Arkstfan

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.

The obvious reason to add at this point is because UAB is going to be hurt by being in the West. The less obvious reason according to a TV executive I spoke to yesterday (over two hours on a cell phone I think I can feel the tumor growing) is two-fold. 1. He says CUSA is in for a hit on the next TV deal because of attendance at too many schools is so low it makes for bad TV. 2. His other reason is Fox. Right now CUSA has five teams in the Fox SW footprint, ASU and ULL would make it 7. They've lost the Astros and Rockets and want greater content while Comcast is nibbling around the edges and is starting to move Arkansas and Louisiana out of Comcast Sports Southeast into Comcast Sports Houston (branded SW outside of immediate Houston area) and will have the same footprint as Fox SW (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico). When the CUSA deal expires at the end of 2016 Comcast and Fox regionals are expected to go to war over the second tier rights because Comcast is basically running Astros and Rockets and third tier CUSA and AAC with some low tier SEC. While Fox is in better shape (holding Big XII rights even if they lose CUSA) they don't want Comcast SW/Houston getting even stronger. Remember Fox as a regional deal is paying the same as CBS despite second pick of games and much of that was on the strength of having Houston, SMU, Rice, Tulsa, Tulane in the Fox SW territory. The rest of CUSA is so scattered among RSN's that there is no critical mass. His belief is that CUSA is less concerned with helping UAB and more concerned about the second tier rights fee because the strength of CUSA's second tier deal is the ability to deliver games of value in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and needs to replace what was lost in Oklahoma. Well the Little Rock market is slightly larger than Tulsa and most of the Little Rock metro area is served by Comcast and ASU has a pretty good relationship with them. He thinks CUSA is positioning to maximize bidding interest on the second tier in the Southwest between Fox and Comcast because they cannot do that in the Southeast due to the variety of service territories.

If you look at the posts I responded to, I'd have to have a lobotomy to get chippy.

Seems like maybe I raised that geography issue in the past. Unless Marshall, ODU, Charlotte, WKU, MTSU, FIU and FAU are all of the same mind that UAB belongs in their group, there is no chance of the needed 11 votes being there. Unless Fowler knows something he isn't printing, the pool isn't ASU and UL, it is ASU, UL, TXST, NMSU and probably Missouri State if they are inclined to go FBS.

First. Your geography is off. If CUSA goes 16 with ASU and ULL the only way USM goes to the east is if they go east and WKU or MTSU, or UAB comes west. Second. Go look at the USM roster. One Texan, a couple Cali kids, decent group of Louisiana kids, lot of Mississippi, but far more Alabama and Florida kids than Texas, California, and Louisiana combined. You might like having USM west, that doesn't mean it will be healthy for USM or that USM can restore its program cut off from its recruiting base. Third. I've been hanging out here since UNT was in the Big West. Over the years I saw plenty of FIU and FAU don't belong. Lots of questioning how Troy and ULM do business. But Arkansas State and Louisiana are the sorts of programs UNT wants away from? That's straight from 1984 declaring that the enemy Eurasia has always been the ally and ally Eastasia has always been the enemy. It reminds me of a fan from another school who said Arkansas State wasn't good enough academically to be in the same conference as his juggernaunt academic ivy tower. Of course a high school grad meeting the minimum standards for unconditional admission at his junior Ivy League school wouldn't even be eligible for admission at a hick school like Arkansas State for having too low of a GPA or test scores. Finally I think it would be hilarious if it weren't so sad to see UNT fans talking about Karl Benson. Benson was hired because Lane Rawlins and Gary Ransdell were the leaders of the pack pushing Karl Benson over Tom Burnett. At least you had no hand in the NMSU debacle. We were all set to admit them as a full member until Ransdell rallied the eastern schools to make NMSU football only. That's been the real fun. We get some turds dropped on us then the people who dealt them walk away defending the move by complaining the place smells like manure.

Once upon a time, I could drive across the river into Little Rock for and seeing an Arkansas State bumper sticker or plate was a unique thing. I would go to ASU events in Little Rock and could look around the room and guess a person's graduation date within a few years because they were alums from one of the golden eras. Our Red Wolf Mafia lunch group would talk about the lost classes or lost generations that hadn't seen good football and were just gone. Now if I don't see at least three vehicles a day with Red Wolf something on them it noticeable. We've been semi-sorta thinking of buying a new house in the Little Rock area and cruising new neighborhoods it isn't unusual to see drive by a house with a stAte flag or Red Wolf flag. Those lost classes, the lost generations, many weren't lost. They just didn't feel like they had anything to support now they are going to games, have a nice new Red Wolf plate on the car, every so often someone will see my ASU jacket or bumper sticker and throw up the wolf hand gesture as they go by. You can sell and sell and sell and market and market and market, but until they are proud of the product, they aren't buying in.

FIU's athletic budget is $23.8 million. Of that $2.2 million is direct from the university student fees $16.9 million. So 80% of all revenue is internal. Ticket sales and contributions $1.1 million.

Yeah conferences are much more interesting when you don't have to face schools that put 20,000+ plus in the stands and win 8 of the last 8 meetings.

14 means that every playing date you have to have a cross-divisional game. It means that UNT might go into the last game of the season fighting for the division title against UTEP with UNT playing at La.Tech while UTEP is hosting Charlotte.

I saw them mentioned in the same sentence in a lot of Independence Bowl articles about La.Tech having to sit at home because they wouldn't play Monroe.