Arkstfan

I've never known a La Tech fan to think anything was good. Could well be that having an FCS across town, an FBS 30 miles away, the bulk of the state's population and business interests well south with no easy drive to Ruston had a greater impact on their Learfield outcome than Learfield simply doing the least it could. Tech re-upped with Learfield last June for $650,000 a year so their administration must not hate the deal. The existing deal was set to expire in 2018 so they renewed after eight years. http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/sports/college/la-tech/2016/06/26/la-tech-athletics-faces-fiscal-challenges/86412228/

That is seriously sad, that you can't come up with any better accomplishments than being asked to join CUSA at the same time as FIU and three schools that had never played a down of FBS ball. Deeply sad.

Yeah well good luck with that. WAC tried with BYU. Remember when the vultures started circling the Big East and MWC held off adding Boise because they thought they were going to pick off Big East members? They lost TCU instead. Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU aren't going to cross the Rockies unless it's to play someone with serious value like BYU. MWC has the same problem the WAC had. No regional replacements. Cut the Big XII down to Iowa State, Kansas State, TCU, Ok St, and Baylor and they'll pick off the front range schools plus whatever of AAC suits their mood. Even without Texas, OU, Kansas and maybe Texas Tech as well, Houston, Tulsa, SMU, Memphis, Tulane will all trade trips to them for UConn.

Media reports a year or so ago indicated UTEP and Rice both inquired of MWC and were told the league wasn't expanding.

Learfield is the rare time where out-sourcing makes sense. There is no ceiling. You get 100% up to the guaranteed amount, if Learfield can't make the guarantee you still get 100% of the guarantee and they have to bid more than you are getting to get the contract otherwise why bother. They place staff in your building and they work as part of the athletic team. Once they hit whatever target, you start splitting revenue. Basically you get 100% of the guarantee, they get 100% from the Guarantee +1$ and then at some other point you start getting a cut. The people assigned to your account want to sell as much as possible because they want to keep their job and they want to maximize their own personal income. Sure some of the people they hire are duds, everyone ends up hiring some sales people who are duds. Learfield has two people on campus but if sales warrant they have said they might place one or two more on campus. You'll keep your announcers unless their employer blocks it or there is some reason the school wants a change. Learfield opens doors that aren't always open to you. Ford isn't going to deal directly with UNT, a regional dealers marketing group will but not the guys in Dearborn. Learfield goes to Dearborn and offers them a national buy and they allocate it out to their clients and they go to the dealers marketing group with a bundle of schools to get more money as well. AState has added some sponsors who used to only do the Razorbacks thanks to Learfield also having the Hogs. They can't do a lot for TV because of the conference contracts. After the first few weeks of the season the 12 day selection window kicks in. If you have a game on November 25 none of the TV partners has to make a decision on whether to show the game on that day until November 13. That just isn't enough time to get an outlet to agree to carry the game, line up a truck, crew, announcers and sell the thing. Our local ABC affiliate is Sinclair owned and despite that connection they had dropped their ASN affiliation for the second broadcast window on the .2 subchannel. When ASN picked up our game at UL Lafayette the station had to scramble to clear the slot. Sinclair rubber stamped it of course but they had to clear the time from the folks holding the programming in that window. They got that cleared on the Friday before Thanksgiving and the game was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and got it 50% sold but in 2011 with more than a month lead time they were actually turning away sponsors for a telecast and that was Freeze's first year, when we were coming off a 4 win season. Friend at the station said the only mistake they made in 2011 was not setting the ad price high enough. So don't hold your breath on getting extra or better TV exposure even though you can generally sell anything allocated to ESPN3 locally. The logistics get messy. Learfield won't be approving shirt designs (CLC and the school do it) but they might do some logo work if they see an opportunity though it'd be unusual. They also don't spend a lot of effort on merchandise but you may start hearing that "XYZ is the official store for UNT merchandise" with a nifty sign in the window and mention of that on billboards and such. As to KNTU, it holds a public license so it is bound by the FCC restrictions on ads. In general that means you can have "Come Visit Billy's GMC-Buick" but not "Get a new truck for $38,000 from Billy's GMC-Buick". BeIN is a well run operation but the reach isn't very good 22 million or so homes. Roughly a third the reach of CBSSN and less than a fourth of ESPN/ESPN2/FS1 but a bit better than double Fox SW but I'd wager BEiN's reach in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana is south of 3 million probably barely 2 million considering that BeIN is generally only offered as an add-on or in a higher package and the heavy dose of European soccer suggests it's strength is going to be in the Northeast and the west coast with the high immigrant populations. They are showing the top leagues from France Italy Spain and Russia and the second tier league in England. They carry the big tournament for Korea and World Cup qualifying for North and South America that doesn't involve the US or Mexico. Texas is second in US population but the fourth most popular legal immigrant destination behind California, NY, and Florida and not that far ahead of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I didn't catch any of their football telecasts but watched a few minutes of their pre-game show and it was quite well done.

My gut feeling (which can't be trusted because there's Pecan Praline ice cream in the freezer but too late for me to get any of it) is that we see some sort shuffle/cooperative agreement sometime between tomorrow morning and the spring of 2020 involving CUSA and Sun Belt. That will be followed by AAC having to fess up by the summer of 2020 that they aren't getting a raise and maybe losing dollars on the next TV deal. Then sometime around 2022 - 2025 the Big XII loses some combination of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas (my guess is OU and Kansas which sends UT to independence in football or a quasi-independence like Notre Dame unless it looks like LHN will be folded at the end of the contract then they have their pick of leagues). What's left of Big XII forms the core of the new top league not in the Power group making a mess of MWC and AAC.

Tulsa ain't sneeze worthy and is only about $200 million behind Tulane in endowment but AAU membership is HUGE for Tulane, There are only 60 members in the US and that's after booting Nebraska. Tulane has more doctoral students than Tulsa has students at all levels.

NCAA units. One per each game played in the NCAA Tournament the past six years. MWC 1.0 and 1.5 was a great league. BYU and Utah were beasts then TCU joined and they were a beast as well. Boise's a great program but doesn't offset losing those three.

Troll? Talking about yourself I guess. Rick's the one who raised the issue.

Man, I know yall have struggled but we went 15 years with one winning season in football (no post-season) and one post-season in men's hoops. It ain't fun. Upside is that while the administration basically didn't care about athletics, at least they didn't do any big screw-ups that had the bond rating of the school dinged or the state questioning whether they were competent to manage the university.

Oh and I forgot to add, we spent 1997-98 dealing with a president who wanted to drop football. Our five member board had two in favor of dropping, one in favor of keeping it, and two on the fence. The for football guy finally swung one fence sitter to make it 2-2-1. The president of the senate (who would later become governor) had a come to Jesus with the president and informed him that the Jonesboro campus funding was going to be dramatically slashed and the junior college in Beebe was going to be funded as a four year school. The president said you can't do that and the senator said sit back and watch, I've done harder deals than that. Just watch your budget. The president had to go convince the remaining fence sitter to switch for football and football was saved on a 3-2 vote that they were supposed to revisit in two years but never did. We didn't have a rose petal strewn path. We were in the pits of hell and just made the decision to climb out.

We have signed a four game series with Memphis. Memphis would join a conference with AState before one with MTSU. They can look at their giving records and their ticket sales records and easily see they don't make jack off people west of the Mississippi River. West Memphis and environs don't attract professionals from Memphis. Traffic funnels into two bridges so it's a suck commute and if you are making any decent amount of money you live in a suburb in Tennessee or one in Mississippi (more house for the money) and a lower income tax rate than Arkansas. Other than a few alums working as teachers or as a local bank branch manager Memphis doesn't have many alums crossing the river. Memphis support does stretch westward toward Jackson which is about where what MTSU interest there is fizzles out (and that's mainly alums in Jackson for MTSU). Memphis competes with MTSU for fans more than they compete with AState and they absolutely compete more with MTSU before the legislature. AState is Memphis' second most played series.

They paid a lot of money to join a conference generating $850,000 more a year in media not one generating $50,000 more. A conference generating significantly more in NCAA units, not one that has generated one more unit than the Sun Belt after four seasons and certainly not a conference that would land behind the Sun Belt in football performance money. Ford didn't survive as a car company by sticking with what worked in 1955. UNT cost-recovered moving (before dealing with travel costs, the potential to sell tickets to regional opponents) in two years. MTSU in just a bit over two years. Imposing the same entrance and exit fees today based on current revenue. Arkansas State would never recover the cost of shifting Sun Belt to CUSA. If USM went CUSA to Sun Belt they'd cost recover it in just under 20 years. It isn't 2013 any more. Sure the Sun Belt has some crap programs but without ULM you never win the four conference titles, you are an independent and who knows if you are attractive to the WAC as it is crumbling in 2004 without that. Without ULM the Belt doesn't happen. La.Tech hates ULM well ULM is FBS today because of La.Tech. If Tech rides it out in the Sun Belt ULM never gets invited and has probably already starved out of FBS. I've not noticed FAU nor FIU producing much for CUSA nor for the students who are paying so much of the cost of operations. Not noticed Charlotte posting any NCAA units in the past decade and they certainly don't offer the FCS resume of App or Georgia Southern. As for the idea of the big difference in budgets, four Sun Belt programs have a smaller budget than La.Tech the smallest CUSA budget. Two play basketball so duh they spend less on athletics having 85 fewer scholarships and 10 fewer coaches. One is ULM. The other is Georgia Southern who is a million back of Tech, not terribly significant. The highest in CUSA is ODU which is skewed by really bizarre accounting in Virginia. Texas State is the highest in Sun Belt and is higher than anyone in CUSA other than ODU. Then you have 7 CUSA and 5 Sun Belt all clustered together. Down below them you have ULL USM and La.Tech clustered together. ULM, UALR, UTA are the only Sun Belt schools not within the range of CUSA spending, and like I said, two are non-football. ULM is an outlier but it is time update your mind map with new GPS coordinates. The whole CUSA is bigger budget than Sun Belt no longer is accurate.

Time for Monroe to move on. They just aren't putting enough money into the effort. Just my opinion but the only teams in MWC that appeal to me as potential conference mates are New Mexico, Air Force, Colorado State and Wyoming. The front range schools just don't snap in well in any alignment but if you are going to travel a long way in conference, they are pretty much worth it. NMSU and Idaho are irrelevant. They are out of the Sun Belt after this season. App State is a potential access bowl team and they know how to win and how to sell tickets. UL Lafayette self-generates $15 million and they also know how to sell tickets. Troy wins, they cracked the top 25 though AState made it a short stay.

I beg to differ. Our administration faced with new state regulations requiring us slash how much we received in school revenue moved us to I-A at the start of the 1990's BUT did not increase funding for football at all. From 1990 to 1999 at no time did AState award 85 football scholarships and at points we were below the I-AA/FCS limit of 63. We dumped a home game to be played in Little Rock vs. Wyoming in 1995. We sold a home a game vs Colorado State back to Colorado State. We sold a home game vs Texas Tech back to Texas Tech turning those two home games into road games. We had an AD sign a (then) fat contract with Oklahoma but he had neglected to enter on his calendar that he had also signed a contract to play Mizzou that same day. Most of the profit from the OU contract was spent to pay the buyout to Mizzou. The only winning season 1990-2004 was 1995 and featured THREE FCS opponents. The 1999 team if they had been able to score a TD on one of two trips inside the Utah State 30 and if USU doesn't give up an 80 yard busted play TD to Boise we could have been the trend-setters going bowling at 5-6. A friend jokingly called the NCAA rule change requiring five countable home games the "save us from ourself rule". The requirement that we had to actually award all of our scholarships, changed the program. AState is 91-82 since the NCAA FORCED US to award all of our football scholarships, we were 38-106 before. From 1991 to 2002 we lost 8 or more eight times. We hired an academic director that the commissioner told us we should avoid. 31 players were certified ineligible improperly. They were eligible but the paperwork was done wrong and had to vacate ten wins. We've been in football hell. After the 1987 season we had the 1995 padded winning season but did not post more wins than losses again until 2011. We had a three exactly .500 seasons (2005, 2006, 2008). We had TWENTY-THREE mostly miserable years and 17 of total ineptitude.

Posted earlier and the gremlins apparently ate it. I don't get wound up wanting make neat little lists. Yes it makes sense that Marshall, ODU, Charlotte, App, Ga State, Ga Southern, FIU, and FAU be in some sort of grouping. It makes sense for UTEP, Rice, UTSA, TXST, UNT to be in a grouping as well (maybe toss the Cajuns in there because they are so close to Rice). But the big in-between? It doesn't have to group perfectly east and west. WKU is west of UAB but they are East in CUSA to keep them with MTSU. The mid-point of the 24 FBS schools in Sun Belt and CUSA is in Alabama. If you were driving from Birmingham to Hattiesburg you'd pass near it about 1/3rd of the way on the trip, SE of Tuscaloosa. Even if you ignore super outlier UTEP, the mid-point of the remaining 23 is SW of Tuscaloosa. Put UALR and UTA in the mix and the mid-point moves just a bit to between Meridian and Columbus, Mississippi just over the Alabama line. The natural line is USA and UAB in the western group and MTSU/WKU in the eastern but just barely. I think you have seven schools that could flex east or west without it being too messy. Long way around of saying, let the presidents and AD's sit down and iron it out. NOW THERE IS ANOTHER OPTION While I like the idea of consolidating into one league it isn't practical without some serious NCAA rule changes. So the next best thing. This will absolutely not suit the people who like dropping pins on maps. Call it a hack or a kludge, this is where I'd start. I'd be more than happy to sit down with them in some meeting room (preferably some place warm during the winter) and explain it in exchange for airfare and a paid for suite. Remain two independent conferences with the existing line-ups and take advantage of the NCAA rule book. Step one. Consolidate the two league offices. Put it in DFW because it's handy to the Big XII and Southland or put it Birmingham because it's handy to the SEC or put it in NOLA because they apparently gave the Sun Belt a sweet deal on offices at the Superdome. Doesn't matter. Both conferences hire the same commissioner and support staff negotiate bowls, championships, media rights, and sponsorships. Step two. FOOTBALL. The NCAA rules require the teams playing in a divisional championship to play everyone in their division one time. Period. Stop. So CUSA teams would play everyone in their division one time for a total of 6 conference games Sun Belt would play four. Only divisional games count in the standings in my plan. Next you work out a slate of 8 games, that means if you are CUSA West you play two games vs Sun Belt West for a total of 8 games. If you are in the Sun Belt West you play four Sun Belt West games and either 2 or 3 CUSA West teams and either 2 or 1 Sun Belt East. Winner of CUSA East meets winner of CUSA West the winner is CUSA champ. Same deal in Sun Belt. Step three. BASKETBALL. The NCAA requires teams to play 14 conference games to have an auto bid. So CUSA teams will play 12 games within the division, two games against the other division and Sun Belt will play 10 divisional games and four crossover against the other division. The remaining four slots will either SBC East vs CUSA East and CUSA West vs. Sun Belt West or added crossover within the conference as the math may be. Step four. Change the bylaws. First change is any school can switch between CUSA and Sun Belt without an entry or departure fee (which is silly since most revenue will be pooled already) upon a majority vote of the members. So if UAB makes the decision they want to be with USA and Troy, they can switch. If UAB shifts then TXST probably switches as well. As time goes on things will mostly start evolving into somewhat sensible alignments.

Don't ever let facts ruin a self-serving argument. UNT spent $31 million on athletics. Of that $21 million came from the school or fees. You actually generated from athletic operations $11 million. AState spent $29 million. Of that $14 million came from the school or fees and AState generated $15 million. Unlike UNT, we have very few opportunities to hop on a bus and go much of anywhere. We are 300 miles from the nearest football playing member of Sun Belt or CUSA.

But university presidents control realignment and Tulane with AAU status is a plum to them compared to Tulsa which is seen as much further down the line.

The biggest news tied to the CUSA name directly was an 80% reduction in television rights fees, gutting by AAC and looking into FCS ranks for teams. Time to retire it if it no longer reflects it's past and becomes a regionalized league.

I did a two-parter for my site. http://www.scout.com/college/arkansas-state/story/1770179-the-realignment-craze http://www.scout.com/college/arkansas-state/story/1770314-making-realignment-work I think AState could be a big loser in this because geographic realignment almost certainly takes us out of Alabama. That's one of our top recruiting areas and even though not always our top signing area, it produces many of our top players. Unless AAC gets involved, we are 300 miles from our closest conference opponent no matter which direction things go. The critical difference between G5 and P5 comes from carriage fees. Houston delivers good ratings but there aren't enough people who will call their cable company and cancel service and switch to Dish Network if their cable company doesn't offer the channels carrying most AAC games while Dish does. When Direct and SEC were fighting over contract terms and the season was approaching Dish and Comcast began putting up billboards and sending out direct mail touting they had SEC Network and Direct didn't, Direct soon agreed to terms to carry it. That's what the P5 is getting paid for, their ability to retain and attract paying customers, not the number of viewers. I've been arguing for years the G5 trying to mimic the P5 was foolish, that we should be focusing on regional sports networks and over-the-air syndicated networks with a limited number of weeknight national telecasts.

Thing is Fox is perfect for that. Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana default to the same feed unless there are conflicting games or blackout rules in place. In Little Rock they slide the Fox South feed in when the Grizzlies play but outside of that we get the Fox Dallas feed for the Stars and Mavericks. Many cable systems just run the Fox Dallas feed and put the Grizz on an alternate channel. They take the Fox Midwest feed for Cardinals games on an alternate. An Ark-La-Tex league is really built for the old Fox SW region.

Well on the good side, the powers that be care about the program. I'd rather have what we had with governor Beebe, appointing hardcore fans to the board (always had two former lettermen on the five member board) who would pick up the phone and call a former fraternity brother and suggest he needed to have the new press box named after him for only $5 million. When Hugh Freeze left, a couple days later Freeze called the governor's personal cell phone and asked if it were OK to give the number to Gus Malzahn. He opened the initial negotiations and when the contract talks hit snag called the AD and told him "sign the damn thing". Governor Hutchinson has been good to us loosening up some of the discretionary spending for some projects but it was more fun with Beebe (who was and is a regular on our board).

The old saying that generals try to fight the last war fits the current situation in G5. Think about TV money. At a P5 TV can be 20% to 35% of the entire athletic budget at G5 you are looking at 4% to less than 1%. A football coach at a P5 may be making 25% or 35% of a school's TV money at a G5 it might be 400% to 700% TV money is essentially irrelevant to the conversation now in G5. Television now is only valuable in the exposure provided. Does the video reach people you want to recruit and people you want to turn into ticket buyers and if you are doing really well, people who vote in the polls? The money is received is an offset for the nuisance of weeknight games and weird start times, it really isn't program operating revenue. We look at travel the wrong way as well. There isn't much difference between a 2 hour flight and 3 hour flight, but there is a big difference in bus or airplane. There is a difference if you have to put a team in a hotel another night or have to pay for two more meals per member of the traveling party. It matters how much you are paying CDL holders to get your gear from home to the opponent. If the drive is more than 11 hours, you have to have two drivers. Travel when it is to a place you recruit students or student-athletes or places where you can connect with a decent number of alumni or places where the opponent is nationally significant or will draw interest at home is a good expenditure, it benefits the school and the program. Travel that doesn't do that is simply a line item in the budget in the expense column. The biggest thing is storyline. What is the story that makes the casual fan show up? Generally that is playing a rival, but the constant churn of conference lineups kills rivalries before they blossom. Is this a critical game for the conference title (unfortunately most games are not a big factor in the race). Not a rival not for the title, well there is in-state pride battling a team in the state, or state pride taking on a school from a neighboring state. Get past that and you are left with maybe the school has a big enough brand to draw fans. One of the largest crowds AState has had was against MTSU. Not so much a rivalry that the casual fan would notice but it was Arkansas vs. Tennessee (which matters in NE Arkansas) and it was winner takes all. The team that wins takes the conference. The place was packed even though it was a December weekend. Lacking those storylines, conference opponents are widgets. Utterly interchangeable. If you swapped Charlotte for Georgia State on our schedule, our fans won't notice. Louisiana Lafayette for Old Dominion? They'd notice. It's an old series marked by a lot of close games (last game came down to a video of review of whether our QB was down before the pitch that led to the apparent and over-ruled game winning TD) most of the games have been televised. Our fans are aware of the Cajuns, they aren't a widget. Our fans care about App State but only because the games have been significant. One of us starts sucking and it becomes a widget. That's really what is at stake when you have an anonymous CUSA AD stating that CUSA's financial model is unsustainable. Too much of the travel cost isn't advancing the program, it's a line item expense. Too many games don't have a storyline to hook the casual fan. The 14 way split of the money minimizes its value, the logical thing would be go to 16 or 18 to regionalize things more but the CFP distribution scheme undermines that. Schools like ODU apparently think if they replace a trip to North Texas with App State that they not only save money but the trip advances their program's goals. A trip to FAU advances Marshall's goals but does it advance UNT's or UTSA's? I don't think it is an accident that the Sun Belt opted to stay at 10 football members while CUSA has 14 and probably not an accident that the Sun Belt listened to Eastern Kentucky and then picked up the phone and called Coastal Carolina. The handwriting is on the wall. CUSA's two year TV deal expires after this season. If it is renewed for two more years, it expires the same time as the Sun Belt's deal. What happens at that point? Maybe nothing. Maybe the conference bid out their TV in a joint operation. Maybe they shuffle the membership and start focusing on regional distribution in addition to national to increase exposure in places they recruit athletically and academically and have alumni.

Yawn. A movie about Georgia is supposed to be an insult. I'll get my lawn chair and cooler to sit with you on the interstate to watch the cars headed to OU-Texas.

You are correct. Grant violated his contract with Arkansas State by not delivering payment on time which in the worst case would lead to lawsuit judgment, fees, costs, and interest but doesn't involve UNT. Presumably, UNT's contract with McCasland requires that UNT tender the payment on his behalf. The failure to do so just means he could walk from his contract and be due whatever damages the contract provides for UNT breaching. That's the whole sum of it. Accused? Look I don't care if 8.7 million people drive by your stadium every day if they don't stop and enter when there is a game, and I don't care how wealthy the DFW area is if you don't honor your obligation to your coach and pay up as required by the contract. Maybe you sophisticates think hillbilly jokes show how superior you are but we pay our coaches.