Update: USM athletics to leave C-USA for ‘exciting opportunity’ with Sun Belt Conference
The engagement is on, and the wedding is scheduled for July 1, 2023.
The University of Southern Mississippi and the Sun Belt Conference made their union official Tuesday afternoon in a news conference on the USM campus. Southern Miss will begin play in the SBC in the 2023-24 school year.
“This is a big day for our conference,” said Sun Belt Commissioner Keith Gill. “Southern Miss brings a host of strengths to our conference. They are competitive across all of their sports, have a strong brand and are supported by a great fan base.”
The move will end an association with Conference USA that began at that league’s beginning in 1995.
The focus at USM, though, is on the future, and that future looks bright according to Southern Miss president Rodney Bennett.
“Membership in the Sun Belt Conference is an exciting opportunity for (the university), for our student-athletes, for our alumni and fans, and for the university’s host communities,” Bennett said.
“The Sun Belt’s geographic footprint will create new regional rivalries and will encourage more visitors to Mississippi, further increasing our athletics program’s $41 million annual impact on the state.”
Southern Miss becomes the 13th member of the Sun Belt, but Gill said the league isn’t finished expanding.
“We aren’t done yet,” Gill said. “We don’t want to put ourselves in a box, but we are currently having conversations with a number of schools, and I expect we’ll have some more announcements in the coming days.”
Gill declined to identify the targets of the SBC’s expansion plans, but numerous reports have indicated that the conference is preparing to invite Marshall and Old Dominion, from C-USA, and either James Madison or Liberty.
JMU is an FBS program that has been a power in that division and is looking to move up to FCS, while Liberty is currently an independent that finished in the Associated Press final rankings last season.
The league’s current makeup consists of Appalachian State, Arkansas State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Little Rock, Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe, South Alabama, Texas-Arlington, Texas State and Troy.
Of this group, Little Rock and UTA do not play football. Nevertheless, the football is highly competitive, as Coastal Carolina finished 14th in the nation last season with an 11-1 record.
McClain said the Sun Belt’s television contract with ESPN will be an immense boost to the program’s visibility on the national stage.
“There will be some midweek games that they will have, but the league does a good job balancing out games, from a home-game standpoint,” McClain said.
“The ESPN platform is single go-to for people to find our games, and that goes well beyond football, but, obviously, basketball, baseball, volleyball, softball soccer, you name it; there’s a great opportunity to have a consistent product that can be easily accessed.”
Although football is at the center of the current conference realignment cycle, other sports – basketball, baseball and softball, especially – will also be enhanced by the association with the SBC.
“I know in the diamond sports (baseball and softball) they had multiple NCCA Tournament bids,” McClain said.
“In fact, I think softball had four teams, which was unprecedented. Football, they’ve had several teams in the rankings, and basketball is much better than a lot of fans realize. It’s a grind because there is so much parity in the league, and every game is a dogfight.”
This move is just one of many moves that began earlier this year when the Southeastern Conference invited Texas and Oklahoma, setting into motion a, “domino effect,” that the Sun Belt was quick to get in on.
McClain said the news of Texas and OU leaving the Big 12 for the SEC brought his summer vacation to an unexpectedly early end.
“When conference realignment starts heating up, people start talking to each other,” said McClain. “You’re planning for best-case scenarios and worst-case scenarioes. As far as things happening with the Sun Belt, they happened rather quickly.”
McClain said his earlier experience in the Sun Belt made it a bit easier when it came time to negotiate with the league. McClain spent four years as the athletic director at Troy before coming to USM.
“I think it made easier for me, because I knew the lay of the land,” McClain said. “I understood the challenges that the league has overcome over the past few years.
“But I’ll say this. Southern Miss didn’t need me to prop it up. It can stand on its own two feet. Everything that has been happening, not only with our athletic department, but across campus, speaks for itself.”
Southern Miss coaches expressed their support for the move and are anticipating getting started in the new league.
“I’m excited about it,” said Golden Eagle men’s basketball coach Jay Ladner. “Louisiana-Lafayette, App State, South Alabama, you start thinking about some of the top teams in the league; they play as good a level of basketball as anyone in the country.
“Great coaches, great facilities, the league has a strong commitment to basketball. It’s very, very competitive, and I think it’s going to be very similar to what we have now in Conference USA.”
Ladner said he thinks association in the Sun Belt will help recruiting across the board.
“I think it’s going to resonate with the players we recruit in our geographical area,” Ladner said. “I’m already hearing some positive feedback from some of our recruits. We had some kids on campus last weekend; of course, the word was already out, and they were excited about it.”
The proximity of Southern Miss to many of its soon-to-be new rivals, and indeed, already plays many of the schools in the league in a variety of sports. McClain estimated that joining the Sun Belt will save the university, “about a half-million dollars” in travel expenses.
“Geographically, it makes sense,” McClain said.
That will come in handy, because leaving Conference USA will cost Southern Miss about $3 million in exit fees.
“The by-laws state that the exit fee is two years’ worth of revenue distribution, which we estimate to be in the $3 million range, and we have a plan to address that,” McClain said.
“We don’t anticipate anything changing in our scheduling (with the 2022-23 school year). We will still compete for conference championships as before.”
For Bennett, Tuesday’s move is one of the biggest of his nine-year tenure as USM president, and it is one he believes will greatly enhance the entire university experience.
“Our work at the university is about creating opportunities for students, for faculty, for staff,” Bennett said.
“Our work has been about positioning the university to create opportunities just like this, so people can see the value in a Southern Miss, to get people excited about Southern Miss. It’s about our students for the rest of their lives.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2021 at 3:50 PM.