PERHAPS IT was the only way to punctuate the 2007-08 college sports season for the now-suffering legion of Marshall fans.

If you didn't see it Saturday on the Speed channel, Brett Rowe had the green-and-white Marshall logo on his No. 05 car and tried to qualify it for the Nationwide Carquest Auto Parts 300 race at Lowe's Motor Speedway near Charlotte.

The chance at free "pub" for the university lasted a warm-up lap, and then the Barboursville native spun the green car in a most unwelcome manner. The car hit the wall and limped back to the garage, the day completed.

Was that Rowe driving, or David DeFatta?

In that one instant, all those unpleasant memories seemed to flash before my eyes. You name it; it was there.

The football team getting outscored 88-32 in the first quarter. Losing to New Hampshire. The errant shotgun snap at Memphis. Getting a delay penalty on fourth-and-5 at the Tulsa 6 - after a timeout. The basketball team showing flashes of promise, then squandering a late 10-point lead in the conference tournament.

(After Marshall's effort in the Conference USA baseball tournament, let's give that team a pass.)

The 2007-08 season was one great spinout for Thundering Herd teams. Rowe simply followed the trend.

Two recent items in Conference USA that caught my attention: (a) Southern Methodist's athletic department has rung up $56.7 million in deficits over the past four years, and (b) Houston and UCLA have signed a 2-for-1 football deal.

SMU's department is expected to lose $16.8 million in 2008 and $16.3 million in 2009. If those numbers look familiar, they should - that's eerily close to the entire annual athletic budget at MU.

A few caveats here: For one, those losses include scholarship funds charged to the athletic department even though no money actually changes hands. The price tag at the private school is not cheap: an estimated $43,295 for the 2008-09 academic year, plus books.

For another, this school isn't exactly impoverished. Its endowment and private fundraising are enormous, and they've pushed as hard as the big boys in facility improvements. The seven-figure salary for new football coach June Jones is privately funded, and then some.

But SMU has lagged in sponsorships and ticket sales, and it's not tough to figure why. That school is unbelievably buried in the Dallas sports scene, beneath the Longhorns, Aggies, Cowboys, Mavericks, Stars and enough high school football to gobble up eight pages in the Saturday edition of the Dallas Morning News. The Mustangs are a non-entity in Fort Worth.

The Mustangs may register the faintest impact on its market in all of Conference USA, except maybe for Rice in the sprawling city of Houston.

Speaking of Houston, the University of, it's not surprising that the Cougars have hooked up a 2-for-1 with UCLA, with the 2010 and 2012 games at the Rose Bowl. Here's the eye-popper: The 2011 game will be played at Robertson Stadium on the UH campus - not the palatial Reliant Stadium a few miles away.

Understand that UH does a decent job of preserving the 67-year-old "Rob," and probably has a renovation in the

If you didn't see it Saturday on the Speed channel, Brett Rowe had the green-and-white Marshall logo on his No. 05 car and tried to qualify it for the Nationwide Carquest Auto Parts 300 race at Lowe's Motor Speedway near Charlotte.

The chance at free "pub" for the university lasted a warm-up lap, and then the Barboursville native spun the green car in a most unwelcome manner. The car hit the wall and limped back to the garage, the day completed.

Was that Rowe driving, or David DeFatta?

In that one instant, all those unpleasant memories seemed to flash before my eyes. You name it; it was there.

The football team getting outscored 88-32 in the first quarter. Losing to New Hampshire. The errant shotgun snap at Memphis. Getting a delay penalty on fourth-and-5 at the Tulsa 6 - after a timeout. The basketball team showing flashes of promise, then squandering a late 10-point lead in the conference tournament.

(After Marshall's effort in the Conference USA baseball tournament, let's give that team a pass.)

The 2007-08 season was one great spinout for Thundering Herd teams. Rowe simply followed the trend.

Two recent items in Conference USA that caught my attention: (a) Southern Methodist's athletic department has rung up $56.7 million in deficits over the past four years, and (b) Houston and UCLA have signed a 2-for-1 football deal.

SMU's department is expected to lose $16.8 million in 2008 and $16.3 million in 2009. If those numbers look familiar, they should - that's eerily close to the entire annual athletic budget at MU.

A few caveats here: For one, those losses include scholarship funds charged to the athletic department even though no money actually changes hands. The price tag at the private school is not cheap: an estimated $43,295 for the 2008-09 academic year, plus books.

For another, this school isn't exactly impoverished. Its endowment and private fundraising are enormous, and they've pushed as hard as the big boys in facility improvements. The seven-figure salary for new football coach June Jones is privately funded, and then some.

But SMU has lagged in sponsorships and ticket sales, and it's not tough to figure why. That school is unbelievably buried in the Dallas sports scene, beneath the Longhorns, Aggies, Cowboys, Mavericks, Stars and enough high school football to gobble up eight pages in the Saturday edition of the Dallas Morning News. The Mustangs are a non-entity in Fort Worth.

The Mustangs may register the faintest impact on its market in all of Conference USA, except maybe for Rice in the sprawling city of Houston.

Speaking of Houston, the University of, it's not surprising that the Cougars have hooked up a 2-for-1 with UCLA, with the 2010 and 2012 games at the Rose Bowl. Here's the eye-popper: The 2011 game will be played at Robertson Stadium on the UH campus - not the palatial Reliant Stadium a few miles away.

Understand that UH does a decent job of preserving the 67-year-old "Rob," and probably has a renovation in the

works. But it's still a dungeon in many ways, a rusted-out trailer park compared to the Taj Mahal home of the NFL's Texans.

After last football season, I took a stab at ranking 10 C-USA road football venues, with Rice Stadium and the Louisiana Superdome not yet visited. The Herd's scheduled visit to the latter, as you'll recall, was rerouted to Mobile, Ala., by Hurricane Katrina.

Unfortunately, that entry was wiped out when somebody decided our blogs needed a change of format. For fun, I'll try to recreate it here:

1. UTEP - El Paso is not for everybody, but I rank it as my most interesting road trip. The Sun Bowl's setting, literally carved into the mountains, is even more striking than it looks on TV.

2. UCF (new stadium) - Yes, Bright House Stadium is an erector-set venue with a whole bunch of steel and aluminum. But in a messed-up way, that adds to the atmosphere, particularly when 12,000 students get into the game and everything shakes. Pending Marshall's trip to Wisconsin, I rate UCF's student section the second-best I've seen, behind Kansas State.

3. East Carolina - Easiest drive for most Marshall fans, and one of the nicest settings. And the Pirates just might have the best fan base in the league, on a consistent basis.

4. Southern Miss - Hattiesburg neither bowls me over nor turns me off. Hey, that's much like Huntington, isn't it? I expect an improved M.M. Roberts Stadium in September, with a better atmosphere than Thanksgiving weekend 2006. The fan base is a lot like Marshall, both in size and enthusiasm. All in all, a fine venue.

5. Memphis - The folks there see UCF's new place and drool and demand an on-campus stadium. But really, they do just fine in the Liberty Bowl - it's in decent shape, not in a bad neighborhood and not far from campus. It's just a little big for the Tigers' football fan base, that's all.

6. SMU - For a beautiful little stadium on a scenic campus, it's tough to beat Gerald J. Ford Stadium. For actual college football atmosphere, it ranks up there with Institute's Lakin Field.

7. Tulsa - Ancient, squarish H.A. Chapman Stadium was overdue for its pending renovation. One hopes writers will no longer have to kill wasps in the press box. The Golden Hurricane has a small but loyal fan base.

8. Houston - All in all, Robertson Stadium is a larger, more structurally sound version of Fairfield Stadium. Oddly enough, this on-campus stadium serves beer.

9. UCF (Citrus Bowl) - Worst neighborhood I've seen for a sports venue, even worse than the area around the now-dismantled Orange Bowl. The inexcusable cop-on-cop shooting before the 2005 MU-UCF game added an unwanted legacy.

10.  UAB - Legion Field looks much the same as it did on your black-and-white TV with bunny ears, except an upper deck has been removed. Take a look around and you expect to see Bear Bryant and Shug Jordan. But Auburn and Alabama have long deserted this place, with good reason.

More news from Memphis, the King Kong of C-USA men's basketball: Antonio Anderson has withdrawn from the NBA draft. That's not a great surprise, as he was ticketed for a second-round selection.

Anderson will lead a senior class that could set an NCAA record for most victories over four years. They've already set a three-year record with 104, and will make a run at Duke's four-year mark of 133.

To contact staff writer Doug Smock, send e-mail to dougsm...@wvgazette.com or call 348-5130.