Conference Makeovers: College football edition

One of the few similarities between the Conference USA of 2004 and the C-USA of 2005 is the logo. Look close. At least the trademark remains the same, we swear.
got the Extreme League Makeover. Pimp My Conference, if you will. Five of 11 teams left for greener (as in the color of money) pastures. Six others were invited in. That's just in football.
When the moving vans cleared, only four of the original football members remained in what is now a 12-team league (Houston, Memphis, Southern Miss and Tulane). There is only one program remaining that won the league since 1999 (Southern Miss).
In the process, the conference office moved from Chicago to Dallas. If it wasn't for commissioner Britton Banowsky holding the whole thing together, the league MVP would have been the office supply person. - College Football -
New teams, new year, even new letterhead. This wasn't a transition, it was a transfusion.
"All things considered, we're in great shape," Banowsky said.
Anything to keep playing football as one, big, sometimes unfamiliar family. Don't blame C-USA so much as the Big Bang caused by conference realignment. The ACC started the latest tremors two years ago when the 53-year-old league had a midlife crisis. Commissioner John Swofford and some impatient ADs had the novel idea that the only way to stay competitive in football (financial and otherwise) was to conduct the biggest raid since Black Beard.
So in dressing up his conference, Swofford caused seismic shifts in several others. The new look of Division I-A becomes official Friday. It seemed appropriate that conference shifts started by the lust for more money take effect July 1 -- the start of a new fiscal year. Eighteen football programs are finding new homes. - College Football -
You can't tell the villains from the victims at times, but at least things are stable -- for a while.
"It depends on what you mean by 'a while,'" Banowsky said. "It can be naive to suggest there won't be any change in conference membership in Division I over the next decade or more. But I do think we're in a period where we're fairly stable."
The ACC's move started a ripple affect that this year alone will affect seven of the 11 Division I-A conferences. Those 18 teams represent 15 percent of I-A. Two of them (I-AA dwellers Florida International and Florida Atlantic in the Sun Belt), never had homes. Army and Temple are leaving their previous conference homes for independent life.
Banowsky is not the only one wondering how long the current configuration can last. The operative time frame seems to be five years. In 2010, Notre Dame's contract with NBC will expire, perhaps prompting the Irish to look for conference affiliation. The Big East members have promised to stay together until at least 2010. The league has different alignments in basketball and football, leading to speculation that football might break off to form its own league at some point. - College Football -
While the political boundaries have been drawn it remains to be seen how actual football will be affected. Certainly the ACC is the big winner with Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech. It will stage its first championship game Dec. 3 in Jacksonville, Fla., and begin to reap the additional postseason bounty that the Big 12 and SEC have enjoyed for years.

Dennis Dodd
CBS SportsLine