It didn't take long for the question to come up.
It was the first thing on everyone's mind and Conference USA's newly named Commissioner, Britton Banowsky, approached the issue of conference realignment with caution.
"It's an issue that is probably more prevalent on our radar screens in the last 60 days -- that is conference realignment," Banowsky said. "We watched with interest as the Atlantic Coast Conference situation unfolded and the potential trickle down that could impact C-USA."
Banowsky is secure that C-USA will not be destroyed by member schools leaving and stressed how much care with which these situations should be handled.
"I'm confident on the back-end that we will be in a position to prosper," Banowsky said. "When we look back we can say we did it right, we did it respectfully and we did it in a way that reflects the values of our institutions."
Given the recent undertakings between the Big East and the ACC Banowsky is not naïve about the worst-case scenarios facing his young conference.
"I recognize the fact that we may change as a conference from a member standpoint," he said. "But, we talked about it and we asked, 'do we want (this process) to move quickly or do we want it to move in a more stable way?' and each one of them strongly came out on the side of (having) some stability here and doing things carefully and thoughtfully."
Memphis coach Tommy West learned from the Big East-ACC ordeal that it is impossible to predict he outcome of realignments.
"Everybody asks me, 'where are we going to be in two years?' and I don't know the answer to that, but I do think there are going to be drastic changes," West said. "I've thought this for five or six years. I think there will be major realignments throughout college football."
West also said he thinks C-USA should make a play for Notre Dame, who is an independent in football and a Big East basketball school.
When asked about the possibility of major schools from the Big East and C-USA combining into a new conference West saw plenty of benefits.
"You certainly would have a very good conference if you did that," the third-year coach said. "I'm not one of the powers that be, but I would think that be in the thought process somewhere."
West said other conferences seem to be waiting for C-USA to crumble or have a member snatched out.
"I've heard that the WAC (Western Athletic Conference) is pulling at some of them and the WAC doesn't have a chance to me of pulling anybody out of this league," West said. "If we decided we wanted to take some of the WAC people right now, I'm sure we'd have a whole bunch of them would want to pile in there with us. That kind of hacks me off to see where the WAC is acting like they're going to take some teams out of our league."
