History UsefulNotes / GroupOfFiveConferences

[[caption-width-right:300:[[labelnote:Click here to see a map of CUSA's schools in 2025.]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cusa_map_2025.png Delaware plans to make the FCS-FBS transtion and join CUSA for the 2025 season.[[/labelnote]]]]

'''Arriving schools:''' ''Delaware'' (2025)\\

In fall 2021, CUSA was on the brink of collapse due to massive raids by two other conferences. First, The American announced that Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice, UAB, and UTSA would move to that league in 2023. Soon after The American's raid, Marshall, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss accepted invitations to the Sun Belt Conference and left immediately in 2022. CUSA responded by announcing that then-current FBS independents Liberty and New Mexico State, plus FCS upgraders Jacksonville State and Sam Houston, would join in 2023, with another FCS upgrader, Atlanta-area school Kennesaw State, set to join in 2024. CUSA didn't stop with its raid of the FCS ranks, bringing in a ''fourth'' upgrader, Delaware, for 2025.

A longstanding Division I-AA power, '''Western Kentucky University''' rose to football prominence during the long tenure of Jack Harbaugh (Jim and John's dad) through the '90s, culminating in an FCS championship in 2002. The Hilltoppers ("Toppers" for short)[[note]]The central campus is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin atop a hill]] overlooking the Barren River valley.[[/note]] transitioned to FBS soon after, but after going winless in 2009, they returned to their past by hiring former star QB Willie Taggart to be HC; his success in reviving their prospects launched his brief sojourn into the major college ranks. Nowadays, WKU is known best for two things: its immensely productive offense that spawned FBS record-holding QB Bailey Zappe in 2021, and its odd mascot, an amorphous red blob known only as "Big Red", who has become the center of a lengthy transatlantic legal dispute, with WKU claiming that the Italian TV character Gabibbo is an unauthorized knockoff of Big Red (something Gabibbo's creator has in fact admitted to). The Toppers also entered the 2023 season as the ''only'' current CUSA member to have won the conference's championship.

The Panthers of '''Florida International University''' merit a mention on this page as currently [[MedalOfDishonor the second worst FBS team]][[note]]Charlotte currently has the #1 spot.[[/note]] in terms of program win record. The public university in Miami is relatively young itself, and its football program is even younger, only starting play in 2002. They fast-tracked their move to the FBS level in just three years but bottomed out with a winless 2006 season most memorable for a bench-clearing brawl against Miami. The following year, the school hired the first Cuban-American HC in D-I history, Mario Cristobal, reflecting its predominantly Cuban-American student body. Cristobal built the program up to its first winning seasons and a conference championship but was fired after a backslide. The program has been unstable and generally losing ever since, winning just one game across the 2020 and '21 seasons. Their biggest competition is the similarly named and young South Florida-based program at Florida Atlantic.