As much as I am not impressed with the current commissioner, and feel it was a hire to make our CUSA Presidents feel good about a diversity hire, not a hire based on achievements, not sure she can do much if there is no hammer to swing down on those who refused to upgrade their programs and schedules. I think a good stick would be the withholding of conference revenue shares and being ineligible for tournament play, maybe even setting them loose on basketball scheduling by not participating in conference games. If some teams that have averaged 225 rpi or more for a couple of seasons had to fill out an entire schedule with no conference games and no chance of tournament play, things might change. But who among these cusa presidents would push something like that and give that 'incentive' for the commish to use against those programs. At if something like that was in place it would allow the good programs to avoid rpi eating games win or lose and maybe they could take those additional games and schedule up.
I wasn't thinking in terms of specifics of a hammer for the commish for ooc scheduling etc. Although a little more power for the commish might not be a bad idea. The NCAA selection committee only appears to be getting increasingly worse in leaving out almost all non-P5 type conf teams for at-large bids. C-USA better get this ship righted before the conf ends up stuck on the outside for a long long time. The commish doesn't carry all that blame for the poor bball performance as a conference. The many programs share the blame and are responsible. I'm just not seeing or hearing of the commish making any real efforts to even slightly improve basketball or even acknowledge that there is a problem. Some decently good leadership in terms of publicly calling for higher standards in bball across the conference would be a good start.
Consequences or motivation for teams to improve brings to mind something that could be helpful and doable. I would suggest going to a conf tourney format similar to the OVCs. Only the top 8 get in. The rest are left out. In C-USA that would leave close to half being left out. The question with such a format change is would it still do anything to motivate teams to improve in ooc play. It would likely motivate conf teams to perform better in conf. Maybe it would motivate teams to get serious and improve overall. It takes away this idea of so what about this poor season, we still have a chance to win the conf tourney and make the NCAAs to save the season.
The commish may be a wonderful person for all I know. What I do know of her is in regards to the leadership and a public face for the conference. She just has not impressed me in that regard. I haven't detected any improvements in her year or two. While the media rights reduced contracts were not her fault, a unified coherent approach for the public to find C-USA games just hasn't materialized.
A couple of small examples that represent something larger regarding the commish's lack of leadership:
During the conf tourney, I saw her do a brief interview. She was asked why the continued stay in B'ham for the conf tourney. Her answer amounted to the UAB folks are willing to do make the effort and do the hard work the conf tourney requires so the conf is glad to turn it over to someone willing to do the work. I was appalled at what I was hearing! No mention of how the location was benefiting the conference was put forth. There was no strategic vision put forth. It's just UAB is willing to do the hard work, so we let them. There has to be more direction, vision, exploiting benefits, improvements etc of a high profile conf event.
This example may seem small and picky, but it seems to match a larger overarching theme with the conference. Watching C-USA games on the many various media outlets (tv & online) the same lame C-USA promo commercial runs that is awful. It is one of those lame C-USA commercials where different coaches or players say a word or two to make up a statement about good sportsmanship and being good student-athletes or something. I knew it was bad. When MT played at VCU, it became clear just how bad it is. An A-10 promo commercial ran during the game. It was really good. It was full of energy and promoted the competitiveness and excellence of play in the A-10. The commercial promo got me excited to want to watch A-10. It also struck me as highly appealing to young athletes who might be in the recruiting process. That contrast in conf promo commercials spoke volumes to me about the direction and leadership of the respective conferences.
