Arkstfan

I concede that. You can't make a living off the true believers, you've got to have bandwagon fans. But I don't understand why athletic departments don't make message boards an integral part of their business plan. I had an issue with ASU where I called and left a message wanting to give them money and they didn't return my call. I persisted and finally made them take my money. There is no telling how much money has been lost because the majority who aren't true believers felt no compulsion to follow up. By monitoring message board talk you can find out in a hurry if you are delivering good customer service because the true believers complain, its what we do best.

Message boards are the single most important place for an athletic department to have their eyes and ears. It is where the converts are, those who are true believers. If you don't have the true believers behind what you are doing no amount of investment in billboards, radio or television will move a program forward. If the people who are your regular ticket buyers and donors and are committed to the program are having a customer service issue that they have struggled to resolve, how many dollars have been lost when a person with a lower level of interest just said screw it when they encountered a similar problem. Fans rant and rave are polarized into camps. How is that different than anything else? I honestly believe that every or dang near every member of Congress wants to leave better United States government at the end of their term than it was when they arrived. Now they agree little on what "better" would look like and everyone on here would find ways to disagree with dang near any of them, and they certainly have times when they feel compelled to swallow their best intents in order to be able to get the votes or the money in order to get another term to try to win some battles but down deep they aren't as evil as we'd like to think. Same with message boards. The fans want to win every game they just aren't going to agree on the schedule, recruiting or game plan to work to that goal. That doesn't make them bad. Anyway, a long blog post on the column. http://www.beltboard.com/?p=260

Athletic donations are not 100% deductible if you receive benefits (ie. ticket or parking priority, decals, etc.). Dude is dead and won't be taking any UNO athletic booster club benefits so it is 100% deductible. The Sun Belt mandate is 15 sports the conference sponsors a championship. NCAA only requires 14 sports for Division I membership and roughly half of scholarships awarded unless grandfathered in (Ivy). FBS membership requires 16 and awarding a minimum of 200 scholarships. UNO is currently spending $4 million on athletics with $1.4 million of that coming from the school. The student fee income is down roughly 35% post-Katrina, and ticket sales and sponsorships down by similar numbers, roughly the hole in their budget to get to 15 sports. The shut-down was threatened because the state was going to slice $15 million out of UNO's budget and the school was needing the $1.4 pleged to athletics to help make up that short-fall. If the student fee had passed that revenue would have gone from $1.9 million to an estimated $4 million to $4.2 million. They currently net about $700,000 from other sources. The school supplement isn't going away after all and local business leaders have pledged to make up shortfalls. If the entire gift were put into endowment, UNO would generate enough to at least match the university contribution and likely more. I suspect they will be more proactive and create some multi-use facilities, guarantee the construction bonds using the gift and probably generate enough renting the facilities to itself and local high schools and regional events to pay the bonds back preserving the corpus of the gift.

Those years were under a different BCS standard and the more complicated prior formula. Ball State was at 12 in the BCS last year. They wouldn't have jumped Boise or Utah but they were all set to go if either stumbled.

Would a 12-0 Sun Belt make it? Here are the BCS standings going into the last Saturday of the season last year. http://msn.foxsports.com/id/9812962_37_1.pdf Utah was #6, Boise #9, and Ball State #12. Utah non-conference: @Michigan (barely beat a dreadful Wolverine team), @Utah State (bad WAC), Weber State (pretty good FCS last year), Oregon State (ended up pretty good). So they got two "name" wins but only one quality non-conference win (ie. an FCS that finished .500 or better). Past reputation coupled with a strong MWC got them in position. Boise State non-conference: Idaho State (1-11), Bowling Green (6-6 with a couple nice wins), @Oregon (nice season), @Southern Miss (rough start finished 7-6). really more impressive non-conference performance than Utah in my opinion but the bottom of the WAC was just horrible. Ball State non-conference: Northeastern (2-10), Navy (8-5, lost to some bad teams), Indiana (3-9), WKU (bad). Clearly the weakest non-conference slate and the 8 MAC wins, I give credit for playing in the tougher division having to get past Central and Western Michigan but not a better league schedule than Boise. Ball started off behind the 8 ball because they hadn't been ranked in the past and had lost their bowl after a middling season in 2007. The deck was clearly stacked against being ranked. Didn't crack the AP poll until they reached 6-0. Despite an unimpressive conference slate and unimpressive non-conference slate they were at the magic number of 12 in the BCS standings when they lost to Buffalo. To get in as a non-AQ you have to be ranked 12 or better, be conference champion, AND be the highest ranked non-AQ champion. If Ball State had beaten Buffalo, they would have met two out of three and would have had to pray for Utah and Boise to get upset. A 12-0 Sun Belt would crack 12 in the BCS poll, after that it is just a matter of whether any non-AQ conference champs were rated ahead.

Shof, the Florida split does seem odd and if we were in divisions it would make no sense at all of course. The reason I went that way is because if you look at the league you basically have three groupings. The old Southland schools (Mean Green, Cajuns, Red Wolves, and War Hawks) although the Cajuns were only in the SLC with ASU. The southeastern schools ('Toppers, Blue Raiders, Trojans, and Jags) The twin Florida schools. There isn't a great deal of history inter-group history but quite a bit intra-group. Of the old SLC schools (Group B ) and the SE schools (Group A) there are only three road trips of less than 400 miles. ASU-MT, ASU-WKU, UL-USA. If you keep the two Florida schools in the same grouping, you end up having to move either USA to the other group or one of WKU/MT. If you split them and then assign an permanent opponent in the other grouping only one road trip of less than 400 miles is split up, either ASU-WKU or ASU-MT. Also if you group the two Florida schools together, none of the schools in that eastern grouping ever skip a trip to Florida, but the western group misses a Florida opponent in 4 out of 10 years unless we do a permanent opponent and then you miss one 4 of 8 years unless assigned a Florida as a permanent. By splitting the Florida schools everyone gets one Florida permanently but their relationship is preserved. The only other thing that makes sense is Group A FAU/FIU/Troy/MT/WKU Group B USA/ULL/ULM/ASU/UNT And then assign permanent opponents of: USA/Troy, ASU/(MT or WKU), and then leave it UNT/ULL/ULM to fight it out as to whether they get permanently assigned FIU/FAU/or the left out of WKU/MT. With either system, ASU comes out worst having to give up one of its three closest league opponents along with whichever of WKU/MT skips ASU.

Why would you pass on a schedule rotation that is better for UNT? The plan floated by the league means that over the course of the schedule rotation for two years you miss your closest conference opponent and for two more years you miss your second closest conference opponent, but never miss your third closest conference opponent. My alternative insures that UNT never misses playing the three closest conference opponents and never misses the 5th closest opponent (if MT is permanent opponent from the other group). Going to 12 makes things neat and tidy but at this point we don't know if the NCAA will change the FBS membership criteria before the mortatorium expires, traditionally that is when they make changes. It would be very easy to tweak the rules so that a school looking to change divisions would find it all but impossible unless they had a league home lined up. That would preclude expanding to 12 unless you found two schools that the membership wanted enough to assist their move. C-USA realignment will be a money issue, who can accurately project where they will be financially in two or three years?

Well if it is adopted (no guarantee it will be that's still some years down the road), it is solely to insure that over the course of 16 years ( like anything is stable that long any more) that no one loses their good gate receipt game. I suspect ASU brings as many to Denton as anyone else in the conference does. But there are some natural pairings that can't be broken (FIU/FAU, MT/WKU, Troy/USA, and ULL/ULM). I don't think that is the best solution though. It doesn't address MT/Troy and doesn't address ASU vs. ULL and ULM which are among our oldest games. Better solution Group A Troy/USA/WKU/MT/FIU Group B ASU/UNT/ULM/ULL/FAU Each team is assigned a permanent opponent in the other group, with preference on geographically natural permanent opponents FIU/FAU, USA/ULL, Troy/ULM, ASU/MT, UNT/WKU or you could flip it and have ASU/WKU and UNT/MT, (MT is only 30 miles close to ASU so either solution won't hurt us) Then you skip one team from the other group other than the permanent opponent. Then you have an 8 year rotation.

Have you considered the possibility that the other bowls the conference has been talking to might only be interested in the Sun Belt if we agree to send our champion there a couple times over the life of a four year contract and without that possibility have said no thanks?

FAU's plan was problematic from the start. The dome idea was to be able to generate additional revenue from convention space but from what I read, the area was considered to have an over-supply of meeting space. Fabric is the most cost effective way to dome but in their location there is a risk that every ten years you'd have to drive to Orlando to retrieve it after a hurricane or tropical storm so that requires a more expensive roof. The first plan was a much bigger real estate proposal including retail and office space in addition to housing but the real estate bust clobbered that idea. If they had started the deal about two years sooner they likely would have got it built and been able to retrieve most of the development back from bankruptcy court from the developers.

Little Rock TV gave it better coverage than they ever have, but part of that could be that once they saw stAte had pre-season players of the year on both sides of the ball that they scrambled to cover it, but one station drove to Jonesboro and interview Roberts and Carrington.

If CUSA East defected and gathered up mostly regional Sun Belt schools around them for a new league, SMU's survival instinct would create a pragmatic affinity for UNT.

The roaches have always been projected to survive nuclear winter. If you look at the typical Sun Belt, WAC, MAC school's real budget the things that stand out are: 1. Ticket revenue ain't a big chunk of change. 2. Donations don't amount to much. 3. Sponsorships are all but non-existent. 4. TV revenue is negligible. The source of revenue tends to be: 1. Student fees 2. Transfers from profitable university operations. 3. Game guarantees. A bad economy means sponsor and donor dollars dry up and people will give up football tickets if that's what's needed to keep the air conditioner running and the mortgage paid. Future TV deals will be weaker do to weak ad revenue. When you aren't counting on those things as a huge portion of your budget a downturn in those revenue sources isn't that harmful. Now historically a bad economy means more people go to college to ride out the economic storm. More people get advanced degrees to be more competitive in the marketplace. More students means more student fee income for athletics. Now if state budget cuts are bad enough, colleges will have to tap into dorm, cafeteria, vending machine and bookstore profits to make budget, but all of those revenue sources will likely grow with increased enrollments. Game guarantees are the tough call but the schools struggling to pay those are going to be more willing to sign 2 for 1 and home/home deals. Overall, the poor schools, will see their revenue available for athletics be in the flat area. Based on current tourism information I've received, the poor economy is helping local restaurants, movies and vacation options in most areas as people swap a weekend lake trip or two for a week at the beach, or at Disney or skiing. They are swapping a trip to the movies and/or a nice restaurant dinner for vacation spending. $15 for a Sun Belt game ticket vs. $40 to $55 for Big XII or SEC ticket is a trade you may see some people make who aren't hard-core fans. Having the weaker BCS schools struggle to pay guarantees can be good too by improving home schedules. I think the current climate is about as positive as it can be for the poorer programs.

FIU came into the Sun Belt with Denver because former commissioner Craig Thompson's vision of the league was urban basketball schools. When the last realignment hit the motivation for adding FIU and FAU in football was to meet NCAA requirements to remain a conference taking any school willing to move to I-A on an ultra-fast timetable. FIU and FAU met that bill. FAMU wanted to and likely would have been invited had they had the resources to do it. People who tout Georgia Southern and Appy need to remember that at the hour of need they weren't interested. Doesn't hurt to remember that WKU wasn't willing to make that move at the time either. FIU/FAU was in no way about vacation destinations, population demographics, or media outlets, it was simply to survive for another day.

Taking a look. Texas State joined I-AA/FCS in 1984. In 25 seasons has made it to the playoffs twice and went 2-2. Posted five winning seasons in 20 years. Basketball in the past six seasons didn't post a winning record and has never done better than .500 in basketball. The women got the auto WNIT berth and beat Prarie View by one and got crushed by Texas Tech. Baseball was 2 and out. The RPI of 34 is honestly the only thing I see compatible with the Sun Belt. If you equate playing a single FBS opponent per year with playing FBS football it shows how little you understand of what it is like being FBS. I've seen that so many times, I was guilty of it as well when ASU was I-AA for ten years (6-4 record in the playoffs, never lost in the first round) your opponent is less intense and your players are fired up to prove a point. Doing it once (or in our case often 3 times a year) is far different than doing it 11 times a year against schools that regard you as a peer. Western Kentucky (2002 I-AA champions) thought it was an easy transition and they've dropped 7 straight against the Belt in transition. Sorry I ruffled feathers but the Sun Belt and WAC are going to want to see expansion candidates that sell tickets and can play our key sports (football, men's and women's hoops, baseball, softball) at our level without us having to wait too long for the growth period.

My ire was at the posters on the WAC board who cannot accept the fact that at an instant in time when the Sun Belt was on the verge of collapse, UNT turned them down. They believe that now despite the fact that the Sun Belt is closing the quality of play gap and the financial gap and is much more stable that UNT still would come a running. The idea that the WAC members who rejected the idea of taking UNT, ULL, ASU, and MTSU as group would suddenly turn around and invite UNT and two programs that have never played a down of FBS football, one which hasn't played a down of any sort of football is simply ridiculous. No one other than the infamous HogDawg would for a minute think that UNT would be better off with an annual schedule of: Tech, UTSA, TexSt, Utah State, and NMSU, while rotating three of San Jose State, Idaho, Nevada, Hawaii, Boise, and Fresno every other year vs. a Sun Belt schedule. That eastern division is the Southland on back of a comic book muscle pills. Even if UNT were interested, where is the benefit to the remainder of the WAC? The Sun Belt bet its future on schools climbing up out of need, not want. The WAC isn't going to base its future on such schools out of want. Now you can cut the math anyway you want, but there ain't going to be an EWAC like that. As for travel, people just don't grasp the distances out west. If you rode a bus from Ruston to New Mexico State and then took that bus to your next closest WAC school, the drive that school (Utah State) takes almost exactly the same amount of time as Ruston to Las Cruces. There is simply no way Utah State supports an expansion that increases their travel that dramatically. Nevada is on record stating that they want any WAC expansion to focus on a team moving from I-AA to I-A.... in CALIFORNIA. Of nine WAC members one and only one has any interest in Texas.

Petrino has been far more strict than Nutt. His brother Dickie was no better, I know a couple people who quit ASU basketball when a player arrested for pot possession was suspended for exhibition games.

The "story" is that Stephens went to buy certain merchandise from an acquaintance and when he didn't come to the door went to the back door and entered but it was the wrong apartment and got himself shot. As I always say when this stuff comes up, coaches can't babysit 'em 24/7 and some are always going to get in trouble. The difference in coaches is how they react to it. At a major institution a few hours away the prior coach would ask the team what to do and invariably they handed out some secret punishment and got to stay on the team. A few years ago a player there and a player at stAte got arrested within days of each other for forging checks. On player missed a game the one at stAte got sent home.

At a moment in time when the Sun Belt was having to rely on FAU and FIU moving their plans for I-A forward by a couple years and WKU was actively attempting to join the MAC, the WAC called UNT and then ULL and they were told then that if they wanted either they would have to take both not one of them and would also have to take ASU and MTSU to create a division with the four plus Tech and NMSU. The WAC said no they would take one and if the one offered said no the other will leap at it and it didn't happen. Since then, the BCS has created a new deal that started giving the Sun Belt an OK amount of money, and it will be replaced by a deal that will bump that money by about 40% next year. The Sun Belt has started on the track to make more NCAA money than the WAC. The Belt TV deal has increased and there will be more money and more exposure. FAU has proven stable and has knocked off a BCS team and won two bowl games. WKU has lost interest in the MAC and upgraded to FBS football. USA has started on the path to FBS football. Denver is on a firm timetable to leave. When the WAC was interested in only one team, defection was a real threat because there was no assurance there would be a Sun Belt, at least for football. Now the Sun Belt is stronger and improving and there will suddenly be interest to defect? Worse, the idea for pigdog is to take schools that have shown little commitment to excellence in athletics. USA has demonstrated for years that they are devoted to playing very good basketball and baseball. Where is that in UTSA or Texas State? Serious disconnect with reality for some people.

The moratorium will have to be lifted. It cannot remain in place permanently without running afoul of anti-trust law. It is unlikely it will be extended or another imposed for a few years due to anti-trust issues. That however does not mean that the criteria for joining FBS football will remain the same. I've not heard diddly but wouldn't be surprised to see a few changes. If they were asking me, the changes would be: 1. A four year transition process instead of two. 2. Must meet attendance requirements in years 2, 3, and 4 (15,000 average). 3. Cannot use neutral site games to meet attendance in transition. 4. Must meet schedule requirements in years 3 and 4 (play 5 home games against FBS and a total of 8 on a 12 game schedule) 5. Cannot use an FCS opponent or transitional opponent to meet the five FBS home game requirement. 6. Must meet sport sponsorship requirement in year 1 (16 sports) 7 Must meet scholarship requirements in year 3 and 4 (200 scholarships awarded across all sports and 79.5 avg in football).

And none of them were in the top 50 in attendance, only Utah was even in the top half. Boise was 70th and TCU 74th. BYU is the only one drawing really big crowds (more than TCU and Boise combined). Sad part is TCU, 74th in the nation in attendance is in the 5th largest TV market and Utah at 51st in attendance is in the 33rd largest TV market so they both have large population bases to draw from. Admittedly Utah is hurt considerably by BYU who is just a skip outside of Salt Lake.

That can be said for any team outside the BCS AQ leagues. The six AQ leagues could pull out and form their own association and the bulk of the viewing public would never notice.

Anyone who misses playing Idaho never traveled with the team to Idaho.

ASU and NMSU played some fantastic games. They rallied once to beat us in OT, another time we were down 21 with 13 minutes left and won in OT. One year we went for two and the win and they stopped it with a fumble return for 2 points, then there was the time we scored 14 unanswered to win by 11 out there. Just a bunch of great games. Here's the interesting thing about NMSU. The closest WAC school to NMSU is Utah State. The second closest is La.Tech (about a 20 mile difference). From a geography stand point the two leagues make no difference for them and their attendance has fallen since going to the WAC.

Huh? ASU has finished at or above its pre-season pick in 6 of 8 seasons. ASU has been picked in the bottom half of the league 6 times out of eight. ASU was consensus pick 5th last year and finished 4th 2007 picked 3rd finished 5th 2006 picked 2nd finished 3rd 2005 picked 7th finished 1st 2004 picked 7th finished 6th 2003 picked 4th finished 4th 2002 picked 6th finished 3rd 2001 picked 5th finished 4th