I’m going to miss marshall and usm fans talk about the natural order of realignment and how we should know our role while they get ready to move up the conference ladder
Talk all the junk you’d like about CUSA but if we were never invited back we wouldn’t have FBS football today and the fanbase would be flatline dead right now. Phil Dubois did not intend for us to have FBS football. Being a FCS independent would have made our football program a novelty and homeless without a conference. You may make the argument that the Sunbelt wanted us also but notice how many teams from the Sunbelt just got invited to the AAC.
I have a healthy respect for most of the schools in CUSA. They are all a lot like us fighting for respect in their own state against the older establishment schools. I’ve been to away football games and basketball games at many of the CUSA schools. MTSU and WKU are close to Nashville which is a fun weekend trip. ODU is near VA Beach and not so far away. Marshall has a loyal and proud fanbase.
Finally, if we had won more games in CUSA I think we could be thumping our chests a little more but we never came close to winning the conference in basketball or football so maybe have a little humility and gratitude that we were still able to move up to the AAC.
Truth! We were so fortunate that C-USA gave us a shot the 2nd time around. Phil was about to go beg the Big South to let us be a football only member before the invitation from C-USA came.
Of course the things I miss from C-USA are from our time in the league when it was founded to 2005. We had big time college basketball on our campus with Louisville, Cincy, Memphis, Marquette coming to Halton, and many times those teams left with an @ss beating. Those games hooked me as a 49er fan for life.
It gave Charlotte a place to play FBS. It was an exciting basketball league that enabled good recruiting until the Big East raided it. It is still a good soccer and baseball conference today.