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It never ends, does it?
Lost in the tournament madness yesterday, Western Kentucky announced that they will be leaving the Sun Belt in order to begin their athletic pursuits in Conference USA starting with the 2014 season, a move made by C-USA to replace Tulsa, who appears destined to be leaving at the same time for The Artists Formerly Known As The Big East (TAFKATBE).
This, of course, comes only days after the Sun Belt announced that it would be adding four teams - Appalachian State and Georgia Southern for everything, Idaho and New Mexico State for football only - in order to compensate for North Texas, Middle Tennessee, and the Floridas (Atlantic and International) departing for C-USA as well.
According to some sources, this makes Liberty much less of a long shot than Parks originally suspected as the team the Sun Belt will need to get back to an even twelve members, and James Madison has been mentioned as well. Yes, I'm as perplexed by that one as you.
On the upside, this gives a home to the two remaining WAC cast-offs in football (though only one of them makes any geographic sense). On the downside, can anyone tell me the benefit of these lateral transitions? Think about it - a little more than a year from now, TAFKATBE will be 50% teams currently in Conference USA, and C-USA in turn will be nearly 50% teams currently in the Sun Belt. Why not just take the conference name with you?