Arkstfan

Depends on what you want in a conference mate? You want a school that NEEDS you to pull them up or you want someone who thinks conference affiliation isn't the be all end all measure of success? We aren't ULL or TXST with multiple AAC and CUSA schools fighting us for media coverage or recruiting. AState doesn't NEED CUSA membership to validate us in those battles as ULL or TXST do. They NEED to be in CUSA because they NEED to be viewed equally in fighting you for recruits. Joe Fan or Joe Reporter comes up and asks about conference affiliation and the bottom line is it's a major deal. AState is big in its market, growing in Little Rock and not butting heads with CUSA schools often on the recruiting trail other than UAB and AState was winning most of those. If CUSA picks ULL because they fawn over CUSA and AState doesn't that says far more about the quality of leadership in CUSA than anything about AState.

No we announced Mizzou was staying in Jonesboro the same day we did the presentation of the $5 million check from Johnny Allison http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2014/08/26/johnny-allison-gives-5-million-to-arkansas-state-to-enhance-football-stadium

To add a team will require 9 affirmative votes. I don't see UAB as anything but a local disaster. On a national basis, every so often (roughly every 8-10 years) someone gets antsy and starts wanting to make rules to make it harder to FBS to cull the herd. UAB dropping gives everyone a chance to counter that by simply saying "the market takes care of itself look at UAB." The Blazers getting hosed could end up being beneficial to the G5 schools. Within CUSA, one thing Harry and I have discussed often over the years with realignment is how each round weakens a conference. The replacements are rarely as good as what left but even worse is that realignment allows the weaker parts of a league to become stuck sediment. You can't fix that without blowing a league up and starting over. UAB is sort of the weird case of weird cases. They didn't even have athletics until 1978 (their president is an alum and graduated two years before they added sports). When they added football it was as a Division III program. As soon as they started, the NCAA banned Division I schools from playing Division II and III football (Division III was upset about schools like Dayton bringing kids in for visits when hoops was playing a name opponent). With few non-scholie FCS to play, they opted to become a scholarship program and figured they could go all the way to FBS for similar cost. When they announced for FBS, there was a real struggle within CUSA because a number of members did not want to add them in football and the eventual compromise was to force them to play 1996, 1997, and 1998 as an independent before allowing them into CUSA football.

The "selling" of Mizzou was three political moves in one. One. Big boosters called and were upset. They were told if the suites, club seats, and loge boxes got sold, we wouldn't move. We sold out the 15 suites BEFORE we formally announced we even building them (it was a poorly kept secret but the actual announcement wasn't until August). Two. It was also a dig at Little Rock. War Memorial Stadium has been begging us to move a game to Little Rock, our response was why would we pay $75,000 to rent your stadium when St. Louis and Kansas City are offering $1.5 million and $2 million respectively to move the game. Little Rock is still trying to get a game but has dropped the rent to $37,500 and the response remains the same. You want us, you pay us, not you want us, we pay you. There have been a couple pieces in Little Rock talking about how AState's refusal to come and UArk's tapering off is demonstrating that if the city wants college football, they are going to have to pay for the privilege. Three. It was a shot at the Jonesboro City Council. The council held up renaming Stadium Blvd to Red Wolf Blvd for a couple months to study the issue (AState was paying for the signs). The city council has a dedicated tax that can only be used to promote tourism. They use that to give money to the United Way despite no discernible tourism purpose and had balked at spending any of it with AState. Since the saber-rattle they are now looking at buying a big sponsorship package. I'll take the hit we got from some sniping MTSU and WKU posters on the Sun Belt board (those guys can't stay away). Strategy paid off well for us. As for Mohajir's comments. If the price of joining C-USA is to stop saying we think we have a better program than FAU, FIU, then it's not worth joining.

I expect Terry gets a nice raise. About to finish paying off the prior AD

Bowl existed before they added football.

Got to admit I'm tickled that our AD is seemed as a bad guy. He's MY kind of AD. Played football at AState, secured a $5 million donation for our press box with construction underway (had to redo the plans multiple times because demand for suites, club seats, and loge boxes was so strong), has an indoor practice facility under construction (walls going up now, roof is already on). Unlike other AD's who goes out and borrows money to build a facility hoping new revenue will pay for it, he locks the money up first then builds. The $7 million+ in new revenue (over 7 years) locked in from press box is going to go toward building another new football complex. Has signed Mizzou, Miami, Iowa State, Utah State, UNLV, and Toledo home and home. Popular interview with Little Rock media. Speaks his mind and rubs outsiders the wrong way. Ask him who he wants AState to be like and he'll reel off a list of names and every single one of those names is in AAC. Wouldn't sign a contract with Daktronics for the new video board until Daktronics guaranteed in writing it would be the largest board in the Sun Belt including any they were negotiating. As to the money part of the deal. Follow the math. Leaving Sun Belt means foregoing $1 million in revenue thanks to the CFP. Joining CUSA means a $2 million entry fee. So the entry cost is slightly over $3 million. CUSA per school from CFP is $142k less than Sun Belt. TV revenue is roughly $900k more, but only guaranteed through next season. Basketball distribution for CUSA is a declining balance and moving closer to the Sun Belt number. Assuming the next TV deal is equal to the current deal then it will take four years before the move breaks even financially, when UNT moved, the break even point was 2 years out. For the deal to be equal, conventional wisdom says Fox will have to up it's number significantly because CBS isn't likely to come back at $7 million a year when they are getting AAC games sub-licensed from ESPN for less than what they pay CUSA. If that's offensive then y'all might be too sensitive to be in FBS, but a smart businessman points out such a financial disparity. Unless the new TV deal blows the roof off, anyone entering now is burdened with higher entry overhead costs than you had. I don't think AState gets the nod because CUSA does the same thing over and over again. Winning 35 games in four years despite losing a head coach to Ole Miss, Auburn, and Boise in consecutive seasons isn't going to impress CUSA. The TV market just passed Bowling Green despite the fact that if you drive 11 miles south of our stadium to pick up a bottle of bourbon, you are no longer in the Jonesboro TV market, you are in the Memphis TV market and drive 4 miles from the transmitter of the ABC affiliate you are in the Little Rock TV market and in neither place can you receive Little Rock or Memphis TV with a conventional antenna (God bless Nielsen's logic). Unlike the other candidates, AState fights one school and no local pro teams. AState is the flagship of an eight campus system that is close to absorbing it's ninth campus. The five member board of trustees is comprised of five people, all are alums, two of them lettered in football. But the real ace is is AState is 300 miles from any CUSA school. We don't recruit Texas heavily. No one in CUSA recruits Arkansas much but it is far and away our primary source of players followed by Alabama. We aren't sharing recruiting base or media base with anyone. The extent of CUSA media coverage in Little Rock is games on KATV 7.2 which is not available on satellite, UVerse, or local cable. ULM is 32 miles from Ruston. Texas State is 50 miles from UTSA, 165 from Rice, and 260 from UNT. NMSU is 50 miles from UTEP. USA is 95 miles from USM. Louisiana is 180 miles from La.Tech, 220 from Rice, and 225 from USM. Cajuns and Bulldogs have overlapping radio stations in Shreveport and Monroe.

The real advantage to killing UAB football is to weaken the perception of UAB as we head into a period of financial uncertainty in higher ed.

Army left because they were not competitive and they won't leave the Patriot in other sports and it means you either Mizzou them and put them in an unnatural division or ship WKY and MT west with USM east.

I like what Ohio is doing but you add Ohio who comes west? MTSU and WKU are going to have a fit if you split them up. The only way to avoid splitting them is to send both west and ship USM to the east.

NIU is a good property. They draw well (down in the early numbers this year) on TV they are just too remote to be practical for CUSA. At a bare minimum you need at least one other regional MAC with them and really need three others to make it work (why I've said for some time the best solution to NIU being burned with some of the less committed MAC schools is to take six MAC and six Sun Belt form a new league so you can address the travel while aligning 12 schools more compatible). If UAB drops (and until the CBS article I wasn't buying it) you've got a dilemma in who to add because there isn't an abundance to choose from. Needs to be a western school as long as you aren't splitting MTSU/WKU. The pool working west to east would be: NMSU: UTEP is unlikely to support them. Texas State: Does UTSA really want a league opponent that close and does Rice want another large state school so close by? Base recruiting territory overlaps basically everyone left in CUSA West. Louisiana: Rice issue again. Recruiting base overlaps La.Tech and USM and they come into Texas as well. ULM: dropping enrollment and La.Tech leadership would have a seizure, probably be some concerns about their admissions profile. AState: Few CUSA bother recruiting Arkansas except for La.Tech hitting the south end of the state. AState recruits some in Texas but the biggest recruiting zone for AState outside of Arkansas is Alabama. We start only one Texan, majority are from Arkansas followed by Alabama. No starters from Louisiana, one from Tennessee, one from Mississippi, one from Georgia. Troy: Unlikely to be supported because of admission policies and question remains whether they will return to being competitive. USA: 200 miles from the nearest P5 school (LSU) but less than 95 miles from USM but a nice sized market with a bowl game. After that you either have to go dramatically north or east for the other western member.

The Fox deal could go up, depends on what Fox needs. FS1 CUSA games draw audiences about like ESPNU Sun Belt and MAC games but unlike ESPN, Fox isn't sitting around with so much inventory that they don't know what to do with it. Circumstances have changed since Fox cut its original deal with CUSA. The membership is obviiously different but what is often forgotten is that when Fox first signed CUSA, Fox did not hold the rights to telecast any regular season games nationally. They had some Big XII and Pac-10 rights but they were restricted in where they could be distributed. CUSA was their first nationally cleared college football. On one hand the Fox deal could come in flat because the membership is different and they have other national content. On the other hand they may be willing to pay more because they are likely going to want more FS2 content and they have less regional content and CUSA would be extremely useful for that purpose. If I were betting, I'd place my wager on CUSA getting more from Fox. The piece of the CUSA puzzle that should be more worrisome is CBS Sports. CBS like Fox signed on to a different line-up but unlike Fox they have re-obtained that content via licensing from ESPN in the form of the AAC. Industry insiders have told me that CBS is getting AAC content (which is what they mostly signed CUSA for) from ESPN for less per game than they are paying for CUSA. I would expect CBS will lowball their offer and wouldn't be shocked if they just walked because CBS does not seem committed to the CBS Sports Network the way Fox and NBC are to their sports channels (they don't even over-flow NCAA Tournament games to CBSS, content that is a natural for the channel) and they seem content to cheaply sublicense excess ESPN inventory because ESPN has over-purchased and has to find outlets for the excess content that by contract has to reach a certain number of households.

Might want to check your math. Assuming all the money is distributed straight to the schools, NIU's share of the MAC TV deal would be $666,666.67 and share of CUSA TV would be $1 million (I'm basing that on CUSA's deal being $6 million more than MAC as has been reported elsewhere). But there is also CFP distribution to consider. Their guaranteed distribution in the MAC is $1 million. In CUSA it is $857,142.86 So the net difference is MAC annually is worth $1,666,666.67 and CUSA $1,857,142.86 a difference of $190,476.19 per year. Now to get that money, they would forego one year of revenue from the MAC and have to pay CUSA $2 million to enter so the total cost of entry would be $3,666,666.67. They would recover the entry cost in 19 years and three months and that is presuming that the travel costs are identical.

They wouldn't. WKU is the closest CUSA school to them and they are about 460 miles away. Their longest MAC trip is just under 600 miles.

There are HUGE problems facing intercollegiate athletics and right now is a great time to be FBS because the CFP money will cover your stipend costs with maybe a few bucks left. BUT The national trend is that enrollment is expected to be flat or decline over the next decade. Not the first time it happened. When colleges ran out of post-WWII GI Bill students a number of schools failed a number of others dropped football (Denver and Little Rock among many). The second time it happened was in the late 60's early 70's as the baby boomers moved out of college age (decline hastened when college draft deferments were limited). University of Louisville nearly went under but was saved by the state. Little Rock University (private) was taken over by the state of Arkansas, the schools now called Arkansas-Monticello and Arkansas-Pine Bluff were going under as well and were absorbed. This happened all over the country and a number of schools dropped football to save money. In Arkansas we are already seeing declining enrollment everywhere but UA, AState, and Arkansas Tech. Everyone else is flat or falling with biggest drops at UALR (they don't offer the college experience many want) and Central Arkansas (having consecutive presidents convicted of felony shenanigans as well as state auditors shutting down their pyramid scheme scholarship program has hurt). The greater the reliance on student income the greater the risk unless you can grow or at least hold steady. Another key issue is governmental support. Nationally state support for higher ed adjusted for inflation is about half what it was 30 years ago. When schools were failing in the 70's state government was dominated by WWII/depression era people who were strong for public higher education. Today there is no political risk in voting against higher ed funding and worse there is actually a lot to gain politically by voting to cut government spending even on higher ed. We saw what happened when gov't funding for colleges drops quickly. California lost multiple FBS programs in the wake of their tax revolt against property tax. Many experts believe we are headed to a student loan crisis because students are finding it harder and harder to repay loans. If Congress has to jump in expect eligibility to be tightened and tighter caps on borrowing limits. Right now students and parents are terribly price sensitive. If less loan money is available it will be another shock to enrollment and if price sensitivity emerges large athletic fees are problem. As I noted, its a good time to be FBS because you've got a funding source for stipend but also a calling card to help keep enrollment up. Funding stipends in hoops without another revenue source is a problem. Indiana State it is thought may drop football at the end of the year, keeping pace with stipend coupled with a pressing need for a multi-million facility upgrade for football to remain viable in FCS is the problem. This why I like the leadership at AState. New pressbox and luxury seating opens in 2015 and will generate over a million a year based on current contracts for seats there and those are seven year contracts. The construction is fully funded, so it's all new revenue. We are working to open a new campus in Mexico that will be run as a private school owned by our Foundation and run by our board and is expected to net several million a year, 2016 we open a med school in partnership with NY Tech Institute that looks like a major money maker and is a private venture as well. Rumor mill claims that we are close to absorbing another junior college in the state taking us to seven juco campuses, with an 8th also contemplating merging in. The system president is trying to maximize revenue to reduce dependence on state aid because he expects state aid to fall, rumor mill claims at least one four year school in the state is talking informally about being taken over because they cannot absorb another aid cut and they don't want to go to the UA system because the campuses they've absorbed haven't fared that well. Right now everything is lining up for a series of crisis in higher ed but if you are not carrying an excessive debt burden and are creative in finding funding, it is an excellent time to be Mr. Potter in Bedford Falls buying when everyone is selling.

BYU's policies on homosexuality have far more to do with the Pac-12 not admitting them than Sunday play. BYU is struggling to schedule, their expectation that every G5 would clamor for a home and home isn't panning out. But they'd have to have accomodations to join AAC because BYU makes a million more per year in TV money.

When I was a college student at AState in the mid-80's my tuition covered 1/3rd of the cost of my education. My daughter is a freshman and the state covers about 1/3rd. That's a massive swing in a relatively short time. This is why it is critical that UNT hit this issue before it became a crisis. There are schools out there who are using debt to operate, there are many more who have debt at very high levels of their total expenditure. They will not survive enrollment declines, especially if state funding declines as well. Go look at a list of schools that dropped football, you will notice they tend to fall into two ranges. The 1950's when the GI Bill students moved into the economy and were followed in the late 60's and early 70's when the boomers moved through and just before that when attending college no longer provided a draft deferment. Schools that don't have a cushion built in and aren't budgeting responsibly are going to have problems. With the decline in enrollment coming, over-reliance on student fees will create its own crisis. Some schools are using those fees to fund their debt as well as their athletic program. There will be price point competition coming as the supply dries up, you will see schools with a lot of resources either holding cost increases below inflation or you will see more aggressive scholarship programs or both. AState is positioning for the change by increasing fees and tuition below the inflation rate while raising the pay for teaching positions faster than most universities to help in reputation rankings. The other prong of attack is private ventures. AState is adding a med school and a Mexico campus that are both private schools owned by the University Foundation and are expected to greatly increase the Foundation's rate of return on investments and mostly escape state oversight.

Get used to flat or even declining enrollment, the supply of college age kids is starting to fall and will do so for another few years, that supply is also being cannabilized by online and for-profit competitors. There will be schools going under the next few years generally of three types. Small privates, small publics, and other schools that have taken on a debt load that is unsustainable if revenue falls. Nearly 40 schools have had their bond rating downgraded because their debt load is too high or they lack sufficient reserves to meet obligations when the enrollment declines hit.

The comments look like the typical shallow crapola that passes for political discourse on Facebook. From reading the factual info doesn't sound like a crisis but rather a situation that could have evolved into a crisis if the state had slashed funding or there had been a significant enrollment drop but instead just a case of over-optimistic budgeting that needs correcting.

Saban is famous for developing "HIS" culture. If you look back, he lost to ULM his first year at Bama which most remember but he lost to UAB his first year at LSU and was tied by a less than mediocre Purdue his first year at Michigan State. Strong didn't have anything that dramatic but had a close call against Eastern Kentucky his first year at Louisville.

Not really new. WAC did this. The champ was guaranteed a bowl, not a specific bowl and they sort of just ironed it all out. Unless you have a real showpiece game like the Liberty was with an SEC opponent or the MWC's deal in Las Vegas where they play the Pac-12 it makes better sense to just keep it flexible and go for the game that works best for the champ. ODU or FIU probably would see playing in Texas as a bust for being champion unless it was an appealing match-up.

The game is over Harry. The old model died yesterday when ESPN and Fox agreed to boost Major League Soccer's rights fees 5X. Old contract, MLS got a game each week on NBC Sports and most weeks a game on ESPN2. New contract, MLS gets one game a week on ESPN2, one game on FS1. How is that worth 5X more? Simple. ESPN bought the digital rights to all MLS games not shown on FS1 or Univision. Folks like me who paid $65 a year to see those games on a computer, or phone or tablet or Roku will now get them free on ESPN3 and the WatchESPN app. The rights increase is almost all about ESPN gaining leverage to charge internet providers, cable and satellite more money to carry ESPN3/WatchESPN and don't think ESPN won't use the data gained from MLS to show them how many of their customers were shelling out $65 a year and let them know those people are a risk to change providers if they don't pony up. The market model is dead and now TV carriage is becoming Internet carriage.

With UT getting snubbed OU and K-State are the only Big XII schools with a longer draft streak than AState and ours is only 8 years. Fresno leads the G5 with 14 years.

The market model is dying. ESPN earns 75% of its revenue via carriage fees, Fox wants to go that direction as well. Carriage fees are generally market agnostic. In the carriage fee economy Nebraska and Arkansas are worth far more than Miami and Colorado because they have fan bases that will tell Comcast to shove it in large numbers if they don't carry the channels the Razorbacks or Huskers are on and move to ATT, Verizon, Dish or Direct. A large and engaged fan base is of far greater value than what TV markets you are in. Right now unless you are a big sports fan, you can put up an antenna, subscribe to Amazon Prime, Hulu+, and Netflix and not spend money on cable or satellite. But if you are a sports fan and want to see the Mavericks, Rangers, Stars, the Horns, you have to be on satellite or cable. I could cut the cord but for my wife wanting HBO and me wanting to watch foreign soccer because I can get most the college games I want on WatchESPN and will either attend or can go to BWW for what few I can't. I can watch all but a few of the MLS games I want via my MLS MatchDay subscription. If you are a Longhorn or Aggie fan, be prepared to impose on friends or run up a bar bill if you cut the cord. The whole game is about content that people are not willing to give up. Does Time Warner hate forking over $5.50 a head to ESPN per subscriber, per month? Absolutely but if they don't they lose thousands and thousands of customers. Look at AAC. They thought they were going to bring huge dollars because of their markets. It didn't happen. They came in getting less than a third as much money for all sports as what they expected just for football. They have 5 top 20 markets and 2 top 5 markets and what they got came out of a bid battle. They created a league built around markets at a time when the networks are more interested in how many people would change providers if their team wasn't available from the local cable company or their current satellite provide. Taking Tulane, Temple, Tulsa, and SMU chasing markets was the flaw in their logic. Even being down right now USM would have been more valuable than those four as would be Marshall, because the game is much less about how many people live in the market. Houston is helluva market but what good does that do CSS Houston? They don't have enough carriage agreements to be significant in the market and have so far been unable to leverage their product into the carriage deals they expected. Just as carriage agreements are replacing the old market model, the current carriage economy is destined to end. I see three possible replacements. 1. Enhanced carriage. The pro leagues and colleges used to price tickets on a low common denominator model. What they figured out was that while they could fill the stadium at $20 a head, there were people willing to pay $40 for some of the better seats, and that evolved into thousands for luxury suites, and a bit less for indoor/outdoor club seats, and hundreds for premium seats with waiter service etc. Right now carriage fees are low common denominator. If you can raise your carriage fee 4X and lose half your subscribers you are rolling in massive cash and your demographic profile skews toward a wealthier group harder to reach effectively. 2. Free. App driven tv is coming fast. Next year will be the first when more than half of the televisions in service will have internet connectivity and the ability to use at least some apps. As the saying goes with Facebook, Twitter, and Google, if the service is free then you are the product. Delivery of content in exchange for agreeing to allow extensive data collection about you can make advertising far more profitable especially in an app driven market where two neighbors watching the same game are delivered different ads based on data collected. The app will serve other offers as well. 3. Subscriber/Freemium. A conference or league or an aggregator like ESPN or Fox will offer a game or a few games each week either on broadcast TV or a cable channel either for free or as part of a carriage fee or the game may be free on an app. So you might get Kansas - Texas Tech from the Big XII for free or part of regular cable but if you want the other four league games, you pay a subscription fee. With app technology you might watch a game like UNT at MTSU for $20 a month but for an added $10 a game you can get other premium features like listening to the UNT radio broadcast synchronized with the video (or MTSU audio) and have the ability to call up replays from any of the cameras in the stadium that you select. My guess is #1 becomes the norm for the power leagues and something more like #2 or #3 the norm for the G5.

As it stands today... there isn't much to worry about but there is plenty of time for someone to try to muck it up.