First, the name.
Firms get paid good money to do it. Honest. They get paid good money to gather folks in a room to kick around some ideas, toss out possibilities and finally come up with just the right name for a new cereal or baby food, a new battery or, even, collegiate conference. Honest.
The Naming Center in Dallas is one of those firms, and it was contacted last winter by the dozen university presidents who had just banded together to form yet another new league. It included institutions in 12 states both small and large, public and private; institutions stretching from Milwaukee to Tampa (1,251 miles), from Houston to Charlotte (1,016).
“The No Name Conference,” some had already begun calling it.
“The Super Conference,” others had dubbed it.
Now, from Dallas, came even more suggestions. “The Great American Conference.”
“The All American Conference.”
“The American Conference.”
“The National Conference.”
“The Central Conference.”
“It’s amazing when you give thousands of dollars to a firm how many lousy names they can come up with,” would be the reaction of one of those dozen presidents, St. Louis University’s Rev. Lawrence Biondi.
And the name finally selected? Conference USA.
“It,” said Memphis President V. Lane Rawlins, “was a point of surrender. It was the only name no one had any objection to.”
“It was funny,” Conference USA Commissioner Mike Slive said. “The league got additional attention because of the name, some positive, some negative. But from a marketing standpoint, it’s worked out good. Now if we just got someone west of the Rockies, we’d be all set.”
Let me introduce myself
Three of its members–Cincinnati, Louisville and Marquette–have won national championships. Four others–DePaul, Memphis, Houston and North Carolina-Charlotte–have reached the Final Four.
Six of its members–Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Charlotte, St. Louis and Tulane–were in last spring’s NCAA tourney. Four others–DePaul, Marquette, South Florida and Southern Mississippi–were in the NIT.
If they had come out of one league, rather than the late Metro and the lamented Great Midwest, they would have been part of college basketball’s third-toughest conference, behind the Big Eight and Atlantic Coast and ahead of the Southeastern, Big Ten and Big East.
This season, with Houston still awaiting the final demise of the Southwest Conference, it is an 11-team, three-division league. Cincinnati, ranked No. 9, is favored to win the Blue Division, which also includes DePaul, Marquette and St. Louis. Memphis, ranked No. 5, is favored to win the White, which includes No. 25 Louisville and Charlotte. And Tulane, unranked but surely good enough to make next spring’s NCAA field, is favored to win the Red, which includes Alabama-Birmingham, Southern Miss. and South Florida.
“It’s not like people are saying, `This will develop into one of the nation’s premier leagues.’ It’s already there,” said Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins.
“I,” said DePaul’s Joey Meyer, “thought the Great Midwest was a good basketball conference, but it never helped in recruiting. This one has been very helpful in recruiting, no question about that.”
Getting here from there
Various cross-currents, as always, caused the demise of the Metro and the Great Midwest, and gave birth to this baby called Conference USA. But football was the prime motivating force with Cincinnati, Louisville, Tulane, Memphis, Houston and Southern Miss all looking for a league to house their teams.
The league will begin play in that sport next year, with its champ guaranteed a spot in the Liberty Bowl, and that makes this season deliciously ironic.
“We’re going to use basketball to help football the best we can,” explained Slive, which is, of course, the exact reverse of the natural order of things.
But basketball already has TV contracts worth $30 million, and–when conference play begins in January–a spot in ESPN’s Thursday night lineup. ABC and CBS, ESPN2 and Prime Sports and WGN will air some of its games too, and no wonder. It is not only one of the country’s most powerful conferences on the court, but 11 of its 12 teams are in one of the country’s top 50 TV markets.
The cast of characters
Chucky Atkins is part of it. He is South Florida’s 5-foot-10-inch senior point guard and little known nationally. But he’s a dandy, good enough to have beaten out Duke’s Jeff Capel and UCLA’s Cameron Dollar for a spot on last summer’s U.S. World University Games team.
Memphis’ Lorenzen Wright, a 6-10 sophomore center, is a lottery pick in waiting, and he is just one of this conference’s plentiful and powerful big men. There are also Louisville’s 6-9 Samaki Walker, Cincinnati’s 6-7 Danny Forston and 6-8 Art Long, and Tulane’s 6-7 Rayshard Allen and 6-9 Jerald Honeycutt. C-USA, in fact, could contribute more linebackers to the NFL than any league in the land.
Then there are its coaches. Seven of them have won at least 63 percent of their games, which puts them among the top 58 of those now working, and eight have won more than 200 games, which puts them in the top 85. The least experienced among them, Tulane’s Perry Clark, is in his seventh season, and the most-experienced, UAB’s Gene Bartow, is in his 34th. He entered this season having worked 970 games, more than all but three coaches still active.
And, finally
Cincinnati joined the Buckeye Conference in 1925-26, the Mid-American in 1946-47, the Missouri Valley in 1957-58, the Metro in 1976-77, the Great Midwest in 1991-92. And now, in 1995-96, C-USA.
It might be good to remember–especially if you’re the wagering sort–that each time it joined a new league, it won its title first time out.
CONFERENCE USA
Blue Division
DePaul
Cincinnati
Marquette
St. Louis
White Division
Memphis
N. Carolina-Charlotte
Memphis
*Houston
Red Division
South Florida
Alabama-Birmingham
Tulane
S. Mississippi
*-Houston joins league for 1996-1997 season.
Conference tournaments: Men’s conference tournament is March 6-9 in Memphis but the winner does not receive an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Women’s conference tournament Feb. 29-March 3 in Birmingham and the winner does receive an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
