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Pirate Notebook No. 172
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

By Denny O'Brien
Staff Writer and Columnist

C-USA, ECU adrift in stormy seas

CyberEast of New Bern

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©2004 Bonesville.net

Game. Set. Match.

In the NCAA Division I arms race between leagues, Conference USA commissioner Britton Banowsky finished a distant last. While other league CEOs are heading to market with record harvests, the C-USA boss is left behind in a dusty drought.

Not only did Banowsky lose all but one of his flagship hoops programs, but also the gridiron school — Texas Christian — that attracted the brightest spotlight since the league formed in 1996.

Conference realignment has now replaced that shine with dark clouds and a not-so-promising forecast: A new position in the pecking order alongside the MAC and WAC.

As recently as this past season, the thinking was much different. Though still unwelcome at the BCS banquet, C-USA at least was threatening to crash the party.

Now in the sport with the greatest dollar value, only the Big East suffered a bigger financial blow.

The difference is, Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese had a legitimate fallback to help cushion the fall. Banowsky didn't.

Though Tranghese had no chance of adequately replenishing his football cupboard, he took the most equitable alternate route: Basketball.

C-USA's new claim to fame? Baseball.

Nothing against our national pastime, but you have to hope Banowsky wasn't pinning his league's financial future on cowhide and aluminum. While C-USA may have jumped to the top of the baseball heap, that is no consolation for the footing it lost in revenue sports.

Across the board, this is a classic case of too little, too late. Instead of making a serious attempt to keep his league in tact, Banowsky sat back and targeted mid-major schools within hollering distance of his Dallas home.

"To a certain extent, we've got to understand how the Big East is going to go forward for us to be in a position to react," Banowsky said back in July. "I don't think we can be in a position to pre-empt anything relative to the Big East, and I'm not sure it would be appropriate, anyway, given where our members are.

"We'll just have to wait and see," he noted at the time. "I think we're prepared to do what we need to do to make the league stronger and that would include adding teams to the conference."

Obviously not prepared well enough.

Any way Banowsky rationalizes it, this is an upheaval from which it will be difficult to recover. Gone are four NCAA tournament regulars, not to mention the football reverberations that are certain to result from TCU's curious abandonment of the soon-to-be Texas-centric league.

Of the remaining football schools, only East Carolina, Marshall, and Southern Miss have a history of sustained success.

On a more positive note, the new BCS agreement almost certainly will grant C-USA better access to a slice of the big money pie. The challenge will be for the conference champion to somehow qualify against a conference slate that is sure to drag its strength of schedule down like an anchor.

In other words, impressive non-conference résumés could be the key to landing an invitation to a blockbuster bowl.

That goes without mentioning the uncertain relationship C-USA has with its current bowl agreements. The Liberty Bowl already has hinted that it will look elsewhere when the current contract is up, and it shouldn't come as a shock if other postseason games follow suit.

At this rate, C-USA could sink before its new members hop aboard.

Word of advice to C-USA's remaining flagship programs: Abandon ship, or at least look high and low for alternatives, as soon as you can.

Priority check for trustees

Quick question for the board of trustees. Why the big rush to hire a new AD?

Now that most of the conference dominoes already have fallen, the urgency of hiring a permanent athletics director has decreased significantly. With East Carolina's position on the national landscape unlikely to change in the near future, there no longer is a need to expedite the process.

Perhaps that would have been more appropriate last March when former Chancellor Bill Muse put then-AD Mike Hamrick on a not-so-fast track out of his corner office. Had Muse taken a more aggressive approach with his lame duck deputy, East Carolina may have avoided the current holding pattern in which it is seemingly stuck.

Given the steady stream of turmoil the Pirates ship has encountered over the past year, it would make the most sense to first focus on the top.

THIS WEEK'S CONTENT FROM BONESVILLE.NET:
Greg Vacek: Daily Web Headlines Roundup - 01.27
Denny O'Brien: Pirate Notebook No. 172 - 01.27
C-USA, ECU adrift in stormy seas
Al Myatt: View from the East - 01.27
Doll still plugged in to Pirate roots
Nuggets: Notes from ECU and beyond - 01.27

Bonesville: Updated AP Basketball Poll - 01.27
Cable 7 Audio: Brian Bailey Show - 01.27
Guests Jimmy Grimsley & Eddie Fulford

Sammy Batten: Football Recruiting Report - 01.26
Pirates figure winners breed winning
Thad Mumau: Hoops Recruiting Report - 01.26
ECU in the mix for Simon Gratz star
Nuggets: Notes from ECU and beyond - 01.26
Bonesville: Updated C-USA Standings & Scoreboard - 01.26
Ron Cherubini - Pirate Time Machine No. 26 - 01.25

Danny Kepley: One of the wildest of the Wild Dogs
Bonesville: Pirates buckle after solid start - 01.25
Nuggets: Notes from ECU and beyond - 01.25
Keith LeClair: From The Dugout - 01.24

It’s cap time for MLB
Bonesville: Updated Recruiting Thumbnails - 01.24

Nuggets: Notes from ECU and beyond - 01.24

By and large, business executives are most comfortable and feel more accountable when they have input into hiring their direct subordinates. That generally means a shorter leash for employees they didn't select.

Just ask former Pirates football coach Steve Logan, who can attest to the reality of that axiom first hand.

The last thing East Carolina needs now is an encore of what has transpired over the past several years. At the very least, ECU's trustees must make a concerted effort to prevent a similar dynamic from occurring.

That means the new chancellor must have input into the AD hire.

Send an e-mail message to Denny O'Brien.

Click here to dig into Denny O'Brien's Bonesville archives.

02/23/2007 01:56:06 AM

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