Conference USA future in doubt with four teams expected to join Sun Belt next week
Conference USA is 'hanging on by a thread' as the league frantically attempts to remain alive amid realignment
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Should Conference USA lose the three aforementioned programs and ultimately dissolve, the result would be the number of FBS conferences shrinking from 10 to nine. That could potentially impact ongoing talks regarding College Football Playoff expansion. As proposed, the top six ranked conference champions would receive an automatic berth in a hypothetical 12-team bracket, but that's based on the 10 existing leagues.
Decisions could be made in the next three days, sources tell CBS Sports. As such, Conference USA faces the prospect of losing nine of its 14 members within in a week. At that point, the league's future would be decided by its worth to media rights holders. If a collection of teams in the newly-formed C-USA does not draw enough interest from networks, it could go away completely. The C-USA television deal with CBS expires after the 2022-23 academic year, and the conference also has separate deals with Stadium and ESPN (mostly streaming on ESPN+).
The 26-year-old league could be the first FBS conference to fold since the Big East in 2013 with the football remnants of the old Big East eventually serving as the foundation for the AAC. Prior to that, the last FBS -- then Division I-A -- conference to go away was the Southwest Conference in 1995.
"To say that [Conference USA] is not wounded would be to deny [reality]," a source close to the discussions tells CBS Sports.
The preference for Conference USA is to add FBS members with schools such as independents New Mexico State, UConn and UMass. CBS Sports previously reported independent Liberty is in the mix for either Conference USA or Sun Belt membership. Given the developments of this past week, Liberty would likely prefer the Sun Belt at this time as the school assesses its options.
In terms of competition and revenue, it's basically a wash for any of the candidates in Conference USA and Sun Belt, and the decision may come down to travel expenses. The 10-team Sun Belt could evolve as an East Coast league with the addition of more schools within that region. In inviting any members, C-USA still has to deal with the existence of far-flung UTEP, which is 900 miles from the nearest current member, Louisiana Tech.
