SMU/Conference USA story (Park Cities People)

[Webmaster]

New league, old opponents for SMU
Mustangs launch Conference USA membership Friday

By Scott Farrell
Sports Editor

Rhonda Rompola remembers the day she dragged her team through the pouring rain into the halftime locker room.

It wasn’t punishment for her team’s poor play. Going to a separate building
for locker rooms, dodging the weather if necessary, was something all
visiting teams had to deal with playing in Fresno State’s North Gym. Bad
weather was just another hindrance in one of the WAC’s toughest road venues.

“That is one road trip I won’t miss,” Rompola said as SMU officially joins
Conference USA on Friday, ending a 10-year-old conference affiliation with
Fresno State and the Western Athletic Conference. “There is nothing I liked
about going to Fresno, the competition, the city, the flights, nothing.”

The Mustangs’ athletic program heads for what will be shorter, if not smoother, trails in CUSA. SMU begins competition in the 12-school league
this fall, more than 20 months after accepting the official invitation.

CUSA road games to Huntington, W.Va., and Hattiesburg, Miss., will be tradeouts for WAC trips to Fresno, Calif., and Boise, Idaho. But with current CUSA members Houston and Tulane composing a Western Division with SMU and other transplanting WAC schools Rice, Tulsa and Texas-El Paso, it’s a compact group that was CUSA’s main attraction when SMU considered changing its conference affiliation for the second time in 11 years.

The move has already paid off for Rompola.

“Our last eight signees have been from Texas,” she said. “I attribute that to the new conference, the perception of CUSA, the TV exposure we’re going to have, and that it’s so fan-friendly in regards to traveling on the road. We’ve already reaped the benefits from the membership, and we’re not even members yet.”

Rompola said the excitement around her program will increase since Rice and Tulsa, two of the WAC’s top teams, are in tow alongside SMU. Renewed rivalries with Houston and Tulane will help home attendance and attracting more interest.

SMU volleyball coach Lisa Seifert has three Californians and a player from
Arizona on her roster that includes plenty of Texans. Southern California has been a recruiting base for her in the past, and she hopes to continue to attract those players even though the majority of SMU’s matches will take the team south and east. SMU plays in a non-conference tournament at Cal State Fullerton this fall, and will schedule more non-conference matches out west in the future.

“The more regional travel is great because it’s fan-friendly, and it lets you develop stronger rivalries,” Seifert said. “It’s nice to be able to sell the Hawaii trip playing a Final Four team, but it’s hard to develop a rivalry with Hawaii. I’ll miss going there because for a volleyball person, you don’t get to play in that type of environment often with sellout crowds and live television. They love volleyball, and would even cheer when the opponents made good shots.”

Seifert said CUSA will be a balanced, competitive volleyball league even though its top teams moved to different conferences. She said CUSA’s prestige should carry over despite new members.

Most of all, like Rompola, Seifert awaits the easier road trips, logistically as well as competitively.

“Thank goodness we’re done with Fresno,” Seifert said. “We never played well there. Not one match, one game, one point.”


CHART
SMU officially joined Conference USA this summer, a year-and-a-half after
accepting an invitation to join the 10-year-old league. SMU has been a
member of the Western Athletic Conference since 1996, which followed a
78-year run in the Southwest Conference.

CONFERENCE USA DIVISIONAL ALIGNMENT

Western Division
Houston Cougars   
Rice Owls    
SMU Mustangs   
Texas-El Paso Miners
Tulane Green Wave
Tulsa Golden Hurricane    
    
Eastern Division
Ala.-Birmingham Blazers
Central Florida Golden Knights
East Carolina Pirates
Marshall Thundering Herd
Memphis Tigers
Southern Miss. Golden Eagles

CUSA/SMU ITEMS OF INTEREST:

* Conference USA sponsors 19 sports. SMU will compete for championships in 14 sports. Men’s swimming will continue to compete in the National Independent Conference. Equestrian and rowing will remain independent.

* In football, volleyball and women’s basketball, CUSA teams will compete in two six-team divisions. All 12 teams will be in one division for men’s
basketball, playing each team once and five teams twice.

* CUSA is one of only two major NCAA Division I conferences to have as many as four private schools. The Atlantic Coast Conference has five.

* SMU’s 10,038 students rank 10th in enrollment among the 12 CUSA schools, ahead of Rice (4,785) and Tulsa (4,100). Only East Carolina, Houston, Memphis and Central Florida have enrollments greater than 20,000. Central Florida is the largest school with 44,000 students.

* Alphabet soup: SMU fans should have an easy time remembering opponents’ names. When in doubt, spell it out when SMU faces UAB, USM, TU and UCF. SMU is already familiar with UTEP and another TU in Tulsa

* Color-blinded: SMU will grow tired of at least one color in CUSA games
against the Golden Hurricane, the Golden Knights and the Golden Eagles. The Green Wave will be an annual foe for SMU as well.

* Texas eight-step: With new CUSA mate and former Southwest Conference foe Houston back on the schedule, SMU will play at least eight football games in the state of Texas for the fourth consecutive season.

* SMU’s historic rivalries and proximity to its new CUSA Western Division
foes was the main attraction toward switching conferences. The six Eastern
Division foes, however, will be as new to SMU as most Western Athletic
Conference foes were when it joined that conference in 1996. Consider:
In football, SMU has only played one game in its history against any of its
new Eastern Division foes. SMU lost to Memphis, 27-13, in 1976. That
contrasts the 139 games played against Western Division foes Houston, Rice, Texas-El Paso, Tulane, and Tulsa.

* In men’s basketball, SMU has only played 23 games in its history against
Eastern Division foes. Tulane accounts for 17 of those. SMU has never played Marshall or Central Florida.
 
* SMU’s men’s soccer program is among the nation’s elite. It now belongs to one of the nation’s elite soccer conferences. CUSA’s new alignment contains five teams – Memphis, Central Florida, Tulsa and associate member South Carolina - that played in last year’s NCAA Tournament. Two others, associate members Florida International and Kentucky, reached the NCAA’s second round in 2003.[/u][/b]

[Sic_em]

I wish Scott Farrell was the DMN SMU beat writer instead of whoever they've got assigned right now.

[MrMustang1965]

I wish Scott Farrell was the DMN SMU beat writer instead of whoever they've got assigned right now.

That would be Calvin Watkins.

[DallasDiehard]

Calvin's a terrific reporter. If they gave him half the space he deserves, we'd all appreciate him more. Plus, because of the Belo layoffs last year, Calvin ended up covering TCU, too, and always has been their boxing guy.

With that said, Scott's pretty good, too. About time PCP started covering SMU again!

[Greenwich Pony]

Well, I'd take whoever wrote this article with a grain of salt- there are only four private schools in the ACC: Duke, Wake, Miami and BC. Maryland, Virginia, Virginia Tech, UNC, NC State, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Florida State are all public. Am I missing anyone? Have they added a new school behind our backs?