Arkstfan

Rick, one could argue the UNLV syndrome with Marshall, that you can rise to national prominence by being great in a mediocre league (then someone will point out UNLV's problems had less to do with WAC and then MWC competition than it did NCAA setting up a branch office in Las Vegas and the whole thing falls apart).

Like Tulane, Rice, SMU and Tulsa would support a plan that busts them up.

More bowl invites The closest is in New Mexico. Others are in Boise and Hawaii. More nationally televised games And they tend to involve the schools who accomplished something who brought a quality opponent. Last year's national games under the WAC contract: Miss. St. at La.Tech Wisconsin at Boise State Tech at Boise Hawaii at Boise Boise at San Jose Nevada at Fresno Fresno at San Jose Boise at Nevada Fresno at Boise Cincinnati at Hawaii. Zero national appearances by: Idaho, Utah State, and New Mexico State. Every televised game involved either Boise, Fresno or a BCS school. More national recognition See above. Unless you are going to be Boise or Fresno and have long-term sustained success in and out of the league, you won't get recognition. Hawaii got two games a year after making the BCS> More attendance numbers for home games The numbers out of New Mexico State and Utah State say you are wrong. They drew better in the Belt. Point of comparison. ASU drew a larger crowd for Southern Miss than Tech drew for Mississippi State, despite the fact more Miss. St. fans traveled to their game and they have the value of being an SEC team. Middle drew more fans for Troy than Tech drew for any WAC opponent, even including the buy one-get-one promotion for the Nevada game where everyone under 18 was admitted for free to drum up a crowd to try impress bowl scouts. More of that BCS money Difference of about $300,000. More rivalries ( we are really lacking in that department, look at my thread on the HOF) Yeah the Hawaii, San Jose, and Nevada fans flowing into Denton will really heat up the rivalries. More interest from DFW WAC member alums as opposed to Sun Belt alums Other than Tech who has any significant number of alums in DFW? Tech's numbers should be roughly similar to ULM's. More of a turnout for conference games. Again. See LaTech, See New Mexico State. See Utah State.

Memphis is the cash cow of the conference. Their bowls cost them about what they make off them. The money they make is mostly from: 1. TV rights where the greatest value is Memphis basketball. 2. NCAA Tournament proceeds (Memphis has generated all 8 of the units earned the last two years, Sun Belt earned 6 same time period). 3. Profits from the basketball tournament (who sells most of those tickets?) Memphis doesn't even have to get it. If llosing Cal and the cloud of investigation causes Memphis to fall from being a top 10 team to a top 30 team, the impact is big.

The Big East couldn't get the votes to expand without adding some hoop only to balance the expansion. Basketball may drive the bus in C-USA but its a really short bus given that only Memphis has gone to the tournament the last two years and they now have NCAA buzzards circling.

I was rather pleased with ASU's win over TAMU after the "accidental officiating mistake" at Texas last year. I thought middle of the Sun Belt pack MTSU's win over ACC member and bowl game winner Maryland was pretty nice. I thought FAU's win over Central Michigan was pretty good too given it was played in a bowl game 2 1/2 hours from CMU's campus, and CMU did beat Indiana, albeit a bad Indiana team but still a BCS win.

#1. The MAC is at 13 in football and generally unhappy with that number but quite happy with 12 in other sports. #2. MAC revenue is falling because basketball has become worse so that per-team the money is basically identical to the Belt and the MAC probably not looking to split more ways. #3. WKU talked to the MAC before committing to I-A in the Belt and I don't think they are particularly interested. My sense of MT is that they have zero MAC interest because their recruiting is all done south of Tennessee, not north.

Generally in home/home deals, you pay your opponent enough to cover expenses ($50,000 to $100,000) to come play you and then they pay you that amount when you return the game.

For the couple who think the WAC is your ticket to respectablity.... Go look at the football standings. Sucking in the Sun Belt = sucking in the WAC. Right now UNT is playing football roughly at the caliber Idaho played it in the Sun Belt, playing in the WAC and being with a cross-state rival has rocketed them into the top 118 schools. USU and NMSU who were convinced the WAC was their ticket... their attendance has fallen and they aren't playing any better. Humm could it be success has more to do with taking care of YOUR program than being a tick sucking off someone else?

My mac drove me nuts for a couple weeks until I realized the problem was I used to doing things the hard way. Only thing that throws me now is the maximize/minimize/close buttons being the left instead of right and trying to use alt-V instead of ctrl-V to paste when using a win machine.

Been there on opening weekend. Amazing experience. Kicked off after lunch with the heat index well over 100. Concession vendors couldn't come close to keeping up with the demand for water and sodas and a couple older fans flopped out from heat exhaustion.

ASU's game at Louisville is the front end of a home/home.

ULM press box side is essentially unchanged from when the place was built. The west side upper level and the end zone and corner seats are new and were tarped when I was there. If you go back and look at the history of the Tech/ULM series, when the two have been in the same classification, ULM has done OK against them. Put them in the same league as Tech and ULM has performed better. Independent of each Tech outperforms ULM. When offering identical opportunity, ULM has an edge due to location.

The WAC offered UNT and upon rejection offered ULL. Tech's biggest problem is they really need the WAC to hit a BCS berth this year because they had bumped their budget up in part by pulling an extra $2 million over from university funds. With the state education funding cuts in Louisiana, the folks in Ruston are probably needing to cut one to two million from the athletic budget.

Another problem with 12. We don't play have a ton of history between most of the schools as it is. Ten is going to mean skipping one, 12 skipping 3. Current Sun Belt series UNT vs. ASU 18 meetings UNT vs FAU 5 meetings UNT vs. FIU 4 meetings UNT vs. ULL 13 meetings UNT vs. ULM 25 meetings UNT vs. MTSU 8 meetings UNT vs. Troy 6 meetings REST OF THE LEAGUE ASU vs. FAU 4 ASU vs. FIU 4 ASU vs. ULL 37 ASU vs. ULM 30 ASU vs. MTSU 10 ASU vs. Troy 9 FAU vs. FIU 7 FAU vs. ULL 4 FAU vs. ULM 5 FAU vs. MTSU 6 FAU vs. Troy 6 FIU vs. ULL 6 FIU vs. ULM 5 FIU vs. MTSU 4 FIU vs. Troy 5 ULL vs. ULM 44 ULL vs. MTSU 10 ULL vs. Troy 12 ULM vs. MTSU 9 ULM vs. Troy 11 MTSU vs. Troy 16 That's only 4 series of 20 or more meetings out of 28 series and 7 with 10 or fewer after last year.

The problem with 12 is that no one other than the SEC has been able to consistently sell tickets to one of those things and the loser are notorious for not selling bowl tickets.

Find 4,000 people willing to part with $250 for a family pack and you've covered the million dollar rent-a-win need.

Why would you book in that far down the road for less than a million? ASU goes to Auburn next season for a million. I know there is always a chance that the market for guarantees could go bust but with the money the SEC is getting for TV...

Would the bowls and TV cut the payout by 9% or more if those 5 weren't included? I doubt it. If anything they aren't happy that the current contract lets us in at 12 or better instead of the old 8 or better because they've had to deal with some bad ticket sales and bad ratings for the games with the non-AQ teams.

The current contract expires in January with the BCS championship in Pasadena. This cycle started with the 2006 season and we were a full participant under the same voting and revenue sharing rights as the other non-AQ leagues. While not signed yet, in June or July the next contract will be signed and unless something amazingly dramatic happens, it will be for the 2010-2013 seasons under the same terms as the current deal except there will be whole lot more money to divide. Basically the five non-AQ leagues take about 9% of the BCS revenue. That 9% is divided 5 shares to the highest rated LEAGUE among the five, 4 shares to #2, three shares to #3, two shares to #4, and one share to #5. If any team in the five leagues makes a BCS game the distribution is doubled mostly along those same lines with a bit extra to the team to cover expenses. So if the MWC is the highest rated league (think it has been the last three years), the MWC actually ends up benefiting more from Hawaii or Boise going to the BCS than the WAC does. That is why there was so much happiness when the Sun Belt pulled ahead of the MAC in 2007, we took two shares rather than one share, and it is also why there was so much disappointment that one or two more non-conference wins could have pushed us ahead of C-USA, that would have meant taking 3 shares.

I actually spent several days working the phone and have my realignment analysis up. Took too many hours Saturday and after church working through my notes. http://www.beltboard.com/?p=241

Not where it matters. Their power ratings under the BCS formula places them securely in the top 6 (they've topped the Pac-10 more than once) and they are in absolutely no danger of losing the auto berth by losing one member.

There is this http://kenpom.com/rate.php You can go back to 1999 looking at full schedules and results. I know there is another such site. This has some other stuff but doesn't even go back as far as the other http://www.warrennolan.com/basketball/2009/index Seems like I stumbled across a better site once but failed to bookmark it.

UAPB is pretty dreadful. Last year they won like 8 games, and two of those shouldn't count because they were over La.Tech.

Sun Belt schedules are squirrely and will be that way as long as we wait for everyone to set their non-conference slate then plug the league games around them, instead of setting a league schedule and telling schools to work around it setting non-conference games. I can't imagine the members changing that any time soon because we are worth more on the road than at home so those non-conference games are too important and return non-conference games too important as well.