20 games, two lawsuits, one team
The schedule mess is the least of Louisiana Tech's problems
A normal college football season is 12 regular season games. When you add in a possible conference championship and CFP runs, you can potentially amass 16 total games. Which Indiana, of all schools, became the first to go completely undefeated.
But at the Group of Six ranks? 14 seems like a pretty hard cap right now based on how the three entrants from those conferences have done in the 12-team era.
So how does Louisiana Tech currently have a 20-game regular season slate?
I mean, just look how ridiculous that looks. 20 games? Heck, the Bulldogs have two contests scheduled for November 7 and you best believe they’re not going to go split-squad across the state of Alabama.
But if you look at the official Louisiana Tech website, you’ll see a much more standard 12-game slate. So what gives?
Conference brawl
No, Louisiana Tech is not about to play 20 football games in a season, including two split-squad games and a game roughly every four days.
You might remember last offseason that Louisiana Tech started the process from moving from Conference USA to a much better fit in the Sun Belt, bringing back one of the most toxic unknown rivalries. Yeah, this is all because of that.
Right now, Louisiana Tech is caught between two conference homes. The deal with their new home, the Sun Belt, wasn’t set to start until “no later than July 1, 2027,” according to the league’s news release at the time.
Last time I checked, the calendar still reads 2026. So what gives?
Behind the scenes, the school informed their previous home, Conference USA, that they wanted to start their membership in the Sun Belt in the 2026-27 academic year. Not the 2027-28 year that was mentioned in the press release. There is a problem with that, though. Conference USA requires 14 months of notice for departing schools. With membership changes finalized on July 1 of each year and the move announced July 15, 2025, we’re at just 12 months.
Too bad, so sad for the Bulldogs. But this is college football and we can’t take things like this lightly. To the courtroom we go!
That’s right, Louisiana Tech filed a lawsuit against Conference USA in an attempt to force their way out of the league. Of course, they could’ve worked out a settlement where the departing LTU would pay CUSA to break the deal. But that makes way too much sense.
More on the Louisiana Tech move to the Sun Belt:
Stacking billables
There’s a common refrain among college athletics: Billable Hours remain undefeated. Boy are they racking up points now.
According to reporting by The Athletic, the crux of Louisiana Tech’s argument is that moving leagues to the Sun Belt would be a net benefit for all the student athletes, particularly because there would be shorter travel. Which is true. There are already two other Louisiana-based schools in the league in Louisiana and Louisiana-Monroe. They won’t have to travel to far-flung school such as New Mexico State (930 miles) or Delaware (1,222) miles. Instead, the longest trip in-division will be to Troy (434 miles).
I think we call can agree that’s a much better situation for the student-athletes. But, rules are rules and bylaws are bylaws.
The case got much harder as Louisiana Tech continued to argue that the CUSA could not withhold NCAA distributions from the school and that the CUSA should be barred from including Louisiana Tech in future schedules.
That argument didn’t fly, and a judge denied Louisiana Tech’s appeal for a temporary restraining order.
Remember when I said billable hours kept stacking? Yeah, it’s time for more lawsuits!
Without the provision that the CUSA could not include Louisiana Tech on their schedules, both leagues released their 2026 football conference slates with the Bulldogs playing a full schedule. That is how we’ve ended up at 20 games.
What’s next?
More lawsuits.
In response to the dual scheduling fiasco, the University of Louisiana System filed another suit against the CUSA.
Court filings obtained by the Lincoln Parish Journal showed that Louisiana Tech informed the CUSA of their intent to move to the Sun Belt July 1, 2026. But, as we’ve discussed, that still falls outside of the 14-month window the conference requires for departing members.
The case, originally filed in Lincoln Parish with a March 19 docket date, has been postponed and a judge granted a request from Conference USA to move the case to federal court. No new date has been set.
Obviously, that will be the immediate answer to what is next. But, what actually will come from this case?
In the immediate term, Louisiana Tech is still bound to the media deal with Conference USA, so that schedule would stand. It would constiute a major breach of contract for the school to spurn that deal and force their way into the Sun Belt. Plenty more lawsuits would follow.
You may remember a similar situation when three CUSA schools - Marshall, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss - departed for the Sun Belt in 2022. The timeline is a lot tighter in Louisiana Tech’s case - a shade over three months until the move compared to 10 months for the others - but precedent is in the Bulldogs’ favor.
All three of those departing schools filed suits in state courts to force the early move. All three won their cases. Could Conference USA pulling the case to the federal level impact the result? It’s possible, but precedent is hard to ignore.
In all reality, I think that a settlement will come about at some point in the process and the two will just go their separate ways. A prolonged legal battle seems against the interests of both organizations.
But who knows? This is college football, after all.
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