By Bill Koch
The Cincinnati Enquirer

MEMPHIS - For years, the University of Cincinnati, Louisville and Memphis have formed an athletic alliance. They were three similar schools - large, urban public institutions with strong basketball traditions and questionable football programs.

They were together in the Metro Conference, split for a few years when Louisville refused to follow UC and Memphis to the Great Midwest Conference, then hooked up again in 1995 when Conference USA was founded.

But it now appears that Memphis could be left behind if UC and Louisville leave C-USA in 2005-06 to form a new conference with the football-playing members of the Big East. If it happens, Memphis coach Tommy West says, it would be a shame.

"I certainly would hate to see that because I think that it certainly would hurt our conference," West said, "but at this point in time anybody in their right mind would tell you that we all have to do what we think is best for our school."

As the 11 football-playing members of C-USA gathered here this week to conduct the league's annual media day, there was more talk about the future of the conference than there was about the season that's about to begin.

Every school has its own set of issues. South Florida, set to compete in C-USA in football for the first time, could be joining a league just as it's about to fall apart. Memphis could be losing its long association with UC and Louisville. TCU, which was spurned once before when the Southwest Conference fell apart, could again become a school without a home. Army has already informed the league of its decision to leave the conference in two years.

But if there's any bitterness toward UC and Louisville, as there was among Big East schools when the ACC first made overtures to some of its members, it's not evident.

"Everybody has their own things and I understand that," said UAB coach and athletic director Watson Brown. "I don't look down on anybody. It could be us next. Who knows?"

Brown has a unique perspective because of his dual role as coach and AD, but also because he spent a year as the head football coach at UC in 1983, long before the Bearcats had any league affiliation. He understands as well as anyone how attractive a league with Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Syracuse would be to UC.

But he also knows how much C-USA has meant to UC, especially to its football program, which has been to four straight bowl games after going 46 years without a single bowl appearance.

"Conference USA was a piece of that in my opinion," Brown said. "But we all have to do what we have to do. That's just the way that it is."

UC coach Rick Minter would be the first to agree that C-USA has helped the Bearcat football program.

"We were an independent floundering out there," Minter said. "Then, as things began to migrate toward conferences, we settled in Conference USA. It's a great place for us because we had nowhere to go. We weren't being invited to anybody's ball."

And now, largely because of the success it enjoyed in C-USA, the Bearcats may have made themselves attractive enough to merit a better situation, one that might include affiliation in a Bowl Championship Series-affiliated league.

"From a regional basis, it only makes sense for the University of Cincinnati that if the opportunity comes along, we'd have to explore it very heavily," Minter said. "It would be for the interest and well being of our student-athletes."

But as Minter and the other coaches pointed out, these decisions will be made by university presidents and athletic directors, not by coaches. Whatever happens, C-USA commissioner Britton Banowsky says the league will continue to flourish.

"We're prepared to do what we need to do to make the league stronger, and that would include adding teams to the conference," Banowsky said. "I'm going to do whatever I can to preserve the interest of this league and its institutions. I'm going to fight for the league. That's my job."

Email: bkoch@enquirer.com