The teams in Texas are probably the main keeping thing this alive because really there is nowhere else for UTSA, UTEP, Rice and North Texas to go outside of forming their own league with whomever else they think they could get.

I'd love for the MAC to add WKU and Marshall. They both fit perfectly geographically and you wouldn't have to do any switching of current members' divisions. Put Marshall in the East and WKU in the West.

The Sun Belt could get much, much stronger adding schools like Southern Miss and La Tech.

LaTech and MTSU left Sun Belt on not the best of terms a few years ago. I doubt that either would be heading back anytime soon.

After CUSA lost Houston, Memphis, UCF, ECU and Tulsa (plus, SMU and Tulane) to the AAC, they tried to make up for the loss of quality with an increase in quantity. It's just not working. A 14-team conference is really cumbersome for football. Unfortunately for them, they may be stuck with their mess. The Sun Belt -- while on the rise -- doesn't offer anything more for any CUSA team.

Anyway, going to the Sun Belt would seem like backsliding for LaTech. At least when they moved to CUSA it seemed like a lateral move, if not a step up.

If Pataskala's prediction is correct and the TV money dries up when sports move to the internet things will be changing. My guess is we will hold onto the MAC as long as we possibly can but if major restructuring happens all bets are off. The bargaining chip in my opinion for getting into another conference is that yet to be built basketball practice facility. With it OU has one of the best mid major basketball facilities in the country.

I had lunch yesterday with about half a dozen Marshall fans. These guys are fairly plugged in. The consensus among them is that they hate that their conference stretches all the way to Texas with little-to-no upside for it. I couldn't get them to commit to the idea of a new conference made up of MAC East + CUSA East, but they didn't totally dismiss the idea either.

They also mentioned this article, from an ODU perspective:
https://pilotonline.com/sports/columnist/harry-minium/art...


(Also, FWIW, despite our problems with MAC scheduling, they said they wished Marshall had half the TV exposure we have.)