Arkstfan

Time to get philosophical here. I have yet to make my mind up about the bowl situation. On one hand I remember quite bitterly when 11-0 might not get you a bowl, hasn't been that long that 10-2 was no guarantee. We saw this year that 8 wins wasn't a guarantee. I have a hard time saying there are too many bowls when schools win 8, 9, 10, 11 and can't find a spot especially when 6 and 7 win teams were getting slots those years. I don't see that a bowl for every .500 or better team hurts the game. Sucks for the folks having to dig in their pockets to pay for them but if they didn't think the money was worth it, I doubt they would pay. If anyone is hurt it is the mid-tier bowls the ones paying $1 million or more the bowl proliferation hurts their product, but they wouldn't talk to us any way so I don't know that I care that it hurts their product. A ton of post-season exhibitions for the benefit of as many fans and schools as possible is positive. On the other hand raising the bar for bowl games to conference champion or winning 75% of your games (8 on a 12 game schedule) with maybe a waiver for 7 wins culls the herd and makes the remaining games more valuable. I guess I'm fatalistic. I think that the pressure for success on the richest leagues is such that the 6 win waiver will remain and as long as it does, having enough bowls so no 7 win or better team gets left out is a good thing.

Keep hearing 09 for sure with a maybe third bowl when contracts start expiring.

Woman goes to a doctor and says, "Doctor I have horrible farts all the time but fortunately they don't smell and they are silent." Doctor says take these pills and come back in a week. Woman comes back and says "The gas is just as bad but the farts are still silent, but now they smell awful." Doctor says OK we've fixed your sense of smell, now let's get you fitted for a hearing aid.

I was just looking at an article about Bowling Green, it appeared they were going to have to cut a check for nearly $300,000 for unsold GMAC tickets unless there was a late run on tickets.

Depends on what you do with it. Feed it back in 13 pieces and it isn't much. Keep it bundled together and it is buying power. When Troy made the Silicon Valley Bowl the only available teams were a MAC rematch or Troy. When MT made the Motor City they were the only available team left. In each case there were other opportunities that could have been pursued but the Sun Belt didn't have the money. The MAC ended up paying the Silicon double what the Sun Belt did because they locked their spot up weeks earlier. When the MAC got in the I-Bowlthe payout was $1.2 million. My understanding is that the MAC guaranteed that their team would buy 10,000 tickets at $40 each so that leaves an $800,000 profit before travel expenses right? Wrong. The MAC "hired" the Independence Bowl to "market" the MAC in the Ark-La-Tex region for around $700,000. The trip was a real money loser because they didn't sell tix for jack. The money from this NCAA run means that the Sun Belt can hold back $200,000 and any time a bowl contract is up for renegotiation (almost all expire in 2009) or if a bowl is short a team and looking for someone to fill in, the Sun Belt can walk in with whatever offer they used to make and up it by 5,000 tickets at $40 each. My understanding is that the MAC agrees to buy 7,500 tickets for the GMAC at $45 each. That contract expires I think after the 2009 game. So what happens if the Sun Belt members sit down with pen to paper and make the decision that they will offer to buy 8,000 tickets from the GMAC? The school making the game will be on the hook for the first 3,500 tickets at $45 each with the conference guaranteeing the purchase of the next 4,500 tickets. If the school sells all 8,000 tickets, awesome no need to tap into the money. If the school sells 5,000 tickets then the conference writes a check for $135,000 to cover the unsold 3,000.

No. The NCAA gets part of the money from ticket sales but most from TV and marketing rights. CBS doesn't pay the NCAA say $300 million that the NCAA doles out one-sixth at a time each year. There isn't $250 million sitting in an account waiting to be sent out in the future. What happens is that the NCAA pays out the entire amount of money allocated for revenue sharing each year the amount going to a particular conference is based on the number of units owned. If the NCAA signs more lucrative sponsorship deals for next season, the value of a share rises. If Pontiac and Coke suddenly went bankrupt and didn't pay their sponsorship money, the value of a unit falls. The current deal the NCAA has with CBS guarantees a minimum amount will be paid every year through 2014 with the minimum payment rising every year. The amount paid can increase because CBS handles the sales of the corporate sponsor deal (corporate champion for the really big players) if the amount brought in is greater than anticipated, the NCAA gets a little extra juice on the deal. This is one of the positives of the six year payout. Let's say this year's money to the NCAA available for distribution based on basketball is around $136 million. Under a BCS type payout the Sun Belt would get $1.14 million per unit with nothing guaranteed next year except one unit. We potentially would fall from $4.56 million this year to the value of one unit next year. Here's the beauty of the deal. Under the NCAA system, a unit might very well rise next season from $190,000 to $200,000. If we are one and done next year we would have 9 units (5 one and done and 4 this year). Total payout would be $1.8 million. Under a BCS style arrangement if we were one and done next year we would get $1.2 million. The unit system buys you into the future growth of the contract. Success today means you get a greater share in the future as the value of the contract grows.

Buy an ASU season ticket and donate at least $250 and you can park on the pavement.

I don't know why the decision was made to spread it over six years but it brings stability. If it were done as an annual lump sum, a unit would be worth $1,140,000. If the value of a unit remainded stable (it tends to rise) last year would have gotten that amount and assuming UCLA upsets WKU the conference would get $4,560,000 this year. If we went back to one and done next year that number would fall back to $1.14 million. Under the current unit system the Sun Belt would have received $1.14 million last year (1 unit per year over six years = 6 units). This year will receive $1,710,000 and if we go back to one and done will receive that figure for a total of six years before the number falls. My guess is that most conferences would rather have the current system because it makes it easier to budget long-term.

Can't believe anyone who has been the bathrooms at Fouts would make an outhouse joke.

This is one place where the NCAA gets it right. With the BCS, you get your money but a lot of it is one time money so you can't make long-term plans with it and pretty much just need to spend it now. With the NCAA, a good year provides benefits for six years making long-term budgeting easier to do.

Why would steal the name of UNT's football stadium?

Make up your mind. Do you want to piss on the Sun Belt for not having as many bids as CUSA? Or do you want the bids and struggle to find opponents and sell tickets to those games like CUSA? Memphis was reported to have sold 2,000 tickets for the New Orleans Bowl and "hoped" to sell as many as a 1,000 more.

If Texas and Texas A&M joined the Sun Belt the media in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston would rave about what a great league it is and how the affiliation will make national championship dreams come true.

Pay better attention then. Rice got cut because they never developed a fan base. Let's talk Houston why don't we. 1995 Last year of SWC. Averaged 19,972 hosting Texas, Texas Tech, Baylor, SMU and La.Tech. Top crowd 32,520 for Texas. Averaged 16,835 for the games other than Texas. 1996 First year of CUSA. Averaged 17,551 host USC, UNC, Sam Houston, Memphis, Southern Miss, and Louisville. Top crowd 21,035 for USC. Averaged 16,854 for the games other than USC. 2006. Averaged 20,507, hosted Tulane, Grambling, Oklahoma State, ULL, UTEP, UCF, Tulsa. Top crowd 28,260 for Oklahoma State narrowly edging out Grambling. I discarded the CUSA championship even though it drew 31,818. Averaged 19,215 for games other than Oklahoma State and the CUSA championship. Going back to the last winning SWC season. 1990. 26,589, hosted TAMU, Rice, Arkansas, TCU, UNLV, and Eastern Washington. Top crowd 45,141 for TAMU. That was a 10-1 squad coming off a 9-2 record and their biggest crowds were for TAMU and Arkansas, schools noted for bringing a lot of fans. Throw out the TAMU game and they drew.... 22,879. Conference affiliation didn't have a huge impact other than a few big crowds that didn't come back. It goes back to developing your own fan base.

Sun Belt will add a bowl in 2009 and if things go well could have a third in 2010.

We've been promised that the helmet will not change. It only took nine years of complaining to get them to change back to the stAte helmet.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in scheduling attractive opponents but that isn't and can't be a program lifeblood. Back when ASU was drawing 15,000 with ease in I-AA I looked at I-A attendance and one of the things that leapt out at me was Rice. Their attendance over a several year period averaged within a couple 100 of ASU. The difference was that ASU didn't host Texas, didn't host TAMU, didn't host Arkansas who traditionally was one of Rice's better attended games. We poured it all down the drain. Anyone remember when CUSA formed? A school that wanted in and couldn't get in was East Carolina. Louisville was adamant at keeping the league at six for football. It took a threat to kick Louisville out to get the deal done. Why were the others willing to boot Louisville to make it happen? Because the Liberty Bowl had told them that if they weren't invited they would reserve the right to take the CUSA champion -OR- ECU. The Pirates had value. They had the second largest average attendance of that group of schools and the largest season ticket base. They sold 17,000 tickets for the 1994 Liberty Bowl game. They've managed to squander a lot of that. CUSA in basketball. They have three teams rated 250 or worse, the Belt has four. The big difference is at the top. They have four top 100 compared to only two for the Sun Belt. Now I could cheat and compare top 50 where CUSA has 1 and the Sun Belt has two but I've consistently said the two most important numbers are being top 100 and not being 250 or worse. The Sun Belt has a grand opportunity. Football is coming off its best year ever and doesn't lose a ton of talent. Basketball made strides but it is up to each campus to build it better. ASU took a step in that direction after being dazzled by a mediocre coach who had little on his resume other than having won the conference tournament once. Half the schools played lousy non-conference slates. The thinking has been backwards. In football where strength of schedule doesn't mean anything we tend to play hard non-conference slates, even though the system is geared more toward wins than the quality of those wins. In basketball where strength of schedule is huge we tend to play weak schedules even though as USA and WKU have shown a solid schedule opens the door to success.

Didn't say we've pulled it off but you can't build a program on the backs of others (ie. visitor attendance) because if you do, the folks carrying you will leave you on the side of the road to die.

Compared to the WAC it is regional. The improvement of the Sun Belt makes it more possible that the day will come that the Sun Belt and CUSA realign roughly geographically. Neither alignment is ideal. With the NCAA Tournament that the Big East is having, they aren't likely to break up any time soon. They got a record 8 in, seven advanced past the first day and three made the Sweet 16. That gives the 18 units even if they lose all three Sweet 16 games. That's $3.4 million just from the NCAA for this season for the next six years before you consider the increased television value it should create.

Correction. Your fans still don't care enough about North Texas to show up for those games. Texas had no trouble getting 84,000 to show up for Arkansas State. Tennessee had no trouble getting 102,000 to show up for Arkansas State. Alabama sold 92,000 tickets for ULM. Georgia had no problem getting 92,000 for Troy. If your attendance is merely a function of your opponent you are nothing more the SWC version of Rice or SMU. Building a fan base takes time and you can draw a better crowd with names, but how many of the people who came to the Baylor or Navy games are likely to return?

WKU's run MIGHT help the league. Obviously it is two thirds of a nearly $600,000 per year windfall for the next six years. That's a big difference from the bowl world where most games are break-even at best and even a BCS windfall is just for one year. The Sun Belt now has cash it can tap into for SIX YEARS to make improvements. It hopefully raises expectations of what can be accomplished. Way too many fans around this conference and I think administrators as well considered a great year to be one where you won the conference tournament and went home the first day of the NCAA Tournament. People have said repeatedly that this is a one bid league. USA proved it wrong. They demonstrated that if you play a decent schedule (doesn't have to be a full time BCS road show) and you win, you get an at-large berth. WKU has demonstrated that we can go and win a game and another game. Before the tournament began, the chancellor at ASU said in an interview concerning the coaching search that he didn't see any reason ASU couldn't be like Memphis in basketball. That's the sort of targeting it takes. No we don't have the corporate money or history but Gonzaga didn't either when they started their NCAA run. That targeting had ASU going after Nolan Richardson and John Brady and talking to Rob Evans and Jeremy Cox. Unless you get lucky, you never get any better than what you target and believe you can achieve. Hoop fans around this conference may ramp up the pressure. UALR went 20-11 this year and a number of their fans were grumbling at the end of the season about having such a low RPI that they weren't on the radar of the NIT or CBI with 20 wins. They were questioning what should be realistic goals. I think we have a better idea of what those can be now. That's the biggest impact WKU's Sweet 16 run or USA's at-large berth can have on the league. Raising the standard for what is acceptable job performance.

Normally coaches handle their own scheduling in basketball. MTSU's RPI didn't hurt USA and kept them alive in the hunt for an at-large. If MTSU had beaten WKU in the finals, USA might have been knocked out because it would have reduced the quality of their sweep of WKU.

Dollars to the conference so far for this year's basketball performances. CUSA - $570,000 WAC - $190,000 Sun Belt - $760,000 The NIT, CBI, WNCAA, and WNIT are cover expenses at best propositions.

It is expected that a unit will be worth $190,000 this year. At the end of the year (fiscal year I think) each conference gets a check based on the number of units earned the past six years. We would have received $1,140,000 if this had been like every other season of late. Because we were one and done all those years. USA's at-large bid raised that to $1,330,000. WKU's win over Drake raised it to $1,520,000. WKU's win over San Diego raised it to $1,710,000. So even if WKU loses the next game and we go back to being one and done and the value of units does not increase, the Sun Belt will receive just under $600,000 more per year for six years. Over the next six years, this season's performance will be worth $3.4 million for the Sun Belt.

A Cessna Citation left Jonesboro for Fayetteville this morning and was scheduled to have already returned but weather in Fayetteville has grounded the plane.