Will Southern Miss leave C-USA early for the Sun Belt? What athletic director says
The University of Southern Mississippi announced last month that they will leave Conference USA for the Sun Belt Conference.
Two other C-USA schools, Marshall and Old Dominion, will join Southern Miss in the move to the SBC. James Madison University is also slated to join the SBC.
Each new member is set to join “no later than July 1, 2023,” Keith Gill, Sun Belt commissioner, said earlier this year after the USM news was made public.
But could the Golden Eagles move earlier than that?
The earliest USM could enter the Sun Belt is July 1, 2022. Athletic director Jeremy McClain told the Sun Herald he would not rule out early entry.
“I think anybody in this situation is going to try and do what’s best for your student-athletes,” McClain said. “There’s a lot of conversations to be had with both conferences on what that looks like, but I do think it’s important to have that conversation.”
USM’s exit fees will be the sum of C-USA’s revenue distribution over the next two years, which is estimated at $3 million. If Southern Miss were to leave a year early for the Sun Belt, the school would only be forfeiting one year’s worth of revenue from C-USA, or an estimated $1.5 million.
McClain expects the university to save hundreds of thousands dollars annually in travel feels alone.
If the three C-USA schools decided to move to the SBC one year early, that would result in uneven 13 football playing members for the 2022 season, as JMU will have to go through the NCAA-mandated transition year that comes with moving from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision.
This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 5:50 AM.
