Western Kentucky head coach Tyson Helton works with his team during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Alabama, Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024, in Tuscaloosa, Ala. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)

Tyson Helton calls it the calm before the storm.

The Western Kentucky football coach was back at Conference USA Football Kickoff and Media Day for the seventh time as the Hilltoppers’ head coach. Practice starts Saturday in a frenetic buildup to a Week 0 season opener against CUSA rival Sam Houston at Houchens Smith Stadium – just 32 days away Tuesday’s event in Frisco, Texas.

As has traditionally been the case, the Tops are expected to be at or near the top of the CUSA standings despite a roster transformed due to the now usual graduation and transfer portal attrition and replaced with a slew of incoming transfers and freshmen to bolster the group that remains from last season’s squad.

“Really excited about this football team,” Helton said. “A lot of new faces, which I think you guys hear a lot but we really do. I look back, we probably lost about 65% of our production from last year. That’s a big number. But really excited about the men that are on our football team currently. I feel like we have depth. I’m going on Year 7, I think this is as much depth as we’ve had since I’ve been at Western Kentucky. Now we have to put all the pieces together.”

With the Bearkats set to come calling Aug. 23 for a 6 p.m. matchup at Houchens-Smith Stadium, there’s no time to waste in sorting all those pieces as the Tops try to get back to the CUSA championship game.

“We need to be ready to play in that first home game,” Helton said. “That will be a big conference game right out of the gate for us, so looking forward to that. Then we’ll keep rolling from there and take it one game at a time.”

Sam Houston first-year coach Phil Longo said facing WKU to open the season is a daunting task.

“We will prepare and respect every opponent the same, but I’d be lying if before we knew about the game that got changed to Week 0 with Western Kentucky … there was a very serious conversation about playing them during the course of the year,” Longo said. “We have tremendous respect for Ty Helton, we have tremendous respect for the tradition of winning that they have at Western Kentucky. We love what they do schematically. There is, just for lack of a better word, a great amount of respect for that program. We’re not going to look past anybody, but we certainly wouldn’t there.”

Despite so many newcomers expected to play a vital role this season, the Tops were one of just two CUSA programs – Liberty is the other – to get a perfect score of 100% in the league’s new Bowl Confidence Index rating. And in an informal preseason CUSA media poll, WKU was picked to finish second behind Liberty in the 12-team league.

FAMILIAR FACES

Tuesday’s event officially introduced CUSA newcomers Delaware and Missouri State to the league, but both the head coaches of those programs already have deep ties to CUSA.

Blue Hens coach Ryan Carty served for four years (2018-21) as offensive coordinator at Sam Houston when that program was at the FCS level, so Carty has familiarity with at least one program. He’s looking forward to the challenge of elevating Delaware from the FCS to the FBS level this season.

“I don’t think there’s going to be one specific, whether it be issue or obstacle,” Carty said. “I do know that certainly no matter where you are, you’re going to have to be competitive week in and week out. And I do think maybe at the FBS level and particularly in a conference as thick as this and and schedule as deep as ours, we’re going to have to have championship-caliber football ready to go week to week. And I think that the depth of our team in going from 63 scholarships to 85 in a year and a half span I think is something that we’ll certainly have to look at as we continue to progress and see how we are.”

Then there’s Ryan Beard, Missouri State’s head coach and a Bowling Green native who both played and got his coaching start at WKU. During his playing days as a Hilltopper (2007-2011), Beard was part of the program’s own transition from FCS to FBS.

“I would be curious to see how many head coaches have gone through the FCS to FBS transition not only as a player but as a coach,” Beard said. “I got to go through that transition at Western Kentucky as a player and now I’m fortunate to do it at Missouri State as a head football coach.”

Beard’s time as an assistant coach at WKU overlapped with Helton’s first tenure with the program as offensive coordinator (2014-15) and the two have kept in touch.

“He’s still a mentor,” Beard said of Helton. “I actually messaged him last night and asked him what he was wearing to one of the events that we had, just to make sure that I was on par with everybody in the room. I didn’t want to be too dressed up, didn’t want to be too dressed down. And he actually wore what he told me he was going to wear.

” … He’s a good man, he does things the right way. Western Kentucky is a great program. I have a lot of respect for those guys.”

WKU will visit Missouri State on Sept. 27 for a CUSA matchup in Springfield, Missouri.

“I have a lot of appreciation for Ryan,” Helton said. “The first time I was the offensive coordinator at Western Kentucky, Jeff Brohm was the head coach – good friend of mine – and Ryan was a GA (graduate assistant) at the time, so I got to know him well, know his family very well.

“I expect them to be very successful early, I’ll be honest with you.”

CONSTANT CHANGE

CUSA commissioner Judy MacLeod spoke at the start of Tuesday’s kickoff event on a number of topics, with realignment an inevitable subject.

Current members UTEP and Louisiana Tech are both leaving CUSA, with the Miners heading to the Mountain West Conference and Louisiana Tech just last week accepting an invitation to join the Sun Belt Conference no later than July 1, 2027.

That would potentially bring CUSA back down to 10 full-time members in two years.

“Realignment is hard and I don’t think it every gets any easier, but I do feel like we’ve done a great job of rebuilding and continuing to position the conference well,” MacLeod said. “I have to give a ton of credit to our board of directors, which is composed of our college presidents. They’re in charge of membership and they have been very thoughtful. I do believe the reason that the FCS schools that we’ve brought in to transition have had a lot successes is because – obviously I’m biased, but I feel like we’ve made really good choices and have programs that have histories of success.”

MacLeod also spoke in positive terms about CUSA’s broadcast deals with CBS Sports Network and the ESPN family of networks, with the league leaning into the non-traditional weeknight national broadcasts for added exposure.

“It’s made it very easy for our fans to find our contests,” MacLeod said. “And we continue to embrace and build on Weekday CUSA. We didn’t want you guys to have nothing to do on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday and so we added some games for you. Last year we had eight games during that period decided by single digits. We also had seven games with 60 or more points, so it’s really an exciting brand of football. You get to go unopposed sometimes when you’re the only game on TV and the exposure has been really incredible for us as we continue to build the conference.”

CRYSTAL BALL

Liberty coach Jamey Chadwell might have the team to beat in CUSA this season.

Or maybe not?

Chadwell likes this year’s Flames, but admits he’s just not sure what to expect from competition across the league.

“I always think the challenge in our league is knowing who has who because every year – us included – you get plucked quite a bit,” Chadwell said. “And so I think that’s what makes our league unique and challenging to determine who’s going to be good and who’s not because you really don’t know who’s coming back and who’s returning, and who do they have waiting to come up because there’s so much change.”

MacLeod said CUSA has actually fared better than some other Group of Six conferences in terms of roster stability, something she hopes will translate to added success on the field this year.

“People ask me, well, who’s going to be your good team this year? Really hard to tell these days,” MacLeod said. “There’s a stat for everything these days – we have average returning production of 54%, which leads our peers. So that tells me we do have a lot veteran talent coming back that can help guide our teams and help those teams gel a little more quickly.”