So now, as the league heads into its fourth season, it continues to fumble about in the dark trying to find an identity.

It lacks a bellcow program that everyone must aspire to beat. It lacks a defining rivalry matching teams that figure to always be in the title hunt. And is has a crying lack of serve-notice victories to its credit.

Conference USA's signature victory of '98 was Tulane's Liberty Bowl win over a 9-5 Brigham Young squad. After that, the closest thing was Louisville's 52-28 crushing of a 3-0 Boston College team -- that wound up 4-7.

Here's the rest of the story:

Southern Mississippi, which began the year as a fringe Top 25 team in most polls, opened the season by losing by a combined score of 60-12 to Penn State and Texas A&M. Then the Golden Eagles ended the season with the shocking upset loss to Idaho in the Humanitarian Bowl.

Kentucky 68, Louisville 34.

Houston provided respectable competition to California, Minnesota and UCLA -- but lost all three. Then it was clobbered by Tennessee 42-7.

East Carolina began the season with a 38-3 loss to Virginia Tech.

It took Memphis six games to score more than 14 points in a contest.

		The conference is getting stronger every year and is rapidly earning respect. They have considered having South Florida enter the league. They're also talking to other schools and have a new bowl, the Mobile Alabama Bowl, giving the conference three bowl berths. That's big. Southern Mississippi looks like the team to beat, but the Golden Eagles have to go to Nebraska, Texas A&M and Alabama. They have a new quarterback in Cable Davis, a great receiver in Sherrod Gideon and a nice running back in Derrick Nix. They probably have the best defense, led by lineman Adalius Thomas. Another obstacle for Southern Miss is that it has to travel to Louisville. I think the Cardinals are the conference's second-best team and may have the best quarterback in the country in Chris Redman. They also have a great schedule. The only problem is that the Cardinals have changed offensive coordinators. In addition, their defense was very weak last year. They'll have to play better defensively to either win the conference or finish second or third to go to a bowl game. I pick East Carolina third. Listen to their schedule: West Virginia, Duke, South Carolina, Miami in the first four games. If the Pirates get better and beat two of those four, which they could do, they would figure in the conference title picture. East Carolina is better off on defense with new defensive coordinator Tim Rose, who came from Boston College and likes to gamble. East Carolina is my dark horse to win the condference. Despite being the undefeated defending champion, Tulane has lost too much to contend this year, including quarterback Shaun King. Chris Scelfo will do a nice job as the new head coach. The Green Wave goes to Southern Miss in their opener. They're going to have a tough time this year.

Forget about beating the Big Ten, Southeastern Conference or Big East; C-USA was 1-3 against the Mid-American Conference, outscored by a total of 117-63.

Chalk it up as growing pains, if you feel like being polite about it.

"I can't believe this league is only four years old," said Louisville coach John L. Smith. "We're still improving. We're a baby, still crawling as a league.

"Anytime you can be that young and have three bowl associations, that's outstanding. But for us to do what we can to get this league's reputation up, we've got to step up and win a bowl game. We've got to win a bowl game. Southern Miss, they've got to step up and win a bowl game.

"The other thing is beating some people outside of the league. Until we start beating some people from older, more established leagues, we're not going to get that credibility."

Coaches are trying to practice patience -- while simultaneously casting an eye about for impact programs to grab up in what is expected to be another round of conference shakeups coming relatively soon.

"We've got a lot of people kind of banging on the door," Smith said.

There was some grumbling when C-USA passed on overtures from Texas Christian and Rice when the Western Athletic Conference splintered last year. The league hierarchy wasn't believed to be excited about the potential of those schools, but coaches saw an expanded window of opportunity to recruit in that state.

Now the league joins the rest of the nation in carefully eyeballing the Big East Conference.

The Atlantic Coast appears ready to finish the expansion it began by adding Florida State, and the top target looks to be Miami. But some ACC members would love to see the league go after three Big East schools, expand to 12 teams and establish the cash cow known as a football playoff. Syracuse would seem a logical second choice, with Virginia Tech and Westn Virginia both rumored to be a potential third wheel.

If the Big East loses three marquee schools, C-USA could be positioned to offer safe harbor to the remainders.

In the meantime, the league welcomes Alabama Birmingham into the football mix and will bring in South Florida in 2001. Nobody seems quite sure what to make of that development.

Coaches carped at the C-USA media days this summer about admitting South Florida, figuring that Division I-A newcomers like the Bulls and UAB do absolutely nothing to help the league's profile or power rating. They have a point, but the potential of programs in bedrock recruiting areas like Florida and Alabama at least promotes the vision of potential.

The problem for South Florida and UAB is the problem at Houston, at Southern Miss, at Cincinnati and at Memphis. They're all in great football states, but they're also battling established heavies from the Big Ten, Big 12 and Southeastern Conference for their piece of the pie.

There remains much work to do before Conference USA can claim its place in college football's adult table.

Pat Forde of the Louisville Courier-Journal is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.