Conference USA

Conference USA, officially abbreviated CUSA, is a group of college sports teams that play each other on the NCAA Division I level. It was formed in 1995 when the Great Midwest Conference and Metro Conference merged, and has added several members since then. Most of the new members have come from either the Western Athletic Conference or the Sun Belt Conference (SBC). From 2005 to 2014, it also lost many members, mostly to the original Big East Conference and its football-playing offshoot, the American Athletic Conference (The American). In a later wave of conference changes in the early 2020s, CUSA lost three members to the SBC in 2022 and six to The American in 2023. CUSA responded to these later moves by adding seven new members, with four joining in July 2023, one to join in July 2024, and two to join in July 2025.

The conference sends several teams to bowl games every year, including the Liberty Bowl and New Orleans Bowl.

Memphis (now a member of The American) has been the most successful men's basketball team in the conference, reaching the national championship game in 2008. (However, the NCAA later took Memphis's wins from that season away because a Memphis player, namely Derrick Rose, had not been eligible to play.)^[1]

1. ↑ Garci, Marlen (August 19, 2009). "NCAA vacates Memphis' '07–08 season record, Final Four run". USA Today. Gannett Company, Inc. Retrieved May 4, 2012.