Arkstfan

Maybe. ACC gets paid for them because ACC will hold their TV rights through the end of the current contract.

Woulda been a damn good policy for CUSA a few years ago.

Yeah their league history is something to behold. Border Conference - collapsed when top members left to form WAC. NMSU left behind. Missouri Valley - Was down to five teams and joined with West Texas left when Valley was bumped from I-A. Big West - collapsed after numerous WAC raids. Sun Belt - left for WAC. WAC - collapsed as a football league.

USU is a heckuva team. Tennessee and Boise were the only ones to really handle them. AState's win over them was the best Sun Belt out-of-conference win this year and it took a couple really big defensive stands to dig it out.

Why would ESPN want ANY school from ACC to move to the Big XII? Let's say Clemson and Florida State. ESPN owns all their home games and four of their road games. If they move to Big XII they have to split some of the FSU, Clemson content with Fox.

For all the weeping about how much TV money the power schools get most of them self-generate 50% - 70% of their revenue. Any school building its model on school and/or student support is always at risk.

Any school getting up around 65% or more of their revenue in fees and school money will be in danger if things go south with the school

I think the idea that AAC would take two from CUSA isn't a great gamble. UMass and Northern Illinois are both academically national universities and one would bolster hoops and hurt football and the other would bolster football and hurt hoops. Conventional wisdom says UConn would fight UMass, TV ratings tell us NIU is the only school in the G5 that isn't in AAC or MWC and isn't BYU that can draw a million TV viewers for a regular season game against a G5 opponent. ODU has to be a dark horse candidate. ECU pushed for them in CUSA, national university, located in a large metro with no top level pro competition. USM would have to get a look because of proximity and history. Being on their keister in football and hoops being under investigation might knock them out. Wouldn't be at all shocked if they took ODU and NIU.

Report claims Big XII expanding with Cincinnati and Memphis. http://www.espn929.com/pages/20457311.php I would wager that if Bankowsky thinks there is anything to this that he will either do like Craig Thompson and try to expand ahead of it or try to wait it out so that he isn't once again adding teams to appease teams who then turn around and leave. I know that around this time last year Big XII asked Cincinnati, Memphis, Tulane, Houston and Rice to provide them with a great deal of data about academics and athletics. Brings up a very interesting wrinkle as well. Their contract can be voided if they lose two of: Connecticut, Cincinnati, Houston and Temple -OR- lose one of those four and one other member. If they lose Cincinnati and Memphis, ESPN can at worst cancel the contract or use the leverage of that threat to renegotiate the terms. If AAC does end up losing those two, the expansion pool would probably be: UMass, USM, ODU, NIU.

I get it that Texas is whole nuther country and all that but I don't get this reasoning. There are a finite number of FBS quality kids to recruit. If you accept the premise that being in CUSA rather than Sun Belt provides an edge in recruiting, why would you forego that edge vs. Texas State in recruiting Texas players and why would UTSA in particular want to share conference with a school that competes with them for students, athletes, casual fans, and media exposure in San Antonio? I know ULL fans say they are best pals with La Tech then I look at the rosters and see 57 Louisiana kids on the Cajun roster and 48 on the La.Tech roster and see a lot of the same high schools and wonder how excited La.Tech is about the Cajuns since they are closer to the greater bulk of Louisiana recruits when ULL is larger in enrollment and just expanded their stadium. Then I see another 16 Louisiana kids (most south Louisiana) on the USM roster and it makes me wonder how excited USM is about perceived equality as well. At least with the Cajuns there isn't a lot of direct competition for casual fans, though with the Cajuns signing with CST and having two radio stations in North Louisiana (Shreveport and Monroe) pretty evident the Cajuns intend to battle for fans with Tech no matter what.

Did you get all the stink off you this year? AState and ULL get mentioned because we do something really odd. Win games. Sell tickets. Spend millions on facility upgrades. Not a clue why any quality conference would lower itself to affiliate with such flawed and inferior programs.

We didn't have the offensive line capacity (coaching transitions destroyed us there, our lines are young with little depth) and we didn't have the size QB or RB needed. Georgia Southern on the other hand was built for him because of their power built option attack.

13 is a bear for scheduling. It means that with an 8 game slate not everyone plays everyone in their division. Also requires that someone always has an open date in league play, which is no fun at all in hoops when you are giving up a better selling Saturday date to sit at home or play some throwaway game like NJIT or UTPA. Then you have to listen to your basketball coach complain about playing a weeknight game and a tough Saturday game against a team that had a weeknight bye.

AState looked at Fritz twice but the difference in what he does offensively to what talent we had on hand was such we knew we would have a harder transition.

TV markets don't mean diddly unless you have your own network and are charging carriage fees. It's about viewership (some will advocate for a large market because of the HOPE that more people will view but when money changes hands, it's about viewership and by now ESPN, Fox, etc have ample data on everyone). If markets were driving CUSA why did CUSA take La.Tech and WKU (AState has a larger TV market than WKU), why wasn't Georgia State taken by CUSA? Why did AAC take Tulsa or ECU when there are any number of larger markets available. If you want to have fun, create a map and label every AAC, CUSA, and Sun Belt school and use a different color for each league. The secret to realignment will stare right back at you. 1. If you win games (hoops or football), you are desirable. 2. If you aren't winning today but have a history of positive coverage for success you are desirable. 3. Conferences want schools who are close.... but not TOO close. It is apparent that if you are close it is an advantage but not if you are so close that you are competiting for local media attention, casual fans, or butt heads a lot on the recruiting trail. If option 1 is a school 30 miles away and option 2 is a school 600 miles away, choose option 2. If option 1 is a team 200 miles away and option 2 is one 600 miles away, chose option 1.

Do it and stake the heart and the financial picture with CFP has to change. Currently CFP distributes $59 million (and has an extra $1 million earmarked) to conferences based on being an FBS conference. That pool is capped at $12 million per league. No reason that couldn't become $15 million per league if there are 4 leagues instead of 5. There is another $24 million in performance bonus. One share is $1.6 million. Highest rated league gets 5 shares, lowest one share. If there are four leagues that would be $2.4 million per share with top league taking four shares and lowest one. If CUSA is #3 this year share of CFP is $16.8 million (with performance bonus). If SBC were put out of business and the same principles applied and CUSA stayed third CFP share would be $19.8 million.

My nickle's worth opinion. NCAA units are real money and stable money (each appearance last six years). Keeping UAB and plugging in a football only whether it be Army (good for ticket sales, national name), UMass (a warm body but they will give up hoops games to bribe you to take them) or NMSU (fit the west), makes a ton of sense. I just doubt much of anyone in CUSA is comfortable with the precedent.

They won't pay that much. That's just the price if they don't find a replacement.

For the second straight year GoDaddy passes on 6-6 South Alabama to take 7-5 Arkansas State. The bowl loves us. We take a great crowd and spend freely.

Going to a bowl (assuming they'd be invited) is a lousy idea. The players need to worry about their future and spend that time visiting schools.

That's what I'm hoping for B'ham would be perfect to host a lot of conference championship events. It's nearly dead center in the league.

Hey we get invited, I'm buying an antenna so I can watch the OTA games (assuming KATV doesn't move the games to 7.1). AState has a number of incentives to join. 1. If we don't someone else does and unless that someone is Georgia State, a MAC, or an FCS move-up, the league gets weaker. 2. It gets us away from Benson. It was bad when in 2012 he suspended one of our best players for targeting when the supervisor of officials said no suspension was warranted (next game was WKU). It was unacceptable when last year he declared the football regulations weren't binding to prevent AState from automatically clinching the GoDaddy berth and then told GoDaddy we would be invited to I-Bowl (lie). This year he has been pushing Texas State for a bowl over us. Throw in the Arkansas Rice Bowl disaster and it gets worse. Little Rock wants a bowl game but couldn't do the dates ESPN wanted because of the state high school playoffs. Benson didn't want to do a deal with any other network (yet signed on to the Cure Bowl which will be on NBC Sports). The guy heading the bowl effort says CUSA and MAC are both interested in Little Rock but neither wants to do a deal with Benson and Little Rock doesn't want to do a deal that can't potentially involve AState unless its with AAC because of Memphis, SMU and Tulsa. So we'd love to get out in order to get Rice Bowl going (assuming Arkansas Rice Federation and Riceland want to be the sponsor). 3. Exposure wise, TV on Fox SW suits us well because most cable systems in the state carry the channel. 4. Schedule wise much of our fan base no longer remembers playing La.Tech and it's been even longer since Rice was in the same conference with Arkansas but the names are familiar except for UTSA and ODU and our fans love USM, other than Memphis or Central Arkansas no one else has brought as many fans as they did. I always detour by their stadium on the way to the GoDaddy Bowl. The hitch is TV money is an unknown after next season. The $2 million entry may or may not be warranted depending on the NCAA unit balance and TV. If Fox does what I think they might do and use CUSA as the gap filler and an anchor for an online offering, the TV might go up.

Liberty is a hard sell. 30,000 or so online students. Honor code is more strict than BYU's. Faculty in any conference taking them will flip over the requirement that all staff members certify they believe the earth is 6000ish years old.

UAB dropping isn't going to hurt your schedule. Easiest way to deal with it is flip this year's schedule and keep the same division alignment plugging Charlotte into UAB's spot.

Tip o the hat to someone who knows their history. I took some delight in Pacific dropping because the BW had booted the football only members THEN Pacific dropped putting them in a crack. Fullerton and Long Beach were victims of the great property tax reform in California, higher ed funding got sliced. They lost some Division II football teams as well.