By Denny O'Brien
©2009 Bonesville.net
All Rights Reserved.

There is a new perk to football membership in Conference USA. The league runner up will no longer be exiled to Mobile in January.

Though it’s not exactly newfound automatic qualifier access to the Bowl Championship Series, it’s a huge step in the right direction. Because if you had to pick the worst consolation prize in college athletics, a trip to the GMAC Bowl to face a MAC opponent in a half-empty stadium is worthy of mention.

Thankfully, the loser of the C-USA championship game no longer must suffer the consequences attached to what has evolved into the most irrelevant game on the bowl schedule.

Instead, Forth Worth, Hawaii, New Orleans, or Tampa could be the holiday destination for the league’s No. 2 bunch. And if certain contracted teams aren’t bowl eligible – which is pretty darn likely – D.C. and Houston also could join the C-USA bowl roster and perhaps negotiate a deal that brings the runner-up to their town.

Regardless, any of those locales is a major upgrade from Mobile. From the number of overall attractions to the potential opponent and date on the bowl schedule, it’s difficult not to find a better all-around option than the GMAC Bowl.

Truthfully, the most recent bowl wheeling and dealing by the league office is the latest example of how C-USA football, overall, has not skipped a beat since the landscape of college of athletics was altered by conference expansion.

Most pundits opined that C-USA would submerge in the aftermath of realignment as the overwhelming loser. With Cincinnati, Louisville, and South Florida bolting for the Big East – and Texas Christian to the Mountain West Conference – many talking heads insisted that C-USA was headed for competitive bankruptcy.

It was almost as if the league was losing a foursome of traditional powerhouses with venues decorated by championship banners. And Central Florida, Marshall, Rice, Southern Methodist, Tulsa, and Texas El-Paso weren’t exactly viewed as equivalent replacements.

Much of that rationale was grounded in the upside offered by Louisville and USF. The Cardinals were already posting double digits in the win column while many believed the Bulls were the second coming of Miami.

But since that time, the U of L, though it did make an Orange Bowl appearance, has been on a steady decline, while USF hasn’t quite lived up to its billing. It’s a bit ironic that Cincinnati has carried the football flag for the Big East three.

Meanwhile C-USA’s newcomers have been a pleasant surprise. Tulsa is everything that Louisville once was, and Rice and UCF have easily trumped anything that Cincinnati or South Florida ever accomplished as C-USA members.

That goes without mentioning the ascension of both East Carolina and Houston, now postseason regulars with conference championships and visits to the national polls to their names. Heck, the Pirates made more noise in two weeks last fall than their former brethren made during their entire existence in C-USA, and that’s including TCU.

That’s not to say that conference expansion didn’t leave C-USA with some noticeable disadvantages. It did. In the scrambling and restructuring that followed, the league transformed into the most geographically scattered on the college landscape.

It has resulted in serious budgetary challenges as travel expenses have multiplied exponentially.

But competitively, it’s difficult to argue that C-USA has taken a step back. When you factor in the success of the conference championship game and the solid television and bowl agreements, there is no shortage of opportunities for league members.

Outside of the BCS, of course.

Now, for C-USA to take the next step and significantly improve its overall perception, it must collectively do more of what ECU did last fall. The Pirates by far have been the most successful against BCS opponents in recent years, and they could use some company on that front.

If that occurs, no one could possibly argue that C-USA hasn’t improved its football profile. And league members can also rest assured that success this fall won’t result in extradition to Mobile for the postseason.

How is that not an added boost for C-USA?