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UTEP has great potential, good football & bball facilities, but they'd be all alone in the mountain time zone and would be 600 miles from their closest competitor. They'd be a good addition if they could bring the Sun Bowl, but I'm not sure that bowl is a good fit for anyone other than the CUSA west teams. Right now, I'd say New Orleans and Memphis are much more appealing bowl destinations.

I'm thinking in a 12 team conference, La Tech or UNT would be the best addition. If CUSA goes to 14, I like the MAC trifecta idea. Realistically, UTEP is a good fit in the WAC along with NMSU or in the MWC with the other mountain time zone schools.

<small>[ 02-14-2004, 06:01 PM: Message edited by: Charleston Pony ]</small>

i think i'll pass on utep...they're in the mountain zone & we need to go eastward where the media markets are.

If UTEP were to become part of C-USA, they would be the Hawaii of C-USA without the ocean and hula skirts to help ease the travel expense hit for the eastern C-USA schools.

UTEP brings a decent crowd to away games. They bring their band to Dallas. Would SMU rather have 10,000 UTEP fans show up every other year, or Miami of Ohio every four years with 200-300 fans in tow?

I agree that from an SMU perspective UTEP is not a bad choice though I seriously doubt that they bring 10,000 fans to our games, but then UNT probably would be equally good from that stand point. However, from a C-USA perspective, UTEP really stretches the limits of travel distance for those teams on the eastern edge of the conference. When it is all said and done, it won't be up to SMU to make the decision and I think UTEP will be, much like Hawaii for us, considered to be too far west.

The attendance at the UTEP game was 20,000. Given the attendance at the Boise game of about 10,000, I figured we draw about 10,000 and the opponants draw the rest.

the UTEP games was a huge give-away game-not that I'm complaining-but there were about 8,000 kids and their families filling the endzones.

I know this one hasn't even occurred to SMU fans, but Troy State is getting some support from the CUSA schools over that direction. Troy State was 6-6 while playing only 4 home games as a football independent last year and beat Marshall in one of their few home games. Their bball team has an RPI of 56 and leads the Atlantic Sun Conference. Being in south Alabama, they'd be as good a geographic fit as La Tech and might allow USM to join their nearby rival Tulane in the western division.

Assuming CUSA votes to stay at 12 members, I'm not sure how I feel about a La Tech vs Troy St comparison. I still like the idea of having as many close by opponents as possible and still lean towards La Tech, but admit I don't know much about Troy St.

UTEP "might" have brought 20 people to Louisiana when we've hosted them in football, basketball,... any sport. They certainly didn't bring the band.

I doubt Miners fans travel in decent numbers anywhere east of Dallas & Houston.