One of the perceptions that the University of Houston athletic teams have fought since the demise of the Southwest Conference a decade ago is that they compete in a “Mickey Mouse” conference — that is, Conference USA.
A conference in D-I athletics these days is defined as a “major” conference by whether the conference has a tie-in to the Bowl Championship Football Series that sponsors the richest bowl games and the annual National Championship game, which Texas won this past season. Thus, institutions in conferences such as the Big 10, the Big 12, the Pac-10, the Atlantic Coast and the Big East all reap more money and prestige because of their conference’s automatic berth in the BCS bowl games. On the other hand, conferences such as CUSA that have no tie-in to the BCS struggle financially and with membership, as institutions in such conferences continually seek to migrate into a more lucrative membership in a BCS conference.
So, with that backdrop, it’s not as if CUSA needs any further reinforcement that it’s not among the “major leagues” of major college athletics. Therefore, CUSA officials were in full-blown, public relations-crisis mode earlier this month when a CUSA football officiating crew was ridiculed by the announcers on national television during the Outback Bowl game in Orlando between the Florida Gators and the Iowa Hawkeyes. The officiating crew made at least half-a-dozen clearly wrong calls in the game, mostly against Iowa, including a game-deciding offsides call that nullified a Hawkeye recovery of an onside kick during a furious comeback in the closing minutes of the game.
After that call allowed Florida to hang on to a 31-24 victory, CUSA’s official in charge of officiating attempted to stem the public relations debacle by publicly apologizing and announcing that he was launching an investigation into the officiating crew’s performance. Nonetheless, the CUSA crew’s performance in the Outback Bowl will probably prompt BCS conference schools to decide not to use non-BCS conference referees in future bowl games between teams from BCS conferences. In short, yet another slap in the face for CUSA.
But it turns out that the CUSA referees’ performance in the Outback Bowl was hardly an aberration. As this Michael Murphy/Houston Chronicle article reports (SportsPageMagazine.com report here), a CUSA officiating crew was generally horrible during the UH-University of Alabama-Birmingham basketball game last night in Birmingham. However, one bad call topped all others — the officiating crew called a technical foul against University of Houston basketball coach Tom Penders just before halftime for collapsing on the sideline!:

With 52.6 seconds to play in the first half, Penders rose to his feet, staggered and then crumpled to his hands and knees on the sideline. After a few moments, Penders went flat as medical personnel rushed to attend to him.
[CUSA referee John] Hampton strolled by, paused and called a technical foul on Penders, apparently thinking the coach was reacting to a questionable intentional foul call on Smith.
Even when Penders was taken off the court on a stretcher, Hampton refused to rescind the technical. UAB’s Carldell Johnson made both free throws for a 48-44 lead.

UAB won by three points. Kevin Whited has more here.
Inasmuch as the only real justification for UH to subsidize the not insubstantial operating deficit each year for its athletic program is the public relations benefit that the university reaps from its athletic teams, are those millions being wisely-spent when the UH teams are effectively forced to compete in a Mickey-Mouse conference such as CUSA?