(07-02-2020 12:40 PM)Attackcoog Wrote: (07-02-2020 12:02 PM)bullet Wrote: (07-01-2020 09:35 PM)Attackcoog Wrote: (07-01-2020 09:23 PM)bullet Wrote: The merger was an afterthought. They formed the football conference first. Tulane, Houston, Louisville, Cincinnati, Memphis, Southern Miss. Then they added the basketball schools.
The goal was to take the best of both and create a better basketball conference they hoped could rival the Big East. They also wanted the new conference to offer a place for the schools to park their FBS teams since the Metro didnt offer football. Pretty sure that basketball actually started first, beginning play in 1995. Football didnt begin until 1996 when Houston arrived. While Houston was a founding member, it was committed to the SWC until the end of the 1995-1996 season, so the conference only had 5 football playing members in 1995, which was one short of the 6 they needed for an FBS conference. They had several non-football members in addition to the 5 football playing schools---so the olympic sports side of CUSA was able to crank up in 1995.
Basketball "play" started first since Houston was still in the SWC until 1996. But football was organized first in 1994. As they moved further along in the planning, they added the basketball schools to the plan.
Non-football schools were part of the original plan. The way I understand it, the merger plan actually began in 1992---well before anyone knew the SWC collapse was imminent. Houston wasnt even part of the plan---they basically just fell in their laps when the SWC went down in early 1994.
There may have been plans of that, but that was not what was first agreed.
Houston Chronicle Feb. 26, 1994 "The University of Houston is not interested in becoming a part of a revised Southwest Conference as it is being conceived, UH Athletic Director Bill Carr said Friday..."
Houston Chronicle September 23, 1994 "UH president James Pickering said Thursday the school has agreed "in principle" to form an all-sports conference with Louisville, Memphis, Tulane, Southern Mississippi and Cincinnati.
Presidents of the six schools who attended a four-hour meeting at an Atlanta airport hotel, <the first airport meeting!> said the universities could form a conference just among themselves or add several schools from the remnants of the Metro and Great Midwest Conferences...."
"According to Louisville president Donald Smith, Houston was the last piece of the puzzle. The other five schools had agreed they wanted to form a conference but needed to persuade UH to join so they could meet the NCAA conference requirement of six members.
"The driving force was Houston coming in together with us," Swain said....
Dick Schultz...began to pitch a plan on behalf of the Metro Conference calling for a merger of the Metro and Great Midwest conferences and UH. Schultz was hired as a consultant by the Metro to study the feasibility of a 15 or 16 team conference.
But Neinas all but shot it down.
"It's a possibility, but I don't know that it would be a priority," Neinas said. "Sometimes more is less."
"Nothing was eliminated. We really haven't plotted any course beyond today...."
<I have a box with the newspapers documenting the demise of the SWC>