Arkstfan

Arkansas State has had a player drafted each of the past seven years and they've ranged from three stars to no stars.

Tempo is merely a strategy. Arkansas State varied wildly. If the offense was on a roll, the coaches the last two years are going crazy on the sidelines to get lined up and go. Then they'd suddenly slow down to see how the opponent was reacting. Offense was struggling they often would cut the pace for a bit then speed up. Trailing or close, usually kept a face pace, comfortable lead, slow down. If you look at Alabama last year (a slow team) led Michigan by 21 after one quarter, WKU 14 after 1Q 21 at the half, Arkansas 24 at the half, FAU 14 after 1 quarter 30 at the half, Ole Miss by 20 at the half, Missouri 21 after one quarter, Tenn 13 at half, 20 after 3Q, Miss St 24 at the half, Western Carolina 21 after 1 42 at the half, Auburn 14 after 1Q, 42 at the half, Notre Dame 14 after 1Q, 28 at the half. Out of 14 games last year they had 11 basically in hand by halftime if not the first quarter. That has a big impact on pace.

Assuming the court doesn't strike it down. With Maryland leaving and the conference making more money it will be hard to sustain it.

The rights would depend on where the game is played. At Duke the rights belong to the ACC at Michigan to the Big 10. Remember, they aren't writing checks per game. They are writing checks for the big pot of games. In fact a few years ago ESPN was sued because they had bought a big quantity of rights from an entity and then never showed hardly anything. They just warehoused the rights to keep anyone else from having them. Let's say Big 10 takes GT and UVA. Realistically, losing those two has a nominal value on the ACC rights. Replace them with UConn and Cincy and ESPN has no heartburn keeping the rights fee where it is (see CUSA expansion). So all that happens is ESPN writes the same check they were contracted to write (actually its a wire transfer) But GT and UVA do improve the value of the Big 10 by increasing interest in the Big 10 in the south (and remember Big Ten is in part driven by getting new $1 subscribers and turning 10 cent subscribers into $1. So it can easily be worth Big 10's time to take them. ESPN wanting a new deal with the Big 10 says give us a contract through 2027 (or some date further down the road) and we will move the GT UVA rights into your package because we already hold those rights through 2027. Big 10 gets a fat new deal with ESPN ACC gets all the money they were promised. Big 10 gains new $1 subscribers.

Who says they can't broadcast the games? The ACC entered into a contract with ESPN and said we grant you the license to show all our games through 2027. Then has come back and said, we now have these 15 schools locked into this agreement through 2027. So ESPN holds the TV rights (of some degree) for all 15 schools through 2027. They still don't control the road games (in Big 10 that's 4 or 5 per year depending on the schedule) so those games would belong to the new league. But here is what you have to consider. ABC/ESPN's deal with the Big 10 expires in 2016. Big 10 is tied on lower tier rights with Fox through 2032. Does ABC/ESPN want your local Fox station or Fox Sports 1 or Fox Sports 2 to be able to show Ohio State - Michigan or Nebraska-Iowa and completely lock them out of the most valuable college sports league? ABC/ESPN has two chips here. If they can't secure the Big 10 rights past 2016 and the Big 10 wants two ACC schools, ESPN has 12 to 16 Big 10 games every year in football and at least 30 basketball games involving the two ACC raided out teams. Fox gets their 9 or so conference road games and 16 or 18 road games in basketball. ABC/ESPN gets some Big 10 content and it is covered by the existing contract with the ACC so if it is worth more money that's more profit they don't share. The other option is Big 10 cuts a new ABC/ESPN deal and ABC/ESPN assigns over their right to telecast home games of the two new members to the Big 10 so the games are available for ABC/ESPN or BTN. All ESPN has to do is continue to pay the ACC the contracted amount of the TV deal. Then they pay Big 10 whatever rights fee they agree upon to have their Tier 1 rights. It all cleans up nicely.

If they are swapping grant of rights for the exit penalty they just made it much easier to leave.

Petrino's been highly successful. Not a measure of the job they have but how good they are.

I don't recall UNT erecting a fence around the entire stadium perimeter and hosting a carnival and festival and counting everyone who comes to it as attending the football game or closing the school cafeteria on game Saturday's and relocating it to the stadium to force students to enter the stadium just to eat on their meal plan and count as attendance. San Jose only got in MWC because they were below the minimum number of teams and the other options were NMSU and Idaho.

There probably aren't 20 schools in FBS that have admission standards as low as the NCAA auto qualifier standard.

Yeah the USM AD and President are going to pull out charts and graphs showing why the AAC doesn't make sense, and announce to the fan base they've turned down the chance to re-unite with their most played rival (Memphis), the chance to play a team located less than 2 hours away in New Orleans and their fifth most played rival ECU. Sure they've played La. Tech 44 times, slightly more times than they've played ECU (38 times) but they've played Tech 2 times in the past two decades. Funny thing is Tech fans talk about that great old rivalry with USM but ULL has played USM 50 times with 8 in the last 20 years. Nope they are going to accept. The money doesn't matter, the chance to play schools that are more of their "class" and "stature" will throw economic analysis out the windown because the fans will revolt otherwise.

The Ivy League has never awarded athletic scholarships. But it didn't formally become a conference until 1954. Nine years earlier they had all signed the Ivy Group Agreement affirming their committment to awarding only need based aid and only admitting students who met the academic admission standards of the schools. It's not that they de-emphasized football but rather have always had the same emphasis, it's just that everyone else changed how they approached the game. The Ivy and Patriot are only allowed to be Division I because they were grandfathered in. Without that they would have been reclassified Division III.

I'd say ULM, Eastern Michigan, Idaho and San Jose State are the toughest AD gigs in the country. ULM's leadership has been committed to working on the cheap in an area with not a lot of resources. Unless they have a president who knows, understands, and embraces a big vision for athletics they are an uphill climb. Eastern Michigan is so close to Michigan that it will always be battle. San Jose State has two Pac-12 teams, 2 NFL teams, 2 MLB teams, 1 NBA, 1 NHL, and 1 MLS in their market. Idaho isn't easily accessible for most the state's population, they've got a Pac-12 team 8 miles away (and they don't have an easy time drawing crowds either), and they are hamstrung by their facilities.

Teams normally lose $1 million+ going to the game. The worst part though is few player families can make the game.

Rumor mill says JMU is very interested in FBS but doesn't want to start transition until 2014, meaning they won't play a league schedule until 2015 and won't be bowl eligible until 2016. There has been some Missouri State talk as well but they have similar timeline issues. So basically you have one group saying just add whomever will start transition NOW so there can be a title game in 2014 vs. those pointing out that a JMU or Missouri State is worth the wait, which gets answered with, "Well we can add a Liberty, Jax State, type of school today to get to 12 and if both those are interested we can then go to 14."

Doubt UTEP was even interested when Nevada was invited. When SJSU and USU were invited Tulsa and Tulane (two decent trips via SW) were still in CUSA.

FWIW there are some rumors swirling that UTEP has been told they will have a spot if MWC ever finds a school they like for 14

And I'd watch carefully what sort of opposition a particular school might encounter. For example, does Rice want another large public in their backyard? That might be a problem for Texas State and even Louisiana. Is the school the "home" team in a market that someone else recruits and "elevating" them make them stronger recruiting competition.

I'm not sure his logic will match the presidents if they reach consensus to go to 16. First I think people learned a valuable lesson from the AAC TV figure coming in so far below what the "experts" projected. The tout was it was the largest league in the nation in TV markets and it didn't beat CUSA's two year old deal by much and remember NBC Sports set the price, they were bidding to get college football on their channel so their bid included a premium for that. ESPN simply matched and that was probably because they considered it a decent value to keep NBCS out of the competition more than an assessment of what the games were actually worth. Second the people who will be bidding for rights are subscriber oriented networks who want to keep cable and satellite happy enough to pay their price or pass on potential increases. They don't think nearly as much about markets as they do states and fan base sizes. The Ragin Cajuns are worth more to them than Tulane because more people care if they get the Cajuns than the Green Wave and those people are spread across a wider geographic area meaning they are important to more cable systems, geographic diversity even matters to satellite if most of the support is in places where people are less likely to have satellite then Direct and Dish care less, if your fan base lives in apartments or condos that won't permit satellite or you can't get a view of the satellite you don't matter much to them. Georgia State may be worth more than James Madison despite JMU having already establishing competent football and a good fan because CUSA is already in Virginia but isn't in Georgia and Georgia Southern is probably worth more than Georgia State because they do have a decent size interested fan base in state they don't have but isn't concentrated in one small urban area. Third 20% of the membership is a bet that they will pan out to be contributing members in football who can actually transition and be decent in football. CUSA needs to be relevant for TV rights in the next negotiation. Fourth, CUSA lost serious basketball clout. The league has been averaging about as much in NCAA units as half the total TV package so take your pick it is equal to the Fox deal or the CBS deal or basically 1/3rd of the league's primary revenue. Another quality basketball team may well be on radar. If CUSA goes down the path to 16 I bet at least one new state is added if not two and either two based on football or one for football and one for basketball.

Depends. If Big 10 adds two more as oft rumored, the AAC is going to get hit how hard depends on whether the SEC and Big XII join in the fun. But odds are with the AAC TV contract saying it is voidable if two of UConn, Cincy, Temple, Houston leave or one of them plus one other, I think you have a pretty good short list of who AAC might lose. That would create some significant churn depending who is left, the AAC might or might not be salvageable if not probably see a new conference emerge of the better leftovers and regional CUSA and maybe SBC. If Big 10 doesn't move, then CUSA's fate hinges on how passionate the members are about this 16 team idea. If they want it to help UAB but it gets derailed to add another eastern school and either fails to happen or does happen without fixing UAB's issue then it might get ugly. Let's say Selig gets his deal and JMU comes in with Team W (W representing any team west of UAB) CUSA East is 8 members with UAB in the West. Come 2016 the CUSA TV deal is expiring and Charlotte and ODU are fully FBS. If the TV deal doesn't look that good, they can bolt the league with UAB in tow and have a 9 team conference. If USM thinks they are better served in the east (the bulk of their football roster comes from Mississippi and points east) they come along to make it 10 and now if they want to be 12 they have their choice of App State, GaSt, Georgia Southern, USA, and Troy or can even look over into Louisiana or Arkansas and make their pitch. Or similar scenario Selig gets his deal and JMU comes in with Team W (W representing any team west of UAB). CUSA West is 8 teams but only 7 are arguably "west" and only six clearly "west". The TV deal expires in 2016 and someone at UNT, or Rice, or UTSA starts putting out feelers and comes to the conclusion that a "western" league can do just as good or better of a TV deal and not have to contend with the eastern schools dominating every league vote especially on things like tournament site selections and they bail out to start league and round out with Sun Belt schools. Or maybe no consensus is reached to expand and there is peace and harmony or there ends up being a consensus and there is peace and harmony.

Who knows what the relationships are among the presidents to gauge pull. That's what a lot of it comes to, personal relationships.

Not surprised at all. The eastern wing wants to make the talk of going to 16 into a talk about being even more eastern and not about helping UAB's geography problem. http://hamptonroads.com/2013/04/odu-eyes-jmu-potential-future-conference-usa-invite

I'd bet that UAB and Marshall aren't going to be persuaded by Tech, because I bet they want UAB back in the east. Not sure UTEP cares, with them probably comes down to which deal costs me less traveling.

No that's your spin. I don't think CUSA offers better football competition and the TV is nothing great with money trade-off being no ESPN. But it's a bunch of driveable trips. Guess that makes me a Sun Belt hater????

Actually the Gus and Harsin packages were identical in dollars, Gus took $850k and had a war chest of some amount that escapes me now that I've popped a migraine pill but I think it was around $600k or $700k because I remember that when Gus was offered $1.3 million before leaving for Auburn that I thought it would gut the war chest if we didn't get hard after the fund-raising, and Harsin took $100k or $150k less provided that it went to the war chest for assistant salaries.

As the AD at ASU and I discussed (he's more skeptical than I am). CUSA TV money isn't going to change anyone's life. But the point I made to him is as a fan, in CUSA I can drive to 6 of 7 divisional opponents for a weekend trip and 3 of 8 potential cross-division games. In the Belt I can drive to three of five divisional games and two of the six in the other division. That holds value for me.