Arkstfan

Call me when you figure out how to get some of the 3.5 million cars that drive past Fouts every day to stop. Then you can start calling around to get fitted for bigger britches.

The margin of error for a Sun Belt school is thin. Once Larry Fedora left MT as offensive coordinator they were never the same under Andy Mac. ASU had recruited a hot shot high school QB who was expected to take over the offense as a red-shirt freshman, he got hurt in Spring and couldn't get medical clearance to play again. We were stuck with a lousy QB. We signed a juco QB as a filler expecting a juco transfer who had played at Wisconsin to be the man. He had eligibility issues and the filler became the starter. Most of us have the depth to survive surprises at a few positions but not at all positions.

Yep, you drove through Weiner (home of the Rice Festival) on the way to Jonesboro. A small community can keep a Division I program afloat because we don't compete as much for the sports dollar. Within 150 miles of Jonesboro there are two professional football teams, both in AF2. There are two professional baseball teams, a Class AA team and a Class AAA. There is one hockey team (CHL). There is now only one pro basketball team (NBA's Grizzlies in Memphis, the NBADL team in Little Rock has suspended operations). We raise around $1.3 million a year for athletics with most of it coming from within 30 minutes of the stadium. Any location has positives and negatives. Success comes from taking advantage of your positives and minimizing your negatives. With some exceptions urban schools have struggled to find a base in I-A football and yet have often done quite well developing a base for basketball. I wouldn't market ASU like UNT any more than I'd market a large enrollment school like UNT the same way I'd market SMU.

In the NFL the team winning the toss in OT wins 52% of the time which isn't that big of a deal but 28% of the time the team winning the toss scores without the kicking team touching the ball. If you lose the toss and don't give up a score on the opening drive you will win 66.6% of the time. Now the supposed logic for deferring is two-fold. First coaches believe that if their defense can stop the opening drive they have an advantage in the field position battle. The NFL OT numbers back that up. The AFCA has done its own study and found that the team that kicks off to start the game will generally get one more possession per game than the receiving team. I expect the rule change to have a huge impact. Not because the average return length will go up, I would rather expect it to fall, remember the average kick return is a bit over 20 yards. Teams with good return capability are already brining it out of the end zone. Average to poor are taking the touchback. They will now be catching the ball in the field of play and being forced to make a return. Last year when ASU played Auburn, they kicked off 6 times, 5 were touchbacks, 1 was returned to the 12. Against Oklahoma State six kickoffs 2 touchbacks, four returned none made it to the 20. UNT vs. Texas 9 kickoffs, 5 touchbacks, 4 returned to the 35, 28, 22, 4. Troy v. FSU. Five kickoffs, two big returns, one touchback, two short returns. If you've got coverage and pretty good kicker, you can actually force some bad field position with the longer kick. THE BIGGEST IMPACT Will be coaches. If they aren't confident, you will see a lot of shorter kicks aimed at the corners or kicked for height to help coverage, maybe even more squib kicks. Corner kicks produce a risk of kicking out-of-bounds giving up good field position. High kicks are shorter also helping field position and squib kicks also lack depth plus allow for misdirection plays by the return team.

Fixed that for ya!

1975 ASU was 11-0 and we were on the short list for the Tangerine (now Capital One) to face the MAC champion but they went with 7-4 South Carolina who had lost to Appalachian State. 1999 ASU was 4-7 and three plays from the Humanitarian. Lost to Idaho by 6 in OT after they had missed their PAT. QB was stopped a foot from the end zone. Got within 30 yards of the winning score against Utah State twice and came away empty. Win those two and we tie but lose the tiebreaker to Boise. Boise trailed Utah State 27-23 when they had what was described as broken play that resulted in a 77 yard TD. The old system is dead. ESPN is asking for even more bowl games, might as well give them to them and send every 7-5 or better team to post-season.

Las Vegas is still tied to the MWC because the game is in a MWC stadium. Heck the Independence Bowl Big 12/SEC started with the Southland Conference. If you look at the history of these deals, yeah its true that they often forget their roots. Fiesta did but that was in large part because stadium owner at the time Arizona State moved from the WAC. The Humanitarian left the Big West because Boise left. The Las Vegas left the Big West because UNLV left and left the WAC because UNLV left. The Holiday got too big for their britches. The I-Bowl got too big for their britches. The Citrus Bowl got too big and booted the MAC. I've got some fairly good contacts around the inter-collegiate athletic world. When UNLV left the Big West, Lafayette offered to start a game, but the Big West wanted to end the football only memberships so it ended up in Boise. When the Sun Belt started I had people who rarely ever get it wrong who told me there was no doubt that the new game would be at Cajun Field. Why didn't it happen that way? Simple we had a commissioner who was paying attention. A school hosting a bowl game has an edge in realignment. Going to a neutral site left everyone on the same level surface. Second why would a conference invest heavily in the success of a bowl game paying the organizing committee thousands, millions if the deal lasts long enough to get a bowl built to a higher level and then watch as the locals get stars in their eyes and start dreaming of Pac-10 #7 vs. Big East #6 as the path to the "big-time". You may think its penny ante but I think it shows fiduciary responsibility to make sure you are on the inside and protect your investment. We've got a sweet deal with New Orleans. Our contract only requires that we send A team. Doesn't have to be the champ. If someone is hot and the I-Bowl or Liberty is short, we are free to send the champ there as long as we send New Orleans a team and our investment is protected. In the cut-throat world of college athletics, that's just intelligent.

Wow. Do you KNOW why we have fewer bowl ties than the MAC, WAC, CUSA, MWC? Because we don't make enough basketball money to BUY our way in. When Troy went to the Silcon Valley, they used Movie Gallery to buy their spot, the MAC had locked in earlier in the year at nearly double the price. The Mountain West gave up its slot in the Liberty because to get that coveted $1.3 million payoff they had to agree to purchase $750,000 in advertising from the bowl and purchase $400,000 in tickets and guarantee that their team would be in Memphis a minimum of five nights prior to the game. The MAC got into the GMAC bowl by agreeing to purchase $300,000 in tickets and spend something on the neighborhood of $250,000 in advertising from the game. To get into the Independence Bowl ONE TIME and get the $1.2 million payout the MAC purchased $850,000 in advertising from the I-Bowl and agreed to purchase $350,000 in tickets and spend four or five nights in Shreveport.

You're just making crap up now. You do understand that the following bowls have been started and to some degree are run by other conferences or affiliated members. Humanitarian Hawaii Poinsettia New Mexico Motor City Las Vegas The Cotton Bowl was started by the SWC. The Fiesta and Holiday by the old WAC. The Music City Bowl has very close ties to the SEC. The Meinhke Car Care Bowl has very close ACC ties. To say a conference doesn't get respect because it's leadership is closely tied to a bowl game the league is affiliated with bears no relation to truth.

I don't think conference affiliation is that big of a deal in attendance. ^ It comes down to being entertaining and developing a sense of community. People have to feel like they saw a show worth the money they paid and they need social connection of feeling like they are part of something good. Winning does tend to be entertaining but a team floating around .500 most of the time can be entertaining as well. The community aspect is the hard part. South Carolina has drawn 60,000 or better for years and years and years. Prior to joining the SEC, ranked three times ever and 0-8 in bowls with the Liberty being the biggest bowl they had made it to. Haven't gotten above .500 all-time against the current members of any of the BCS auto berth conferences. Yet they have developed an incredible community of support and draw well. Now as to the ^ above. Conference membership can significantly help attendance if you are playing opponents who come in with a bunch of fans. Downside is they help negate your home field advantage. Boise State averaged 101% of stadium capacity because people came to see Boise play. Most of their opponents are a long way away and won't bring fans and I doubt that many of their fans really give a crap about San Jose State or La.Tech as opponents.

If I did my math right, it costs 350% more to attend TCU than UNT. That sort of cost differential skews the demographic of students and alumni. It also means a significant portion of potential ticket buyers will never follow TCU because it is perceived as a rich kid school. I suspect TCU draws a higher percentage of its student body from outside a 150 mile radius of campus than UNT. That means alumni more likely to disperse upon graduation. Guesstimating, but I'd bet that TCU turns out 1/3rd fewer alumni each year. Private schools have a tough battle to gain acceptance from the population at-large. I've lived in two places with private colleges and I've lived in two with state universities. State-supported institutions have a much easier time tapping into local civic pride. Now you of course have to always contend with those folks tying their loyalty to another bigger name in-state school but if you can trend correctly, you at least have greater potential to tap that market. A long-time observer of college football once offered this analysis, accuracy? No idea. His contention was that some schools were built mostly on alumni support while others had done better reaching the full community. He contended that Texas A&M had been more alumni driven than Texas, Auburn more alumni driven than Alabama, and Florida State more alumni driven than Florida. Not that all don't reach a lot of fans who never attended, just that they got to that point relying more alumni devotion. Now as to public vs. private. In general private schools are just flat facing an uphill battle. ACC. The three worst drawing programs in the conference in football are all private, including second worst attended Wake Forest who won the league last year. SEC. Worst drawing program in football was Vanderbilt last year. Big 10. Worst drawing program in football last year was Northwestern. Big 12. Worst was Baylor Big East. Syracuse was only third worst, ahead of Cincinnati and South Florida. Pac-10. The exception to the rule. USC leads the league, but in the last five years have not been ranked worse than 4th taken two national titles and won at least a share of the conference, heavily embraced by celebrity presence at games, no NFL competition, and they have an undergrad student body of 16,000 and another 16,000 grad students and have nearly 200,000 living alumni.

Green Tiger I think what you will find is that if a player has exhausted eligibility but hasn't completed a degree that the school can give them aid for one or two years to complete the undergrad degree.

I'm too lazy to look it up but off-hand I think if a player completes all of his playing eligibility they can only receive institutional aid based on: 1. Financial need the same as other students. 2. Academic merit the same as other students. 3. A degree COMPLETION program for student athletes which I don't think is available to a student-athlete who has completed his/her undergraduate degree. If my memory is correct, then there isn't any NCAA sanctioned way for UNT to pay for a former athlete's college expenses for a post-graduate degree when there is no playing eligibility left.

A side note for those who think La.Tech is rolling thanks to WAC membership. On the men's basketball side they've signed a home/home deal with SWAC member Arkansas-Pine Bluff (AKA an occasional buy 'em to come money game for UALR and ASU) and has signed a three for two contract with UALR (3 games at UALR in return for 2 at Tech).

Memphis has 65,000 seats without any decks. The Rose Bowl has 105,000 seats with no decks. So its physically possible. However the real money in college athletics is in having too few seats, not too many. You are better off turning 1,000 people away than you are selling those 1,000 seats and having surplus capacity.

Navy won't hook up with a 12 team league as a full member if at all possible because that means moving the Army/Navy game to a less lucrative date. Have no information about what might happen but I would expect that Army and Navy both would prefer a half membership where they play 4 teams from a conference each (half schedule) and are included as part of that conference's bowl agreements (ie Notre Dame and the Big East). I think the MAC might consider such a deal because it helps them with the icky 13 team scheduling mess they have. The MAC could treat the two as a single member for scheduling. The Sun Belt I think would eagerly agree to such a deal because it could be leveraged to pick up a third or fourth bowl game (ie. New Orleans takes champ, #2 and #3 and even #4 if there were one would take their choice of SBC/Army/Navy). CUSA? I can't see CUSA agreeing to anything short of full football membership before they would give up bowl access.

If they had really wanted to increase scoring and increase run backs they would have left the kickoff at the 35 and adopted a Canadian style rule that any punt or kickoff that is caught in the end zone or strikes the ground in the end zone scores one point for the kicking team if it isn't returned out of the end zone and the receiving team gets the ball on the 30 or 35. You would rarely see the single point awarded but you'd see a lot more returns.

Double rare. Beyond the fact it was apparently an early run, it doesn't have the correct logo. The official New Orleans Bowl logo included "at Lafayette" as part of it, and I don't recall any merchandise that was licensed not having that added if it used the bowl logo.

Under the new rule it goes to the 40.

The Indy Star numbers include FBS, FCS, and non-football Division I schools. There are schools out there that don't spend but about $5 million total. UNC-Asheville spent $3.1 million their entire athletic department and $2.1 million of it came from student fees and government/university funds. Nichols State spent $3.6 million wit $2.5 coming from the school. At the other end of spectrum Houston spent $22.6 million, $3.5 million from student fees and $8.9 million from the school.

According to an Indianapolis Star study, the AVERAGE Division I school has to have $5 million in either government or internal support either from straight budget transfers or student fees. Remember that average is held down by schools like LSU and Michigan that take zero dollars from the government, the institution or student fees.

Arkansas State alum Cleo Lemon still listed as co-starter at QB!

Who will it benefit? It will benefit the school that can get the fastest tacklers down the field. It will benefit the school that can get the best return guys behind the best blockers It will benefit the school best able to recruit guys who can kick to the end zone with the most hang time.

The NCAA essentially has no power. In the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, etc the governing body has total authority to determine how many franchises may exist and have some limited authority to determine the territory they may compete in. In those systems the governing body came first (not totally accurate in regards to MLB but never mind that) and each franchise was created by fiat of the association. In the NCAA the members created the governing body and retain the control. Some time back the governance structure was modified so that in Division I governance is on a conference basis rather than an institution basis (one school, one vote has basically been repealed and may only be invoked in very limited circumstances). While 120 teams divided by 10 conferences makes math sense it makes no reality sense. The ultimate power in Division I rests in the hands of 11 university presidents, one from each FBS conference. In that group there is no reason for the representatives of the Sun Belt, WAC, MWC, Pac-10, Big East and Big 12 to mandate 12 member football conferences. That's 6 of 11 votes. There is no reason for the SEC, ACC, Big 12, and to lesser degrees CUSA and MAC to mandate 12 member football conferences because more conference title games dilutes the value of their own title game product. Essentially none of the 11 have any incentive to make it happen. As to Army and Navy, they have a lucrative television deal for their game. Joining a 12 member conference moves that game off the last Saturday of the season reducing the value of the game. CUSA's bent toward a 12th team provided strong incentive for Army to leave. A national CBS audience on a date with few games is worth much more to them than being one of many the week before. The NCAA is facing a number of significant issues. The three biggest right now are the growth of Division I (not in the football area but basketball), the growth of Division III, and the possibility of the NAIA collapsing. In Division I there has been rapid growth with schools like Central Arkansas, South Dakota State, North Dakota State, Cal-Davis, Longwood, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Utah Valley, etc moving into Division I. Some already have a conference home but there are others along with some independents who in the near term may align to form Division I's 32nd conference. Once the 32nd legal conference forms we have to move to a second play-in game has to be added and additional Tournament shares awarded diluting the pool. An extra conference also means an added share paid out for the direct conference support. Each school added also means additional revenue sharing from the other pools (one paying based on number of sports sponsored, another paying based on number of scholarships awarded). The growth in Division I means less money for UNT and less money for Texas. Forget football in this equation because the only revenue sharing in football is in the independently run BCS which is a private association of the 11 FBS conferences. Division III is a big issue. The Division's membership is strongly divided nearly in half over a number of issues, such as: inital eligibility, continuing eligibility, red-shirting, limits on other forms of aid, and playoff participation. Division III has become so large that getting a playoff spot is very difficult. Many observers believe that Division III will be split into III & IV. Division III will be highly restrictive and IV a bit looser. The issue may end up being how free-wheeling IV can be because there is some belief that a less restrictive Division IV that does not allow "ability based" aid but allows some sort of need based aid set by formula behind the straight Federal student aid system could result in a number of Division II teams moving into IV. We've got similar systems in Division I. For example the Patriot caps aid to student athletes based on a financial need basis. If mom and dad are making good money a quarterback might get zero dollars but the running back with a poor family might get what is roughly equal to a full-ride at other schools. The next issue is the NAIA. The NCAA already had a moratorium on schools moving from the NAIA to Division III and will phase that out by permitting five schools per year to move. The thought is that if they removed the roadblocks that the NAIA could lose at least half or more of its 300 members essentially killing the association and making the NCAA's monopoly situation even worse placing it under even greater legal and legislative scrutiny. Some significant lawsuits involving the NCAA have turned on the fact that there is an alternate association even though it is not seen as a particularly attractive alternative (Tarkanian v. NCAA). What the NCAA needs right now is breathing room. My expectation is that there will be a change to FBS/FCS membership. FBS members will be those schools who are a member of one of the 11 conferences that sponsor FBS football as long as they retain the 8 required members and those members meet the current criteria or will be schools not in those conferences who meet a significantly higher standard, with the justification being that a school in a conference has the support network in place to play FBS football while independents without the built-in scheduling and post-season opportunities will need to demonstrate a higher degree of internal support. That will essentially freeze FBS membership except when a conference chooses to add a member. Division I membership standards will be raised requiring more scholarships awarded and maybe more sports. Division III will be split into III and IV.