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League poised to fatten
coffers ahead of breakup
Bonesville.net Staff Report
©2004 Bonesville.net
Conference USA, which will see
several of its teams depart for other leagues after next season,
suddenly finds itself in
position to earn a stream of loot for its community piggy bank well
into the future.
The windfall will materialize and could
become substantial with successful runs by one or more of the half-dozen
teams the conference will send to the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
C-USA matched the ACC, Big East and SEC in
landing six berths in the field-of-65 announced Sunday by the selection
committee for the lucrative national championship playoff.
No. 13 Cincinnati, which defeated DePaul on
Saturday for the C-USA Tournament championship, is the No. 4 seed in the
Atlanta Regional and will play East Tennessee State in a first round game at
Nationwide Arena in Columbus, OH, on Mar. 18.
Four teams which shared C-USA's regular
season title with the Bearcats — No. 23 Memphis, Charlotte, DePaul and UAB —
also were awarded spots in NCAA Tournament, as was Louisville, which
faltered in recent weeks after rocketing into the Top Ten earlier in the
season.
The potential revenue from the postseason
extravaganza for C-USA could be
immense, depending upon how far the six teams advance. The payout from the
tournament, funded by the NCAA's contract with CBS Sports, increases
significantly in the later rounds.
Money is distributed to conferences by the
NCAA based on a six-year formula that, among other
factors, takes into account the collective success a league's teams achieved
during that rolling time frame.
The Cardinals, a 10th seed, join Cincinnati
in the Atlanta regional and will face Xavier at the Waterhouse Centre in
Orlando on Mar. 19.
Seventh-seeded Memphis and No. 9 seed
Charlotte are both headed for the East Rutherford, NJ, regional. The 49ers
will take on Texas Tech at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo, NY, on Mar. 18, while
the Tigers will meet South Carolina at Kansas City's Kemper Arena on Mar.
19.
DePaul is seeded 7th in the Phoenix
regional and will battle Dayton in Buffalo on Mar. 18.
After the 2004-05 season, Charlotte will be
leaving C-USA for the A-10, while Cincinnati, DePaul and Louisville will be
jumping to the Big East.
Memphis and UAB will remain a part of a
reconfigured C-USA, which will be realigned as a conference in which all
members sponsor Division I-A football. MAC members Central Florida and
Marshall and WAC schools Rice, Southern Methodist and Tulsa have accepted
invitations to join the league in the 2005-06 academic year.
Copyright 2004
Bonesville.net. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
02/23/2007 10:49:42 AM
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