Not much new info but at least it's from a AD talking on the record.

http://www.bgdailynews.com/sports/wku/q-...a8622.html


League keeping an eye on realignment; Stewart praises Birmingham as hoops tourney site


Year 2 of Western Kentucky’s time in Conference USA is complete.

Daily News sports reporter Brad Stephens sat down Friday with WKU athletic director Todd Stewart and talked about various issues affecting C-USA.

The most pressing issue has been the league’s new two-year TV deal, which was announced late last month during the C-USA spring meetings. To read more about Stewart’s thoughts on the new TV contract, see Saturday’s Daily News.

Other issues of note for C-USA include elevating the bottom of the league, getting prepared for more potential realignment and picking sites for the conference basketball tournaments. Stewart discussed all those Friday.

Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and space.

[b]BS: What’s the current state of Conference USA?[/b]

TS: “I think it’s really good with one thing that needs to improve. The reason I say it’s really good is that if you look at really every sport across the board – football, the league champion has finished the last two years in the top 25. And over the last two years we’re 7-2 in bowl games. Men’s basketball over the last two years, the conference tournament champion won an NCAA Tournament game against a 3-seed and a 2-seed. … So I think if you go across the board, the top half of the conference I really believe can compete with anybody in the country.

“What we talked about in the meetings and what we need to improve in all of those sports is not necessarily the bottom half, but the bottom third, probably. That’s where there needs to be improvement. The bottom three, four, five teams in each sport are what is keeping the league from elevating to a higher level and having a little bit more national respect.”

BS: Where does elevating that bottom third of the league begin?

TS: “It starts with scheduling and recruiting. Obviously every school wants to recruit. But as a conference we need to schedule the right way. That’s easier said than done. Sometimes there’s changes in getting games, getting home games. But I think we’ve shown if you’re creative then you can get some nice series that enable you to compete and also enable you to have some home games. I think that’s probably the biggest way out because when you have overall league rankings, it’s based on all 14 schools. If three, four, five schools – and it’s not the same schools – but if three, four, five in every sport could just improve then I think it could be a real positive across the board.”

BS: The Big 12 Conference’s potential expansion has been a hot topic all spring. Should the Big 12 take teams from the American Athletic Conference, it’s likely the AAC would look to replace them with C-USA programs. What discussion was there at spring meetings about realignment contingency plans for the league?

TS: “Not a lot. We have talked about it. The good news is there are a lot of schools that are interested in coming to Conference USA. So should we need to add schools, that would not be a problem or an issue. It’s a lot like a coaching search kind of thing. You always have to prepared. You never really know when, for the right reasons or the wrong reasons, you may have a coaching vacancy. It’s the same thing with realignment. …

“It was hot and heavy for about 2½ years and it really has settled down. Certainly whatever the Big 12 decides to do or not to do – and I’ve kind of heard conflicting reports coming out of their meetings – that could be another domino to fall that could affect things. I don’t think you’ll see, regardless of what they do, the nationwide impact of before.”

BS: Do you feel WKU’s move to C-USA, which took place in the summer of 2014, has produced the desired results?

TS: “I do, for a lot of reasons. First of all, I think the schools we’re associated with are like-minded schools. We have more in common, I feel, with the schools we’re with now than we did when we were in the Sun Belt Conference. Obviously Middle Tennessee, Marshall, Charlotte, Old Dominion, Louisiana Tech, UAB, Southern Miss – our fans really identify with those schools.

“The other thing is, from a football standpoint the bowl tie-ins are great, both in terms of the number of them and the locations. I don’t know that there’s another conference in the country that has better bowl destinations than Conference USA has, and that helps with recruiting. When you can talk about the fact we have five primary tie-ins and a secondary tie-in, it’s huge. We know what it was like when there were only two. So that’s been great with football.

“But in all of our sports, the television package in terms of exposure benefits every program in ways that didn’t before. Even though TV revenue is down from what it was, it’s still greater than what it was in the Sun Belt. In almost every area it’s been an improvement for us.”

BS: What were your thoughts on Birmingham, Ala., being selected to host the C-USA basketball tournaments again next season?


TS: “The choices were Birmingham and El Paso. I voted for Birmingham and just felt like for our fans, El Paso is a great place but it’s obviously much harder to get to. I think it’d be a lot easier for our fans to get to Birmingham than El Paso. And it’s worked well the last two years. People have gotten used to it. They know how everything works, they know where the hotels are, where the restaurants are, where the arenas are. For us it’s been a very good experience both times we’ve been there.”

BS: Is Birmingham a long-term home for that event, or will the league look at other options in coming years?

TS: “I think there’ll probably be different options. I think there are other people that want to get into the mix. I don’t see it being in the same city for every year, but then when we left Birmingham last year we thought that it would be somewhere different this year and then it turned out it was back. That’s a crystal ball that’s a little hard to see into right now but my sense is that more people will enter the mix in terms of hosting.”

– Follow Daily News sports reporter Brad Stephens on Twitter @Stephens_Brad or visit bgdailynews.com.

Quote:“What we talked about in the meetings and what we need to improve in all of those sports is not necessarily the bottom half, but the bottom third, probably. That’s where there needs to be improvement. The bottom three, four, five teams in each sport are what is keeping the league from elevating to a higher level and having a little bit more national respect.”

And the congregation said, AMEN!!

There is always going to be a bottom, middle and top, in every conference. I think it's too early (at least in Western's time in CUSA) to say any one team is at the bottom.

Got to give it a few more years and hope the bottom rotates from the middle of the conference and not what is the top today. A strong core is as important as (I think more so) as a few bottom feeder programs.

Ideally you would see the strong top and in a off year one of those top teams falls back to the middle and one of those middle programs take their place. While the core of the middle and core bottom rotate.

It does no one any good to have a 2 year run then drop to the bottom for a couple years. So while we all want the bottom to improve..remember there will always be a bottom. EVERY YEAR!

So the key is not the bottom once conference play starts but OOC....WINS. It really doesn't matter where those wins come from...just WINS. Work on that and it elevates the top. That is if they are winning OOC games, also.

This is why I never want to see mandates based on the RPI. It might work for the SEC, a conference that can dictate who they sign games with and buy home games without a return. The only thing it will do to CUSA is to insure our bottom teams who are having trouble beating bad schools...get their head bashed in even more

(06-05-2016 12:43 PM)WKUYG Wrote:  There is always going to be a bottom, middle and top, in every conference. I think it's too early (at least in Western's time in CUSA) to say any one team is at the bottom.

Got to give it a few more years and hope the bottom rotates from the middle of the conference and not what is the top today. A strong core is as important as (I think more so) as a few bottom feeder programs.

Ideally you would see the strong top and in a off year one of those top teams falls back to the middle and one of those middle programs take their place. While the core of the middle and core bottom rotate.

It does no one any good to have a 2 year run then drop to the bottom for a couple years. So while we all want the bottom to improve..remember there will always be a bottom. EVERY YEAR!

So the key is not the bottom once conference play starts but OOC....WINS. It really doesn't matter where those wins come from...just WINS. Work on that and it elevates the top. That is if they are winning OOC games, also.

This is why I never want to see mandates based on the RPI. It might work for the SEC, a conference that can dictate who they sign games with and buy home games without a return. The only thing it will do to CUSA is to insure our bottom teams who are having trouble beating bad schools...get their head based in

That's why winning OOC games is so important..imho

Spot on. Having the top 3-4 shine is great, but we'll need the bottom 3-4 to pick it up for conference perception to consistently improve.