The conference teams have played 14 games so far. Overall, the teams have played two games within conference. JSU beat UTEP and LA Tech beat FIU. The conference has played 10 non-conference games, going 6-4. This is the important part, right now. Credibility is what we want. JSU out of the gate was able to establish that they could hang, beating UTEP. Both teams really had no idea of what that meant. But they followed it up with a mugging of ETSU. LA Tech beat FIU but stepped out oof conference and lost to SMU. Liberty got a nice ooc win against Bowling Green State University. Western Kentucky got a nice win over UCF. NMSU played two ooc games, losing to UMass but whupping WIU. MTU lost, but it was to Alabama. Sam Houston took on Big12 member and national power BYU and while losing the game, they held BYU to a 14-0 win. You can bet money on Sam not being kept scoreless and win money on Sam being able to hold BYU to 14 points. Even FIU went out of conference and wrestled a win from Maine's black bears. Our beloved Miners lost a close game that we could have won against a fired up Jacksonville State team but got back to work and grabbed the win we should have against Incarnate Word.
So far, Conference USA deserves at least a B. Against power5 top powers the losses were far from embarrassing. Against perhaps a level of teams equal or a tad higher than C-USA our teams more than held their own, and for the others we did what was needed.
Coming up, UTEP v Northwestern, FIU v UNT, JSU v Coastal Carolina, Northwestern St. v LA Tech, MTU v Missouri, Houston Christian v WKU, Sam plays AFA. I think JSU has a good chance of winning, as does LA Tech, WKU, and think Sam may win theirs.