(11-28-2019 01:29 PM)DustMyBroom Wrote:  

(11-28-2019 11:58 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  What has happened to USM? Did nurturing yet another group of big city schools that moved to greener pastures just break the administration’s spirit?

When AState moved Division I in football in 1975 until about 2010, 35 years give or take, if you had asked AState fans what their aspirations for football were they would have said USM.

Since then USM wouldn’t be in their top five. The fire seems to be out in how the school handles athletics especially post Fedora


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The combination of getting passed over for membership to the AAC (which most Southern Miss fans blame on our rivals), Ellllllllllllis happening, and the Tyndall ruling coming down hard on us is what killed our spirit. All three happened within about a two year period, along with massive turnover in the athletic department. Even our compliance staff left, poached by Memphis.

We’re playing games against teams that no one recognizes in a conference that clearly doesn’t value us.

It’s led directly to the “one of us” era, where we hire coaches with direct ties to the program for largely sentimental reasons rather than going after the best available. The result is a baseball program that doesn’t take risks, a basketball program that just hired a guy with a losing d1 record, and a football coach whose 28 wins in four years includes 20 conference wins, four FCS wins, and three Sun Belt wins. The only other win was against Kentucky...in his very first game.

Fan apathy is at an all time high. If a change isn’t made somewhere and somehow, a department that’s already suffering is going to dwindle away to nothing.

The good news is that Bennett has been far from idle. He’s taken advantage of the most favorable political situation in Southern Miss’s history to fix some glaring academic issues, and managed to push through some finance reforms for athletics. He also hasn’t hesitated to run off athletic directors who weren’t performing up to his standard. He also just finished a two year stint as head of CUSA’s Executive Council.

McClain was a long time member of Southern Miss’s athletic department before leaving to become Troy’s AD. He obviously would know everyone in the room at a Sun Belt meeting, and he’s acutely aware of the need for change at Southern Miss. One need look no further than the changes he made to the game day atmosphere this season to see that.

That said, the Sun Belt isn’t an ideal fit. Southern Miss is adamantly opposed to playing off-Saturday regular season football games, even on the road. Additionally, the divisional alignment isn’t ideal. If UTA and UALR stay in the conference after the add, it would create a situation where Southern Miss is the eastern most West team outside football season, even though USM and USA are very close to each other. Southern Miss would be stuck playing a lot of schools its fan base doesn’t know...exactly the problem we have now. There would need to be some type of optimized schedule adopted to make it work, and I’m not sure existing Sun Belt schools would want to extend that kind of special treatment.

USM Divisional distances C-USA
UAB 232
LaTech 239
Rice 436
UNT 528
UTSA 631
UTEP 1124

Sun Belt
USA 95 (football only divisional opponent)
ULM 207
Louisiana 223
UALR 347 (non-football)
AState 366 (stadiums both by US 49 not that anyone would drive US49 the whole way)
UTA 511 (non-football)
TXST 600


USM in the Olympic sports alignment would have 4 closer teams than the four furthest in CUSA.
In football. In football would have four closer than the four furthest CUSA.

Doesn't mean can sell it but the geography certainly works