C-USA - College Football Nation Blog - ESPN

ESPN.com's Andy Katz reported late Friday that the league has sent conditional invitations to Houston and SMU in all sports, and Boise State and Air Force in football only. A separate all-sports invitation has been sent to UCF.

Sounds like there will be 3 open spots in C-USA.
Two in the west and one in the east.

Hmmm. I don't quite understand why the mention of UCF is listed separately from the others. Any insights?

GO OWLS!!!

but with MWC & CUSA merging, they don't really have to fill 3 spots, 1 to bring them to 10 maybe, if none at all???

owlfan1 said

Hmmm. I don't quite understand why the mention of UCF is listed separately from the others. Any insights?

I've yet to see a concrete story saying UCF received an invite and accepted it.

Plenty of sites reporting speculation that UCF will get an invite though.

Kind of strange. They mention the others as "provisional", but do not use that term when mentioning UCF. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

GO OWLS!!!

To the casual fan, there is no difference between playing Arkansas State or ULM at home, versus playing Tulsa, Rice, Tulane or ECU.

BMarkey said

To the casual fan, there is no difference between playing Arkansas State or ULM at home, versus playing Tulsa, Rice, Tulane or ECU.

To me there is a difference, ECU is closer than any SB team, so I would like that! And I have always lobbied for App State to join any conference we are in.

=)

BigEast took ANOTHER blow with WestVirginia leaving for the Big12. Another slot opens IF they even survive in football. With Louisville, UConn and Rutgers all still looking to leave. Being picky over teams current records has cosy them time and whomever they add will not equal the quality of current football programs that are leaving.

if they are to even survive as a football conference they better start thinking long term by adding the media markets (UCF, FAU, FIU) and a few winning programs (S.Miss, ECU) that will help them and stay with them long term. As of now they are trying to add only winning teams to keep the AQ bid but are losing the entire conference in the process as the other Big5 are just maiming them. NO loyalty in the present members at all, even after pledges of loyalty just weeks ago.

GeorgiaOwl said

BigEast took ANOTHER blow with WestVirginia leaving for the Big12. Another slot opens IF they even survive in football. With Louisville, UConn and Rutgers all still looking to leave. Being picky over teams current records has cosy them time and whomever they add will not equal the quality of current football programs that are leaving.

if they are to even survive as a football conference they better start thinking long term by adding the media markets (UCF, FAU, FIU) and a few winning programs (S.Miss, ECU) that will help them and stay with them long term. As of now they are trying to add only winning teams to keep the AQ bid but are losing the entire conference in the process as the other Big5 are just maiming them. NO loyalty in the present members at all, even after pledges of loyalty just weeks ago.

Right now I'm thinking BE football will be over soon. You may just see the leage re-formulating into a sole basketball league which is really it's core anyway. Pitino has talked about this. They are going to look at teams like SMU, Houston etc but it does nothing to really bolster their football credentials and they will most likely lose their automatic BCS bowl status. However I'm sure they know that they would still have a ridiculously strong basketball conference and would be wise at this juncture to just add some more strong basketball teams. Right now it looks like Big East football is turning into a Conference USA of sorts being handcuffed by football.

It's sad bc I grew up a huge Big East basketball fan (I'm a huge Syracuse fan). So it's sad to see this.

Right now I would not doubt theat the BigEast remainders merge wih CUSA into a 14 or 16 team conference and take the AQ bid with them. Still a better conference than the Mtn.West with only Boise really.
Either way it appears likely that the Belt, MAC and WC are being forced out of the FBS game. This really makes me angry as we will never be able to pay for, let alone fill the new stadium in this scenario. I prefer we go back to being Independent as to that! Bring in a couple of big name schools and fill these seats at least twice a year, plus play a couple of payday games too. Pay for the stadium and make the operating budget for athletics until we get another opportunity to move up.