand it as well. There are a lot of P5 schools that are barely hanging on despite the huge TV contracts. This type of shutdown could put all but about 10-12 schools into a financial situation where that recently released Pat Forde regional model may be necessary for the entire NCAA landscape to survive.
clt says that forde model is looking very reasonable