Perfect 10? Maybe not, but current CUSA works for WKU
Published 10:03 am Monday, August 3, 2026
Western Kentucky University Director of Athletics Todd Stewart discusses the upcoming athletics season, successes and changes from last year and the current health of the Hilltoppers’ athletics department during a press conference at Diddle Arena on Thursday, July 30, 2026.
(Grace McDowell / The Daily News)
Conference USA enters the 2026-27 school year as a slimmed-down league after seeing two longtime members depart.
Now at 10 teams after UTEP left for the Mountain West Conference and Louisiana Tech departed for the Sun Belt Conference, CUSA is a more compact league – for now, anyway. And at present, that configuration is one that works well for Western Kentucky.
“I don’t think it will stay at 10 indefinitely,” WKU athletic director Todd Stewart said during a preseason news conference last week. “I just think ultimately, probably adding a couple more would make sense. But you don’t want to add just because you can. You want to add and create strength and so I think that’s why the conference is being a little more deliberate.
“Right now, in the short term, 10 works for a lot of reasons. I mean, in football you can play everybody but one team and if we went to a nine-game conference schedule we could play everybody, but right now our conference schedule is eight. Basketball works great – you have 18 conference games. You have a home-and-home with everybody, very fair schedule. So I think it is good right now, but I don’t know that it necessarily stays at 10 indefinitely.”
CUSA has dealt with plenty of membership turmoil since WKU joined in 2014 after leaving the Sun Belt, with a huge shift coming in 2023, when former members Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice, UAB and UTSA all left for the American Athletic Conference, and Southern Miss, Marshall and Old Dominion exited to join the Sun Belt. CUSA added four new members to backfill the league that same year – Liberty, Jacksonville State, New Mexico State and Sam Houston – then admitted Kennesaw State in 2024.
Last season, Delaware and Missouri State also joined CUSA as full members to bring the conference back up to 12 – for a year.
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“We lost two members out of the league, UTEP and Louisiana Tech,” Stewart said. “They were good members of our league, but they didn’t really win a whole lot. I mean, if you really look at it – UTEP finished in the bottom half of the league in every sport program last year with the exception of volleyball and they haven’t won a bowl game since 1967. And La Tech won a women’s basketball regular-season championship last year and a bowl game, but the year before they didn’t win any conference championships. So everybody has to do what they feel is best, but I don’t think those schools will be missed from a win-loss standpoint at all.”
Stewart thinks not every move away from CUSA has worked out for former members, from conversations he has had with other schools.
“When we lost six schools from Conference USA to the American a few years ago, if you talk to those schools now, – which I do – and talk to people at those schools … I’m not saying that they’re saying there’s buyer’s remorse, but they would tell you or they would tell me that this hasn’t gone exactly the way we thought it would. They haven’t had success. They really haven’t won on a consistent basis at all. And so it’s no real sure thing. I think what you have to do is you just have to focus on being the best version of yourself. Sometimes leaving a league is the right thing to do. We’ve left, we’ve changed leagues. But it isn’t always, and I think Conference USA is in a pretty good spot right now with the 10 schools that we have. I don’t know if it will always be at 10, but the 10 that we have are really competitive.”
CUSA commissioner Judy MacLeod said during the league’s Football Media Days in Arlington, Texas, that expansion is never off the table. But extending membership to the right schools remains the priority, not sheer numbers.
“We’ve been very strategic in our expansions and we’ve focused on universities that increased our reach, our visibility and also on academic and competitive profile,” MacLeod said. “I think our newbies, especially our two newest, both played in bowl games last year – one of them won the women’s basketball championship. So we’ve been really proud that our new members have come in ready to compete. People ask if we’re going to stay at 10 – you know, we’re always going to explore but we’re going to do it in a very strategic way. We’re very happy with the 10 – it’s a really committed group and it’s working very well together, but that will always be something that we examine and explore.”
Now entering the fourth year of five-year multimedia deal with ESPN and CBS Sports – Stewart said an option year will likely be exercised to extend the current agreement another year – the financial penalties for schools still considering departing CUSA have lessened somewhat.
“The way the conference bylaws are that every school has agreed to is when you leave the league, in addition to the grant of rights component you also have to leave behind two years worth of revenues,” Stewart said. “So it’s expensive to leave Conference USA. And there’s other leagues where it’s expensive too. That doesn’t mean that schools can’t leave or won’t leave, but it’s not as easy to leave as it used to be.”
The biggest factor in the CUSA’s current deal with ESPN involves football, with the league set to play weeknight football in October for the fourth straight season.
WKU will have two Thursday night games (at New Mexico State, Oct. 1) and at home against Missouri State (Oct. 8), one Wednesday night game (at Sam Houston, Oct. 14) and one on a Tuesday night at home against Delaware (Oct. 27).
Stewart knows those non-traditional game dates have and will cause some issues for some fans to attend, but the national exposure they have provided to the Hilltoppers has been a net gain for the program.
“I think there’s been far more positives than negatives to it,” Stewart said. “Certainly in the month of October, it’s different not having Saturday games and that’s less dates that people can do the traditional tailgating, but the exposure we get from those midweek games is unbelievable. It’s literally millions of dollars of exposure from those midweek games because oftentimes it’s the only college football game in the country being played or it’s one of only two. So therefore, every sports bar in America has our game on and that’s a level of national notoriety that we would not get on a Saturday. There’s just too many other games and too much competition. So that part’s been huge in terms of again, the national relevancy piece but I think also recruiting.”
About Jeff Nations
Sports Editor, Bowling Green Daily News
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