C-USA at the ESPY's

Last Sunday night ESPN presented its annual ESPY awards show in Los Angeles. One of the major award winners is a current student at a Conference USA school. Gymnast Nastia Luikin, a student at SMU, was named Female Athlete of the Year.

She was the 2008 Olympic individual all-around gold medalist, the 2005 and 2007 World Champion on the balance beam, and the 2005 World Champion on the uneven bars. With nine World Championships medals, seven of them individual, Liukin is tied with Shannon Miller as the American gymnast having won the most World Championship medals. Liukin has also tied Miller's record as the American gymnast having won the most medals in a single non-boycotted Olympic Games.

In addition to her ESPY award, she has been named the FIG Athlete of the Year, the Women’s Sports Foundation Individual Sportswoman of the Year and the United States Sports Academies Female Athlete of the Year.

Luikin was born in Moscow, but moved to the United States when she was three years old. She resides in Parker, Texas and did her Olympic training in Plano, a north suburb of Dallas. She is an international business major at SMU.

C-USA Schools Show Strong in Excellence in Management Cup Standings

C-USA was one of two leagues to place five of its member schools in the Top 25 of the Excellence in Management Cup standings. Tulsa was the the league's top finisher at No. 8, followed by SMU (10), Rice (12), Tulane (13) and East Carolina (21). UCF landed in the Other Notables on the list. The Excellence in Management Cup was established by the Laboratory for the Study of Intercollegiate Athletics (LSIA) at Texas A&M University in order to address the question of: Who is the most economically efficient athletic department in Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A)? The standings are based on a unique, yet simple, scoring system that awards more points to athletic departments that win conference and national championships while efficiently allocating money to win these events.

Donnan Part of 2009 College Football Hall of Fame Class

The 2009 class of the College Football Hall of Fame will be enshrined Saturday, July 18, in South Bend, Ind., and live coverage will be provided for the first time by CBS College Sports from 8:30-10:15 ET. The group of 21 that will headline the show at the Century Center include former Marshall coach Jim Donnan. As head coach of the Thundering Herd from 1990-95, Donnan rewrote the record books posting 64 wins and leading Marshall to the 1992 NCAA Division I-AA National Championship title. Donnan is featured here as part of the College Football Hall of Fame's Countdown to Enshrinement.

Pete Gillen Joins USO's Operation Hoop Talk

CBS College Sports analyst (and voice of numerous C-USA basketball telecasts) Pete Gillen recently participated in the USO's "Operation Hoop Talk: Talking Hoops with the Troops" initiative. Gillen and seven other prominent college basketball coaches and sports personalities traveled to the Persian Gulf to visit troops and in addition to sharing trade secrets and hosting free clinics, the group signed autographs, posed for photographs and interacted with troops. The league sent C-USA t-shirts with Gillen for the troops. The group also visited hospitals in the Virginia and D.C. areas before they left on the trip. For more about Gillen's his experience overseas, click here.

SMU Tennis Coach Named One of DFW's Most Notable

2009 Conference USA Women's Tennis Coach of the Year Lauren Longbotham-Meisner was recently named one of the most notable women in sports in Dallas-Fort Worth by the local NBC affiliate. Longbotham-Meisner, head coach at SMU, guided the Mustangs to the winningest women's tennis season in school history and their first conference title this season. A former high school state champion from Groesbeck, Texas, Longbotham-Meisner has her sights set even higher for the program. For an in depth look her interesting story, click here.