Arkstfan

The market strategy worked great didn't it? Not our fault that the presidents in CUSA are ignorant of how TV works. The market model has been irrelevant for anything other than a conference subscriber network since the capacity to do live ratings came about.

Maybe you ought to take a harder look. AState has moved into the range of AAC in attendance. We now self-fund $15 million getting us in the ballpark as Houston. Built a huge new press box with premium seating, new indoor practice facility, next up is a new field house with offices, new training room, new weight room, new meeting rooms, and even more premium seating. Outpaced most of CUSA in season ticket sales. Outdrawing 75% of CUSA in football.

UALR Law had a many year streak of best bar pass rate in Arkansas but nearly lost accreditation when i was in school over the quality of the buildings. The old courthouse building was old and I learned how to operate a cage style elevator with a lever control rather than buttons. The ABA is tough. I suspect UNT's biggest problem is spin. Applications are down nationally for law schools and schools are faced with the question of whether they uphold their traditional standards or go ahead and fill a class so they have sufficient tuition and fee revenue to pay the bills.

Well I agree Ben that if you ask, you might actually get a crazy surprise, but even if you don't hit the powerball jackpot there are other prizes available to be won.

Some of you guys are so linear in your thinking. Most of the schools on the Big XII list have no shot at this Big XII expansion and know that. By taking a run at it, they just got their name mentioned not just with the Big XII but with the schools they have a realistic chance of aligning with. It's like seeing a group of hot people at a bar around a celebrity. You can guess which of the 8-10 people you have a shot at and approach them or go hit on the celebrity, watch the reactions and figure out pretty quickly who thinks you are funny/smart/cute/handsome/repellant/annoying and focus your efforts more intelligently.

Well if the article is wrong about CUSA revenue as it appears to be, Sun Belt departure is higher than CUSA at $2 million plus foregoing a year of revenue.

The last AD bailed after months to go to Baylor. He ditched a very rich very stable league to go to Baylor where: 1. Like Mizzou there is leadership turmoil 2. A huge black eye from the scandal 3. Plenty of potential litigation including possible action by the Department of Justice 4. Potential NCAA violation if players should have been ineligible under the school's standards 5. Emerging scandal of possible obstruction of justice by threatening directly or by implication that witnesses would be sanctioned by the school. 6. Plus a conference that is a mess AND has requested that the school turn over copies of all related records to the above scandals. In short, Mizzou is a mess with no chancellor or president.

Double check the math. Then, there's $16.1 million from the College Football Playoff; $14,257,000 in bowl and college football playoff revenue; I don't believe CUSA is getting $30 million a year in CFP and bowl revenue. The reported figure to the NCAA for CUSA was $16.6 million bowls and CFP combined and the league reported bowl expenses of nearly $4 million so only $12.7 million was available for distribution. https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/2015-16DIFB_Postseason-Revenue-Excess-by-Conterence_20160426v2.pdf Landon appears to be over-stating CUSA revenue by $17 million or $1.2 million per year per team assuming UAB is still taking a full share. That makes the departure cost roughly $3.2 million and that's not a check written, it's just revenue being foregone. Fascinating that the buyout has been changed. The departees paid around $4.4 million under a formula that was $500,000 cash, forfeit one year of revenue plus liability for the decrease in TV rights for the life of the TV contract. Coupled with the decision to do a short TV contract sure looks like pre-planning for departure.

As I told Harry, I sent a text to AState's AD about the hire, he immediately responded saying he's great guy. He's dealt with Baker at Mizzou and Memphis that I know of.

If AAC loses two and one of the two is Houston, Cincinnati, UConn or Temple ESPN can cancel the TV deal though in reality they will cut the money and the number of guaranteed appearances. We are moving into a new era where when it comes to TV money and you aren't P5 it just isn't going to matter which of the G5 leagues you are in. MWC talking expansion beyond 12 a few months after rejecting expansion makes me think they are looking to roll the dice to try to shake up their TV position in anticipation of being flat or losing money.

Realignment hasn't really changed my viewing much. Having a team that doesn't suck has changed my viewing. We play six home games instead of five and I make more road games so I watch a lot less college football because I'm not home. Yeah you lose a Nebraska-OU (but that wasn't a protected game in Big XII and was being skipped) and get Nebraska - Iowa which tends to be plenty entertaining. You lose UT-TAMU and pick-up TAMU-LSU and I can't say I hate seeing the two most insane fan bases playing each other. Oh we lost Mizzou-KU, honestly who outside Missouri or Kansas or with some ties to one or the other gave a rip whether they played in football?

I get that coaches "need" an extension for recruiting but if a coach is in a crack and doesn't have much in the way of options why does the extension have to guarantee every dollar? If you need to tell recruits you have three years on your contract, fine here's three years but we are only paying for the one you are still guaranteed unless you hit targets in the contract. And I don't trust G5 coaches who want long deals when they renegotiate, just like MTSU's Stockstill deferring raises in exchange for a 2 1/2 year extension. I want guys who want to squeeze every possible dime out of me before they cash in buy winning the coaching powerball by going to a bigger job.

Sort of surprised that $1 million is their largest donation.

We do now. It wasn't always that way. I'm a serious fan and for nearly 20 years I almost never renewed my season tickets by the deadline and when I got around to it, the process was generally a real pain once you finally got someone to answer the phone and get you to the person who could take a credit card transaction. Order tickets for a road game? Nightmare and they expected you to swing by and get the tickets, before the roads were improved, swing by meant a two hour one way trip and it was hard to convince them to mail a blooming ticket. Now? I renew before the deadline. You miss the deadline you get a phone call basically telling you give me your credit card NOW or give me a firm day you are paying. I know a few people who didn't think they were serious and called in a month after the deadline and they were very accommodating helping them find their new seats because their old ones were gone. Under the old administration a friend knew someone giving up their old seats and called to try to buy them a couple weeks before the season. They wouldn't give him the spot because they might still renew. The guy giving them up had to call and tell them he was giving up the seats (had taken a job in Houston) just to free them up. The new bunch WANTS your money and they want you to feel appreciated so they can get even more of it. I expected our fan base to rebel and whine about putting money over long-time fans, but it has been the opposite, now they know AState is serious.

ULL has finished a comprehensive report on athletics. In self-generated revenue (omitting student fees and university support) ULL produced $81k more revenue than AState but $2.5 million more than the average of UNT, WKU, Marshall, ODU, and Charlotte. Houston's self-generated was $3.6 million more. The five comparison CUSA schools spend on average $447,941 MORE on travel than ULL. http://www.ragincajuns.com/documents/2016/4/4//ICA_report.pdf?id=1215

This right here is why athletic departments MUST monitor fan sites, people are far more likely to post a complaint on a fan site, facebook, or twitter than hunt down the person in charge. Customer service is another thing that starts up top. Right after we hired our current AD, I dropped in for a visit and within a minute or two I was asked if anyone had stopped me in the halls and asked if I needed help. I said yes and was asked to describe the person. The AD had been pounding into everyone that if they saw someone they did not recognize to stop and ask if they needed help and he was using visitors to spot check whether it was actually happening. You post a problem on our board odds are pretty good you'll get a response in 24 hours from someone with the power to do something. It most certainly hasn't always been that way.

Conference patches and visiting fans aren't the answer unless the question is "Name two things that are over-rated?" But proximity does matter. An athletic program only has a certain amount of resources and the choice is spend those resources on things that advance the program or spend it on bus charters, meals and air charters. But AState averages about 20% more per game than Tech and they have 160,000 people (and another FBS) within 50 miles vs 375,000 and no other Division I within the area. I don't know that ANYTHING will move the needle other than more success with a Big XII and AAC in the metro along with MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLS but at least playing someone in a border state has more meaning than Virginia or Florida. AState was able to grow its fan base without winning by developing a tailgate culture, that probably doesn't cut it in Denton. If you are waiting for conference mates that will cause your fans to fill the stand you are in for a long wait, Big XII isn't calling unless it gets gutted the way CUSA did. We changed the name of our booster organization from Red Wolf Club to Red Wolf Foundation because it goes along with people feeling they have an ownership stake. We host our Little Rock athletic events in one of two places. Either the university system office or the system president's home. The system president will be there along with all the vice-presidents athletics is viewed as the glue that holds the alumni together and keeps them in engaged. I've stood by as people quizzed the leadership not just on athletics but academic matters. Getting the alums invested starts at the top, if the leadership makes it clear they are in then others will follow and I don't mean the BS lip service about athletics being a window.

For AAC yep. Spend $2 million exit fees from the Sun Belt, $2 million in entry fees to get less money in CUSA? Nope. As for the Suck Belt. Maybe ya'll would have been better off riding the Big West horse into the ground. It's not the Sun Belt's fault UNT parlayed four conference titles into no progress on facilities and a 16-40 conference record after that. If anyone uses the Suck Belt name think of why they might use it? Following the rules and sending a 5 win team to a bowl, having a team post three seasons of 1 or 0 league wins and a couple more 2 win seasons? CUSA name recognition? That name recognition was built by Louisville, Cincinnati, UCF, Houston, Memphis, etc. Maybe you should explore the Southern Conference for name recognition. Alabama and Duke USED to be there, just like Louisville and SMU USED to be in CUSA. The money has changed because TV has just explained the value of that CUSA brand.

Sounds like most of the money is going into offices. Just putting a roof over a practice field won't cost $22 million. Our indoor has been a big help for baseball they can work in the early season when the field is too messy. Saved a couple of football spring practices from lightning

All it will take is a respected league president within CUSA to open the conversation. Sun Belt won't start the conversation. Fans just aren't grasping the scale of the travel. Take TCU in MWC how awful was that? UNT to ODU and FIU are both longer than the longest trip TCU had and FAU just slides under the longest trip TCU had. The longest distance across MWC with or without TCU is/was shorter than the longest distance across CUSA or AAC and without TCU shorter than the longest trip across Sun Belt. Marshall, USM, and Rice ought to be talking right now. By what measure? Money? Sun Belt now wins that battle. Bowls? Sun Belt has five for 10 teams vs CUSA five for 13ish. Do we want to talk about how the Sun Belt departees did against the teams they left? Budgets, salaries, NCAA performance? Don't pretend there was a grand plan to reach 13ish teams, each move was a reaction to the move that triggered it.

It isn't 2001 any more. ULL averaged a bit over 9000, AState 10,700 and some change, UNT 15,000 and some change. The early Sun Belt was about repairing the damage caused by being an independent or in a malaligned out of region conference. At least some of those early members now sell more season tickets than they had average attendance in 2001. Seriously how many AState, ULL fans did you expect to come to Denton in those years when people wouldn't drive across town to see them play? The last few years UNT was in the Sun Belt the number of UNT fans who came to Jonesboro went down because UNT fans had given up the hope of seeing the Green having much of a chance to win. But Marshall can go 12-0 and will still bring fewer fans to Denton than a ULL team pushing for 8 wins. They just weren't often pushing for 8 wins for a long time. Now AState isn't going to be rolling in it in any G5 conference that doesn't include Memphis because every other G5 is 300 or more miles away. But keep this number in mind. 11 Eleven matters because if you play someone who is more than an 11 hour drive you either have to put two drivers in the equipment truck or you have to park the truck for a mandatory 10 hour rest. 400 miles is about the limit for putting a non-revenue sport on a bus or charter vehicle. Simply put it costs significantly more to send a volleyball team to Boca Raton than Jonesboro or softball team to Norfolk than Lafayette and what is the return on the higher investment? Wearing the patch that Louisville, Cincinnati, UCF, Houston, SMU all so eagerly cut off their jerseys? Does that justify traveling to Charlotte, NC or Miami, FL? The money certainly doesn't justify it.

I think any cognizant observer looks and says the final result looks pretty crappy, but the final result was the product of several independent decisions, not a coherent strategy. Adding UNT, UTSA, Tech, ODU, Charlotte, FIU was the decision making of 8 schools to respond to losing four. To get expansion approved meant that 6 of the 8 had to concur. I believe based on conversations with people engaged that ECU, UAB, Marshall were prepared to block unless the eastern needs were met. Then two more left and depending on who you believe either the 6 remaining plus 6 newcomers voted or the 6 remaining voted but accepted input for the incoming. If only six voted then five affirmative were needed or if all 12 then 9 votes were needed in theory all new plus 3 existing or all existing plus 3 new could have carried the vote. Then Tulsa left and either it was 5 voting with four needed to approve or it was 13 voting with 10 needed to approve. The path was shaped in part not by the command or dictate of the commissioner but by advice he provided. It was apparent the Big East situation had the possibility of spiraling in crazy directions, He had survived a major raid and taken a big hit in television, and for those reasons probably did advise bigger is better. But we also know ECU and Marshall wanted more eastern schools and both believed a Florida presence was vital. UAB and USM both recruited Florida and likely agreed. I tend to suspect that had ECU's number come up before the vote to expand to six that it would have been far more difficult to secure the votes to get both of ODU and Charlotte and might not have gotten both. FAU might well have come in with FIU. I also suspect that had Tulane's number been called sooner that Louisiana Lafayette would have been higher on the selection list. If MWC hadn't advised that they were about to take a significant portion of the WAC that UTSA wouldn't have been quite as heavily considered and have been led to believe that had the league not taken all of ODU, Charlotte, and FIU that UTSA may have sat that one out. The sequencing of the departures and who was in at each point shaped each decision, there was no planned path to this alignment and the reality is there is RARELY a planned path to a conference alignment. Those who hung around the Sun Belt board in those days after CUSA was first raided may recall I handicapped CUSA's moves like this. If going to 9, UNT, if going to 10 UNT and FIU, if going to 12 I thought La.Tech, MTSU, and FAU were in play. When ECU and Tulane left, I posted congratulations to MTSU and FAU because I felt at that point the powers that be had made the decision to "own" 14 as the number. When Tulsa rumors emerged I congratulated WKU. What I missed completely was UTSA, Charlotte, and ODU being in the conversation because I misjudged ECU and Marshall's desires. During the wait for the six team add, the only thing I thought could derail the expected path would ECU and USM, a charter and near charter member slamming a fist on the table with an eruption of profanity declaring that they were sick of adding large market schools that were no better or inferior to them when added using the league as an incubator to move on and demanding members more like them. ECU's geography concerns were greater than that and USM as I recall was in the midst of leadership turmoil and probably not very effective. WAC16 is one of the nearer examples of what happened. They were poised to go to 12 to better their positioning with ABC (remember ESPN wasn't the ESPN we know and ESPN2 was being touted for youth oriented sports like BMX). SWC blew up. The Metro and Great Midwest were talking football and there was general instability. They went in the room to get to 12 and came out with 16. Eventually the question was asked "What have we gotten into?" Of the 10 WAC members pre-16, the four remaining charter members left. Of the first expansion of two, one would go MWC (UTEP left out), of the next rounds added San Diego State and Air Force would go MWC as well. Fresno the 10th member added and Hawaii the 8th would be passed over. Out of the six added to get to 16 only UNLV would be brought along. They didn't re-form the old WAC culling UTEP, Hawaii and almost old WAC Fresno as well as 5 of the group added to get to 16. They turned the WAC map into a giant doughnut. With five in Texas and Oklahoma and two California and one Hawaii school. Take the USM beat writer's suggestion. He tosses out a league of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky as "right". That creates a southern version of the WAC doughnut putting vast distance between CUSA-Texas and CUSA-Eastern Time Zone.Now I don't have a problem uniting with our US49 school in Mississippi and all the rest are reasonably handy but it creates another layer of instability. The throttle preventing such is the NCAA autobid and CFP signatory situations.

All you gotta do is hire a timeshare salesman to handle it. Then no one looks at the fine print. Sun Belt is at 10 football in 2018, 12 hoops starting July 1. CUSA is 13 football 14 hoops with UAB pending. 26 total teams to deal with... maybe. Let's say I'm Wood Selig or Chris Massaro at ODU or MTSU. I convince all of CUSA East to follow me into the newly announced Seaboard League (borrowing the legendary name for the league that never was that would have been the Big East before the Big East) and get this done on July 3rd (because tomorrow's our Independence Day! We shall not quietly). Sun Belt votes 9-3 to expand with the 7 schools (the bare minimum vote). The press release announces the formation of the "new" Seaboard League. The seven CUSA east schools are confirmed as members with the details being ironed out, or maybe it goes ahead and lists App State, Coastal Carolina, GaSo, and GaSt. Who is in the Seaboard League? Everyone in the Sun Belt plus 7 CUSA teams. That's 17 football and 19 hoops, not a very good deal but it's temporary. It won't start competition until the 2018-19 academic year because the departing league rules mandate proper notice. Meanwhile the 6 football / 7 hoops CUSA is needing members. AState and ULL easy picks. TXST maybe some gruff but probably works out, basically have to choose between forcing NMSU down UTEP's throat or TXST down someone else's. The difference being that if UTEP launches the escape pod to the surface of planet MWC, do you want NMSU as your far outlier? So no on NMSU. South Alabama's a nice fit they didn't make Camellia Bowl feel disappointed and they are in the home town of the GoDaddy. Seaboard has a quick meeting waiving departure fees if a member goes to a conference that agrees to waive departure fees for schools coming to the Seaboard, and also waives entry fees. So CUSA has 10 football and 11 hoops pending UAB's return. Now cut back to the east. They've "lost" to their joy, AState, ULL, TXST and USA. The Seaboard League is now at 13 football and 15 hoops. A bit more manageable. You need to have another Seaboard meeting. You have a meeting and conduct it under the Sun Belt bylaws. You take a vote and by a 12-3 vote you make FBS football a core sport, one all members must offer and give UTA and UALR until the end of the 2017-18 academic year to be reclassified FBS, heck be generous, give them until then to start reclassifying, either way they can't meet the requirement and they are out. Another twist to the Sun Belt bylaws. Any member may be expelled by a 75% vote of the members (with the considered team not voting). So even counting UALR and UTA, there are 14 voters with ULM not getting to participate in voting. That means 11 votes are needed to expel and by a 12-2 vote (ULM not voting, UALR and UTA casting eff you votes) ULM is expelled at the end of the 2017-18 academic year and is entitled to 1/15th of the league's assets as a lovely parting gift. Come 2018 football season the Seaboard League plays its first ever season even though as far as the NCAA and CFP are concerned it is the Sun Belt. The CUSA brand now is worthless as CUSA 3.x becomes 4.x so the members tweak the nose of their beloved neighbors (Houston, SMU, Memphis, and Tulane) and announce the formation of the new conference, The National Athletic Conference which starts play in 2018 and is still CUSA for all NCAA and CFP care. Not every one gets to come along but the two league charters are preserved.

This. Send the victims a message, we don't really care what happens to you if football wins. That is our family value. On the plus side, hiring him back ought to boost the size of the jury verdicts that start coming in when victims begin suing.

Marshall went into the WKU game rated 24th, that same poll had Boise State rated 23rd. Marshall lost and dropped out but Boise won and moved up to 22nd they seemed hell bent to punish Marshall for playing four cruddy non-conference games and one of them being a late replacement didn't seem to sway them. The MAC would be a better league with 10 than 12. Too many schools aren't committed. I've said for years that I wished AState would recruit the midwest more, even before the upgrades we've done we were ahead of most MAC schools in facilities and few shell out much for salaries.