Louisiana Voice

The numbers vary, but the core facts remain the same.

The State of Louisiana, through the University of Louisiana Board and Louisiana Tech University are concealing the expenditure of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds in order to finalize a settlement between Tech and Conference USA, a settlement which clears the way for Tech to exit CUSA and move into the Sun Belt Conference.

Front Office Sports online news service puts the fee for departing CUSA after 13 years north of the $8 MILLION that UTEP paid CUSA in order to leave for the Mountain West Conference.

The numbers are confusing because CUSA first said it should cost as much as $5.5 MILLION to leave early and Tech opened the bidding at a lower amount.

Of course, the numbers would be crystal clear if the agreement had not contained the dreaded NDA (non-disclosure agreement) that shrouds the final dollar amount in secrecy.

It’s the explosion of confidential settlements that concerns me. This is taxpayer money that’s being bandied about as a bargaining chip in this comedic custody battle.

Want to know why it’s laughable? Get this official statement released by Tech: “The move to the Sun Belt Conference in July is one that will benefit the health and well-being of our student athletes, the fiscal stability of our athletics department and the economic vitality of our entire region.”

Really? A multi-million-dollar payout to jump from one conference to return one you were a member of a few years back and left for the Western Athletic Conference is going to somehow contribute to better health for student athletes? Or their well-being? Is that some sort of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. MAHA gimmick?

If you sincerely have their health and well-being in mind, you might consider backing off on scheduling the big boys who routinely beat your players’ brains out. You’re just not ready for the SEC or the Big Ten or ACC level of play. I love Tech, but hey, I’m a realist. I know you do it for the bucks and not the glory, the athletes be damned.

As for the fiscal stability and economic vitality, I pretty much covered those in the previous paragraph. Actually, the last sentence of the previous paragraph.

And with the exception of maybe one or two well-heeled alumni (I’m a Tech alumnus, but not a wealthy one), there is no TAF from which to draw a seemingly endless pool of cash to lavish on coach buyouts. Any major expenditure of $8 or $5.5 million—or whatever—is taxpayer money and the school should be held accountable for any such expenditure.

Yeah, I know, Tech is claiming the move will save millions in travel expenses. But it didn’t seem to mind shelling out travel expenses when it jumped from the Sun Belt to the WAC where it had to play games in Nevada, Idaho, California and Hawaii. That took a pretty good chunk of change and Tech made that move without batting an eye, as I recall.

LouisianaVoice REPORTED LAST MONTH that litigation had been initiated over the proposed move. That was after both CUSA and Sun Belt released football schedules for 2026 and both had Tech playing a full slate of games—more than two dozen combined. That would be enough to wear just about any team down.

But signing onto multi-million-dollar confidential settlements is enough to wear down the tax-paying citizens of Louisiana.

And of course, there are the God-know-how-much in attorney fees spent on flinging motions, countermotions, requests for information, interrogatories, denials, depositions—all of which eventually led to negotiations and maybe mediation before agreeing in principle to in all likelihood, a predetermined outcome.