I'd rather see us add another eastern school over another school from Louisiana. Ark State I can live with.
As a Marshall fan I agree with you.
As a fan of a school that is a member of C-USA I can see the need for additional western schools if we want to build towards stability and a conference that has a better chance to develop and resist future realignment. We Marshall fans should be among the schools most able to understand the need to add more western schools. Under the old conference alignment we were one of the most remote schools in the conference. It affected the schools budgets and fans ability to follow their team.
Now that the new conference teams are more eastern located the teams in west are increasingly isolated. Ignoring them will only increase the likelihood of instability and the chance they will make lateral moves as well as making upward moves.
Personally I couldn’t give a rat’s behind for UTEP or the other three Texas schools, but I’m tired of worrying whether my school is linked to an unviable conference. If we’re going to move ahead as a healthy conference we have to take care of everyone’s needs.
If we move to 16 teams the new schools should be more Western and I really don't care who, let them find schools that western teams find agreeable.