Arkstfan

Stadium capacity places an upper limit on attendance but I believe excess capacity deflates attendance. Too many empty seats gives a depressing feel to a game and excess capacity reduces the pressure to buy a season ticket knowing one is always available. A person with a season ticket is more likely to use it than let it "go to waste" if the weather isn't perfect or the team is a little (or a lot) disappointing this year, while the walk-up buyer just doesn't bother to come out at all. The season ticket holder is more likely to schedule other events around a game, the walk-up buyer is more likely to come if it doesn't conflict.

I don't get the love that FIU and FAU have received. They each won a split share of the Sun Belt. They cannot attract crowds in a market that is infamous for not drawing crowds consistently.

The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum

No way that I buy UTSA to MWC talk. The MWC's history has always been quality over markets.

Actually there is a rule against it. In football, if you are a Division I school, you have to play Division I football. That is why you have leagues like the Pioneer for non-scholarship FCS football. The DIII schools thought the Division schools had an unfair advantage bringing football recruits in when they were playing big name basketball schools. A Division II or III can play up in Division I in one sport as long as that sport isn't football or basketball.

Per Sun Belt bylaws they are out no later than July 1, 2014. Once they issued the CUSA press release that constitued notice and they are out.

Bad is being a new FBS and breaking a 14 game losing streak against a Division II (not I-AA, II) when you get a second shot at a hail mary after a pass interference. Bad is getting Ole Miss to come to your place and it being the first game after 9/11 and a referee mike check being heard over the video tribute. Bad is firing your coach (with happily caught early prostate cancer) who is 3-19 in his last two years on Monday before the last game (Thanksgiving) and he asks for time to tell the team then never does it, school hands out the release in the 3rd quarter and national press reports "Arkansas State fires cancer victim coach on Thanksgiving Day". Bad is having a basketball coach six years removed from an NCAA bid who can't do better than .500 in league play after that and his Sunday School buddies creating a save the coach campaign that convinces the administration the coach is loved and he gets a three year extension which results in an immediate loss of half the season ticket holders. Bad is knowing that wins and tickets sold don't matter, the dumb luck of being in a small market means we are where we are for many years to come. Never mind that there are people who can walk outside their house and see the tower of the Jonesboro ABC affiliate, they are in the Little Rock market, even though they can't get Little Rock TV with a normal antenna. Never mind that in many nearby towns they watch Jonesboro TV because Jonesboro TV covers their city and their high school teams, never mind that they work and shop in Jonesboro, Nielsen says they are in the Memphis market.

I know Arkansas State is lobbying to let them out because our AD has a replacement game lined up that he'd rather play.

Thanks gang, I'm hearing there are schools that go to a bowl with the same coach from the regular season, hoping to give that a try. Mobile does a great job putting on the game. The stadium is old a right at dump status but everything about the event is first class. The players are treated very well and the coaches wives have some great events. The community really goes all out with the Mardi Gras parade (first Mardi Gras in the US was held there, and they'll happily tell you that). Two different bars set up computers and projectors to get ESPN3 when they found out the ASU-WKU game was on ESPN3 in order to show the game. Used to be a CUSA bowl but they dumped CUSA for ACC vs. MAC (the MAC was at the insistence of then sponsor GMAC). Like to see it be CUSA vs. Sun Belt in the future, the MAC teams just don't make the trip.

They had 40 something for TAMU and the AP said it was pretty evenly split crowd. So Tech had roughly 20k there.

My exclusive opinion

But the MAC's best needed two OT's to beat the MAC's second best

Hey at least you guys got to align with some people in your region. We draw more fans than La.Tech, can raise money, have more support in Little Rock than they could dream of having in Shreveport (and they are 20 minutes closer to their claimed market) and we are stuck in entry level land for eternity. The ONLY other FBS in our state won't play us in ANY sport (they pulled out of a baseball tournament at UTA a few years ago because we would be in it as well). The closest FBS to us (Memphis) won't talk about extending our football deal after this season because we've won 4 of the last 5. Won't talk about playing basketball any more since the last game went to OT when we missed a buzzer beater and the game before we lost on a buzzer beater. The next closest FBS won't play in basketball because we won more than they did and they will hire our football coach but lost interest in football after we forced them to score late to win. Y'all don't know what having it bad is.

Craig Thompson A+ He took what was once the best non-AQ TV contract but then became an albatross and got it modified so they can sell more games and make more money and get more exposure. A few weeks ago he was literally in a position where Arkansas State and Louisiana believed they were MWC bound once the Big East pulled two more MWC. In a matter of weeks, he won back Boise State. By most accounts is expected to announce the return of San Diego State and may be relatively close to getting BYU back. When everyone panicked he stayed calm and didn't burn bridges. More importantly he made sure the door stayed open by ignoring those who said that the MWC should just accept reality and go ahead and take NMSU and Idaho. Taking Idaho almost certainly would have closed the door on Boise returning and NMSU wasn't going to advance the cause either. Top notch performance. Karl Benson D Came in acting as if UNT and FIU were gone rather than going through the motions of trying to hold the league together. His quick acting cowboying of running Georgia State in by using a specially empowered committee seriously weakened him after a short time on the job. Adding Texas State and UTA were OK moves but he has learned from the opening mistake. Six weeks out from MTSU and FAU leaving he hasn't tried to ramrod an immediate response. The membership has calmed down and already some schools are actively advocating to allow MTSU and FAU have early departure because they've used the past few weeks to explore schedule options. ASU's AD made no bones about it in a radio interview earlier this week, he's got a game lined up that he wants and he needs them out. That means the panic is gone. Didn't take the bait when pressure was applied by other commissioners to help NMSU and Idaho out of their jam. Brit Bankowsky D- It started as a smart idea. Take one maybe two teams to offset losing four. Get CUSA to 9 or 10 members. One to fill the Texas hole and maybe one to appease the east. It quickly spiraled out of control. Depending on whom you believe, La.Tech and UTSA came into the mix either to help MWC in their gutting of the WAC or to insure that the Sun Belt didn't add two programs that might strengthen the league. Either way it seemed like a decent idea, get back to 12. Except the eastern membership balked. They would block Tech and UTSA unless they were thrown a bone. So they got Charlotte and ODU. Six teams added, one with 8 years of playing an FBS schedule three with zero years experience in FBS. Then the Big East strikes again and CUSA reacts again. Taking an MTSU that is .500 over the past five years and pretty well run program and an FAU that well hasn't hit .500 but at least didn't just fire their coach to hire Ron Turner. Mike Aresco F You can't blame him for losing Louisville and Rutgers or Notre Dame but you can certainly blame him for the loss of the seven basketball schools. It was a classic in speed over thought. Adding ECU made sense but Tulane broke the camel's back. Tulane was sprung on the presidents for a fast vote to keep things quiet. The few football presidents spoke glowingly of Tulane's new financial committment and sterling academic reputation and nice location. The vote passes without the AD's being consulted and the presidents get back home to a firestorm. The AD's and coaches are livid. Yet another school added that hurt the strength of basketball and a school that plays basketball in an 80 year old (but recently modernized) 3,600 seat facility and has had no need to look at adding more seats. With the ever shifting line-up faced the problem of being obligated to find at least one more western school to make the league work, repeatedly rejected by BYU and Air Force approached UNLV, Fresno and New Mexico and the three knew the question to ask thanks to Commissioner Thompson, "What's the latest number from your TV consultants?". Depending on who you believe there is either no number or one that is a fifth of the number used when Boise was first courted. The only thing propping the league up right now is that Houston, SMU, Tulane, Memphis, UCF, and ECU don't see a 20 team C-USA as a viable option and Cincinnati and UConn need some place to get their mail while courting the ACC.

Problem #1. The SEC's richest schools will not give in and go to a 9 game schedule because it will cost them an average 0.5 home games per year and a loss of gate receipts of roughly $1.5 million per year and more importantly result in a decrease in winning percentage Problem #2. It reduces winning. Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, LSU, TAMU, Tennessee, Miss St went 4-0 in regular season non-conference. 32-0 Auburn, Vandy, Mizzou, and Ole Miss went 3-1 in regular season 12-4 Arkansas and Kentucky went 2-2 so that's 4-4 The non-conference winning percentage was 0.857 If they went to 9 non-conference games there would only 42 non-conference games instead of 56. So the games converted from non-conference to conference the SEC went roughly 12-2 and would become 7-7 in. Going to 9 conference games means 5 more losses on SEC records and most likely, Ole Miss misses a bowl game this year. Problem #3. It removes 5 to 7 telecasts from SEC TV inventory.

Anyone who is bored and sketching out dream conferences, you can find the last two years of BCS ratings for the non-AQ schools here. http://www.arkst.com/?p=2098

Peoples was at ASU and was hired away by Arkansas. Our defense went in the toliet under Roberts after he left and as an added bonus, his wife was an assistant for the women's basketball team and she left with him and the women's hoops team got worse as well.

I would expect SDSU to come back but they aren't in near the crack that Boise was. SDSU's membership in the Big West gives the quite a few games that non-revenue sports can bus to.

Minor disagreement. TV first looks at proven ratings for when teams are on. That's why small market teams in the SEC and Big XII can make good money. If you don't have ratings that move the needle, then given a choice between small market and large, they go with large.

I not only don't think ASU is on the Big East radar, we aren't on CUSA's radar. It's the idea that La.Tech is some unique rising superstar that leaves me baffled. We don't go around claiming Little Rock is OUR MARKET as they do with Shreveport but Little Rock TV carries our coach's show, carried one game last year would have carried two this year but our deposed AD turned down one of the chances and then a production issue on game day at Troy scotched the other one. One Little Rock station is offering to carry several games in 2013. While we might be touting Little Rock in private conversations, we aren't bellowing that it is our market.

MWC has five schools that have been in the top 50% of the country in the BCS rankings the past two years. Boise 2011 & 2012 USU 2012 SJSU 2012 Fresno 2012 Wyoming 2011 That's the same number as the new Big East has had and if SDSU switches back, advantage MWC.

Tulsa is the 59th largest TV market just a bit smaller than Little Rock and about 70,000 more TV households than Huntington, WV. Twenty or thirty years ago it was a highly prized market because it had the highest cable penetration of any top 75 TV market but that advantage is long gone.

That is correct.

Dr. Lee was doing a poor job raising money. Most of the big increases the past two years came about because the Governor turned his donor list over to the system president and began holding cocktail receptions at the Governor's Mansion to get donors to meet the leaders. The coach and the president were there for the receptions but the AD was never invited to attend. The new chancellor blew his stack when he asked all department heads to submit a one to three page summary of where their department was and what their goals were and how they were going to achieve them. The AD never bothered to submit his and six weeks later he was reassigned.

Harsin is being paid $700,000, has use of a home in a gated golf community, has two cars provided, and has no utility payments except for cable and internet. Malzahn was getting $850,000 and turned down $1.4 million to stay rather than go to Auburn.