Louisiana Tech has sued Conference USA in its attempt to leave the league and join the Sun Belt for the 2026-27 athletic year, according to court documents filed Thursday.
The school announced on July 15 of last year that it would join the Sun Belt “no later than July 1, 2027” but told CUSA it planned to leave for this upcoming fall. CUSA bylaws require 14 months’ notice to depart the conference, and the sides have not come to a financial agreement that would allow an early split.
The lawsuit asks for an injunction on the grounds that playing in the Sun Belt will be better for players with shorter travel, that CUSA can’t withhold NCAA distributions from the school and that previous distributions cannot be recouped. It asks to bar CUSA from placing Louisiana Tech on the conference’s 2026 football schedule and deem CUSA’s bylaws unenforceable, among other requests.
Louisiana Tech’s legal move follows the same steps taken by Marshall, Old Dominion and Southern Miss, who sued CUSA in state courts to leave early for the Sun Belt back in 2022. All three did join the SBC for that 2022 fall season.
“When we joined Conference USA in 2013, its membership was different, its scheduling was different, and the landscape of college athletics was very different,” Louisiana Tech said in a statement. “Seven months ago, we notified CUSA of our intent to exit in July 2026. We have worked in good faith toward an amicable separation within conference bylaws. The proposed 2026 football schedule drafted by CUSA left us no choice but to pursue this remedy.”
Conference USA did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the court filing, which was published by the Lincoln Parish Journal but was not publicly available online as of 4:30 p.m. CT Tuesday, Marshall, ODU and USM each paid the league $1.75 million to leave early, and the three had received their conference distribution. In a July letter, Louisiana Tech offered to pay $480,000 or a membership fee, along with forfeiting its conference distribution for 2025-26 and purchasing back its TV rights.
CUSA responded in August, noting that the league bylaws had changed since that 2022 realignment, including a 2023 grant of rights agreement, all of which Louisiana Tech signed. Its letter additionally claimed that fellow departing member UTEP has followed the agreed-upon timeline and forfeited two years of conference distributions. CUSA asked for Louisiana Tech to forfeit the same, which would amount to around $3.8 million for the 2024-25 distribution, along with an $825,000 late notice charge, marking more than $5.5 million total.
The sides continued discussions for months, according to court exhibits. CUSA also sued Louisiana Tech in a public records case last November, believing documents showed that the school had been planning to leave for the Sun Belt months before the official announcement but waited in order to receive its annual conference distribution from CUSA.
In early 2026, Louisiana Tech said it planned to reschedule nonconference games to fit in a Sun Belt schedule, while CUSA said it was planning its 2026 schedule with Louisiana Tech included. Conference schedules are released in the early part of the year. (In 2022, CUSA released a schedule with Marshall, ODU and USM, then later released another without them.)
With the schedule release crunch still unresolved, the battle now moves to a courtroom.
“Despite the Board of Supervisors and Tech’s good faith efforts to resolve this matter amicably over a period of eight months, including multiple written settlement proposals and repeated requests for mediation, CUSA has declined to engage in meaningful resolution and has instead placed Louisiana Tech on its 2026-27 athletic schedule in disregard of Tech’s explicit and repeated written notice that it would not participate in Conference USA competition beginning July 1, 2026,” the lawsuit states.
The Lincoln Parish Journal first reported the news.
