Conference USA Comes to Agreement With Three Departing Schools

The league's terms with Old Dominion, Marshall and Southern Miss's departure are not expected to be made public.

Old Dominion, Marshall and Southern Miss have reportedly finalized a separation agreement from Conference USA. ESPN’s Pete Thamel was the first to report the agreement.

On Tuesday evening, the league put out a statement announcing the agreement, which will let the schools leave for the Sun Belt ahead of the upcoming 2022 season.

It’s official: ODU, Marshall & Southern Miss will leave Conference USA & join Sun Belt on July 1 pic.twitter.com/dfk9vlg3Bw

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) March 29, 2022

The terms of the separation have been agreed upon but are not expected to be made public. All three schools—which accepted invitations to join the Sun Belt in October—announced in February that they were ending their alliance with C-USA in June 2022 to move to the new conference. 

The three programs broke the C-USA’s bylaws by not giving the league 14 months’ notice before their departure. On Feb. 15, C-USA released a statement saying that it would use legal action after the three programs announced plans to leave the league. In response to the C-USA's legal action, Marshall filed a lawsuit in February to ensure its early exit from the conference.

ODU, Marshall and USM are currently on the Sun Belt’s 2022 football schedule.

Conference USA had previously released its fall 2022 football schedule that included all three schools last month. However, per Thamel, the league is expected to release a new schedule soon and has petitioned the NCAA to play a pair of Week Zero games for health and safety reasons.

Games in Week Zero help reduce teams from playing too many consecutive games, a concern for C-USA now that it is an 11-league team. 

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