Wednesday, September 01, 1999
C-USA to consider expansion
BY MIKE DeCOURCY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Conference USA may soon include more of the USA.
League presidents Tuesday gave commissioner Mike Slive the go-ahead to look into expanding the 12-member league, with the two expected targets being Western Athletic Conference members Southern Methodist and Texas Christian. The presidents unanimously voted to have Slive consider the expansion issue and report back in two weeks.
C-USA currently has 12 full members, including the University of Cincinnati, and two football-only members. SMU and TCU would be interested in joining only if they could compete in all sports.
The addition of those two and the inclusion of South Florida, which is upgrading its football program to Division I-A in 2001, would give the league 12 members and permit the scheduling of a conference championship football game.
The league has members in 13 states, including New York, Florida, Illinois and Texas. SMU, located in Dallas, and TCU, which is in Fort Worth, previously were in the Southwest Conference.
There may be some opposition to the expansion to 14 schools in basketball, particularly from those that do not have football teams.
Expansion would force a change in the scheduling structure for basketball and also would make it difficult to include all members in the conference tournament.
In football, TCU averaged 27,181 fans for six home games in 1998, which ranked 71st in Division I and would have been middle-of-the-pack in C-USA. SMU drew 18,218, which ranked 93rd, ahead of only Houston among C-USA members.
TCU ranked 93rd in attendance among more than 300 basketball schools, drawing 5,940 per game, better than just four Conference USA members. SMU did not rank among the top 100 schools in attendance.
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