MSU will join Conference USA in 2025

For the first time in over 30 years, Missouri State University is poised to enter a new level of athletic competition.

The university on May 10 announced its acceptance of an invitation to join Conference USA as a full-league member, effective July 1, 2025. MSU has been a member of the Missouri Valley Conference since 1990.

With the move, the Bears football team will join the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision for the first time. MSU will compete in CUSA in football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, women’s soccer, women’s cross country, men’s and women’s golf, women’s tennis, women’s track and field, and beach volleyball.

MSU President Clif Smart said at a May 13 news conference that the league change “is an important day in the history of Missouri State University.” Smart, who is set to retire June 30 after 13 years as the university’s leader, briefly reflected on some of MSU’s accomplishments during his tenure. Those include becoming a doctoral granting institution and the significant upgrades to campus facilities, such as Glass Hall.

“This move is in league with those achievements as it will put us on the national stage in a national athletic conference,” he said. “It also puts us in a league with more universities like us and with those we aspire to be like.”

MSU is slated to become the 12th full-time member of CUSA, which was founded in 1995. The MSU Board of Governors approved the university’s invitation to CUSA at its May 9 meeting.

“This conference is stable and has built itself into a league that we are proud to be joining,” Smart said, noting 11 of the schools set to be in the league in 2025 are public – Liberty University is private – and five have enrollments exceeding MSU’s. Fall 2023 enrollment at MSU’s Springfield campus was 24,224, which is 166 students below the school record of 24,390 set in 2018, according to university officials.

Budgetary considerations
During the news conference, Smart said the move will be “budget neutral” for the university, noting MSU athletics expects to spend an additional $5 million annually as part of CUSA, up from its current $31 million. He said the funding would go toward scholarships, personnel, travel and student-athlete funding, and MSU expects to offset the new expenses through additional revenue.

In a May 14 interview, Smart said each school in CUSA annually receives $2.3 million in media rights. He added CUSA has an exclusive deal with ESPN to air its football games in October on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The media rights total is $2 million more than MSU is given by MVC, he said.

The news conference also revealed that local attorney and alum Tom Strong is donating $5 million to help the school move into CUSA. Smart said $3.5 million of Strong’s donation would go toward a $5 million fee MSU must pay to the NCAA for the Bears football team to move into the Football Bowl Subdivision. The other $1.5 million is intended for planned upgrades to Robert W. Plaster Stadium, home of the Bears football team. The funding goes toward a first-phase $4 million locker room project, Smart said.

Strong, a 1952 MSU graduate and founder of Strong Law PC, said he owes “a great debt” to MSU for his education and that of other family members.

“All I have given the university is money. What it has given my family and me is priceless,” he said via email, adding his mother, Blanche, graduated in 1925 and his youngest child, David, graduated in 1988. Additionally, his two oldest children, Stephanie and John, graduated in the 1970s from Greenwood Laboratory School, the MSU-affiliated private K-12 school.

Strong said his children signed off on the donation, noting he believes MSU’s conference move is “transformational” for the school.

“Athletics is the front porch of a university. It is what is first noticed by the public,” he said, noting the transition to CUSA will draw national television exposure for MSU’s athletics program.  “Athletics will now take its place alongside of the numerous other programs where we excel – programs such as debate, business, theater, music, etc.”

Lance Kettering, executive director of the Springfield Sports Commission, said it’s too early to determine a potential financial impact for MSU’s conference change. He said the commission doesn’t typically study Springfield college athletics for economic impact over the course of a given sport’s season.

“Time will tell that story,” he said. “We’ve never really measured that unless it’s like a conference tournament setting.”

He said the geographic distance for CUSA members, which include schools in Virginia, New Mexico and Florida, is greater than for those in the MVC.

“I don’t know how that’ll affect normal game-day travel. But being a Division I FBS [school] and having new teams at that level coming to Springfield will draw that interest locally,” he said, noting CUSA members Western Kentucky University and Louisiana Tech University could be close travel options for opposing fans.

Being an FBS school also will allow for potential higher profile nonconference football games, Kettering said.

“That could be the exciting thing, too, is what FBS people will be coming to Springfield for nonconference games,” he said.

MSU is coming off a 4-7 record in its first season with Ryan Beard as head football coach. Home game attendance averaged a bit over 9,100, according to NCAA data, a total that would rank the program 10th among CUSA.

Making connections
Smart said the topic of exiting MVC was brought up to the MSU Board of Governors in February 2023.

“We had some conversations with people connected to the Sun Belt [Conference] to explore if that was a possibility,” he said. “They had filled up with team members. They were not looking during the last two years for additional schools to join.”

That led to connecting with CUSA, which involved meeting with Judy MacLeod, CUSA commissioner, and other conference officials, followed by an application by MSU. When the invitation from CUSA was received, Smart said the board’s decision to join was unanimous.

MSU was open with MVC officials about its interest in moving to an FBS league, Smart said. When the decision was made to join CUSA, he called MVC Commissioner Jeff Jackson to notify him.

Aside from locker room improvements at Plaster Stadium, Smart said a renovated press box will likely be part of a phase two. Future phases will probably roll out over more than a 10-year period, he said, adding those decisions will largely belong to his successor, Richard “Biff” Williams, and current athletics director Kyle Moats.

“I don’t know exactly how it will roll out, but I know (Williams) is committed to upgrading our football stadium. That’s the one piece of our facilities that’s below standards of the schools in this league,” Smart said. “It’s not mandated, but (CUSA) wanted to know that there was a commitment to improving the football facility, and Dr. Williams gave them that.”

If not for the chance to move up to FBS in football, Smart said MSU likely would have stayed in the MVC, where it has claimed 117 regular-season and post-season tournament titles since 1990, according to university officials.

“We were happy in the league that we’re in,” he said. “The opportunity to bring in substantial additional revenue, raise the profile of the university through joining a national conference that plays FBS football, that was really the driver.”