Interesting - History Of The Sun Belt

[MeanGreen61]

From a MUTS board.

How it "went down" from ArkStFan

Arkstfan wrote: The Sun Belt had WKU, USA, Jacksonville, South Florida, Virginia Commonwealth, Old Dominion,, UAB, and Charlotte.

The American South had ASU, UNO, ULL, La.Tech, Central Florida, Lamar, Texas-Pan American.

UAB left to join the Great Midwest. ODU left to join the CAA. The Sun Belt voted to add UALR from the TAAC (now Atlantic Sun)

With the departure of South Carolina and Florida State along with the Metro schools that formed the Great Midwest the Metro was on the verge of collapse and raided out USF, VCU, and Charlotte, leaving the Sun Belt with three members in the league and UALR set to join.

The Sun Belt rather than trying to put together a raid (they would have lost their auto bid any way) started looking around to find a home for all members. The NCAA said that if a conference wanted to merge with the Sun Belt they would be able to retain the auto bid as well as the units earned by the Sun Belt and any units the old league had. The American South took the bait and opted to become the Sun Belt so they could retain the league's existing contracts (not worth much, mainly the ESPN championship game, plus a guarantee of one national telecast for every NCAA Tournament game played the prior year, and a deal with SportsChannel).

The merger took place after the 1991 season (outstanding year for the American South, UNO and La.Tech made the NCAA Tournament, ASU made the final 8 of the NIT, and ULL made the NIT, the seven team league had four 20 game winners). The next season Central Florida and the league got cross-ways because UCF had a TV deal with Sunshine Sports (now Sun Sports) and it conflicted with the league's deal with SportsChannel Florida (now Fox Florida) the mess went to court, there was one game that they were considering broadcasting on both networks while the courts resolved the conflict, don't remember if it happened or not. UCF asked to be released. UCF had basically been added because they planned to go I-A, a budget shortfall had resulted in them backing off the promise to be I-A by 1992 so the league agreed to let them go.

That was later followed by UTPA being booted (excuse me voluntarily withdrawing once they saw what the vote was) after their second round of major NCAA violations made them death eligible (they even asked for it so they could get out of a contract with the coach who they suspected of being behind the violations but they couldn't prove it).

That was soon followed by the league nearly collapsing when Lamar opted for the Southland and Jacksonville for the TAAC. We added FIU and Denver as part of the "urban basketball plan" Commissioner Thompson favored.

He left. ASU's president was head of the search committee to replace him, didn't like the candidates and started making calls and found Commissioner Waters who came in with the plan to get I-A football.

The football plan got a huge shot in the arm when Nevada left the Big West for the WAC. It left the league with six members (then the minimum) and one was ASU and the basketball only members were balking at approving any football expansion.

It basically came down like this (with a lot of help from UNO's chancellor who was a big proponent of football to promote stability and increase the power of the league). The Sun Belt invited every independent to participate in talks to form a league along with all Big West football schools. They quickly discovered that everyone had conditions (ie. I won't join if X joins) and the Big West schools really wanted to just add some football only members. So everyone was told to go home and send a private letter by a set date expressing interest in joining or rejecting the idea, anyone sending a join letter was bound and had to join IF INVITED. To help the process, ASU who had negotiated a "no notice" agreement with the Big West informed the members it intended to withdraw effective immediately killing the Big West as a football league.

Boise hadn't responded but had informally taken the lead among Big West schools to join and bring the bowl game.

ULM broke the agreement and publiclly announced its intent to join (they believed it would help prevent Tech from black-balling them). That resulted in La.Tech balking (even though they would be expelled if the vote passed and football was added). Tech balking caused UCF to balk.

Then the WAC expanded taking Boise and Tech.

The league put everything on hold a few weeks and then voted to extend full membership to NMSU who immediately accepted, MTSU (who had been holding out for football only but wasn't going to get a football only invite), UNT (who had been balking because of some bad blood with ULM from the Southland days), and football only to ULM, Idaho and USU. USU ended up rejecting it, Idaho asked for more time (president was out of town for an extended period at the time of the invite).

[NT80]

Interesting read. I remember some of it but not most. Seems I recall UNT had little choice where it could go after the collapse of the Big West. We didn't like being forced into a league with then former Southland bitter-rival NLU (ULM). I believe there was some mention of NLU being able to accept academically-marginal athletes that wouldn't qualify in other league schools, but could play football for NLU. We also desired a conference with both NMSU and La Tech, didn't happen.