There’s a whiteboard on the far side of Conference USA commissioner Judy MacLeod’s office, sometimes used for ideas and notes. Some of the notes are old, covered up because the door to the office is typically open. One message on the board stands out.

“TRUST NO ONE!!”

It was written more than a year ago, during a round of conference realignment in which nine of C-USA’s members announced their departure and two more nearly left. It’s not about any one person or a sense of betrayal. It’s a reminder of the evolving landscape of college sports, including changing priorities and a different way of handling relationships. In other words: Don’t take anything at face value.

“That was written very early during realignment and I’ve never erased it,” MacLeod said. “Personally, I’m the kind of person that wants to trust people until they give me a reason not to. But you have to shift your perspective sometimes.”

Conference USA has felt like a random grouping of schools without a collective identity for several years. It had 14 football-playing schools last year. It has 11 this year after Marshall, Southern Miss and Old Dominion sued the conference to leave early for the Sun Belt, and it will have nine next year. Only five of those 14 will remain — Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee, Louisiana Tech, FIU and UTEP — and four new members will join next year: Liberty, New Mexico State, Sam Houston and Jacksonville State. It’s the largest reshaping of a conference since the Big East split in half and became the American Athletic Conference.

Conference USA was founded in 1995 largely as a basketball league, the result of a merger between the Metro Conference and the Great Midwest Conference. None of the original members will remain. It used to be headquartered in Chicago but has since moved to the outskirts of Dallas. There was a period when it was arguably the top non-BCS football conference with teams like TCU, Southern Miss and East Carolina. Now it’s far from the top of the Group of 5 in football, and successful programs like UTSA and UAB are on their way out.

While it appeared from the outside that C-USA was scrambling amid realignment last fall, there was always a plan and a list of scenarios gamed out. The league got farther down that list than it would have liked, but it survived.

“I certainly feel better today than I did last year,” WKU athletic director Todd Stewart said.