Wednesday, January 21, 2004
	Conference change bad for basketball Moves will make recruiting difficult in C-USA The tidal wave caused by the University of Miami and Virginia Tech leaving the Big East conference and moving to the Atlantic Coast Conference has hit Fort Worth. If you’ve been hiding under a rock, then you don’t know that Louisville and Cincinnati will be leaving Conference USA for greener pastures in the Big East, leaving TCU, yet again, in a drowning conference. Everyone worries about what this will do to the football team. How does it affect their strength of schedule now? Who is coming in to C-USA now? Questions pile up without a clear answer in reasonable sight. Everyone wants the football team to move in hopes of getting into a Bowl Championship Conference. But don’t hold your breath, you won’t be seeing “TCU accepts invite to Big-12” anytime soon in the papers. Everyone worries about the football team. But we neglect to realize that it will be the basketball teams that will be hurt the most by these moves. Louisville, Cincinnati and Marquette are three of the premier basketball schools in C-USA. Without them, the conference and the schools in the conference lose a certain flare. There is something special about getting a chance to go up against the powerhouse schools like Cincy that players will miss out on now. Potential recruits won’t listen to you if you tell them they get a chance to play Rice, SMU or Marshall in basketball rather than Cincinnatti, Marquette or even DePaul. That is where TCU will feel the biggest hit. TCU football will be TCU football regardless of what conference they are playing in. As long as they continue to win, players will continue to come here to play football. TCU basketball, on the other hand, needs all the help it can get.

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