Conference USA Expansion

Conference USA has just announced the addition of five new member schools (news release). As shown in the screen-capture below, the new members are: UNC Charlotte, Florida International, Louisiana Tech, North Texas, and Texas-San Antonio (I have added circles around these schools). With slight exception, "Each new member will join the league in all sports for 2013."

The home to a dozen schools this past season, C-USA first lost Houston, SMU, and Central Florida, and later Memphis, all to the Big East. Conference USA thus has 13 members at the moment, eight holdovers and the five newcomers. I've always been a fan of geographic compactness, which C-USA's new addition of the five schools clearly promotes

As we previously noted here, Conference USA had agreed to merge with the Mountain West Conference. According to today's C-USA news release:

Conference USA and the Mountain West will continue to discuss a future affiliation that could begin as early as 2013. Both Conferences agreed that adding membership at this time was important and have carefully coordinated new membership plans. Additional expansion remains a possibility.