Conference USA: Looking Ahead to 2009

Take a look at some numbers for me.

5-0

6-2

4-2

4-2

3-2

Anyone want to guess what these are?

These were the top records for the conferences in bowl games.

Do you know who they belong to?

Unless you have been living under a rock, I am sure you know that the Pac-10 was 5-0 and the SEC was 6-2.

The Big East and one other conference went 4-2. I will give you a hint for the other 4-2 conference. It was a non-BCS conference.

Everyone has been talking a lot about the Mountain West, but it wasn’t them. They actually came in at 3-2.

That 4-2 record belonged to Conference USA.

Why didn’t we hear more about it? Why was this overlooked?

The four wins came against other non-BCS conference teams. Does this make Conference USA bad? No, I don’t think so.

In fact, they beat a team from three of the other four non-BCS conferences. The teams they beat were good teams from those conferences.

MAC West champion, 12-2 Ball State

MAC West second place team, 9-4 Western Michigan

Mountain West fourth place team, 8-5 Air Force

Sun Belt champion, 8-5 Troy

And while those are nice wins, they weren’t as impressive as wins over teams like Alabama or undefeated Boise State, which were a couple of wins the Mountain West earned.

So what does this mean about Conference USA?

Bowl records alone don’t make up the whole picture. Both the Pac-10 and SEC had nice looking records in bowl games, but you would still have trouble finding anyone who wouldn’t say that both conferences, as a whole, were down.

Instead of a big bowl win, the signature wins for the conference actually came at the start of the season, when East Carolina beat defending Big East champion West Virginia. The Pirates then went on to beat highly ranked, and the eventual ACC champion, Virginia Tech.

Unfortunately, no other team in the conference had wins that even came close to the caliber of these two.

By no means do I think of this as a one-team conference though.

Tulsa came up just short with Arkansas, losing by seven.

UCF lost by seven to both USF and at Miami.

Memphis fell by seven to Louisville.

Southern Miss and UAB lost to Auburn and South Carolina respectively by two scores.

If the success from the bowl season can carry in to next season and some of these close losses turn into wins, Conference USA may start challenging the Mountain West as the top non-BCS conference.