Arkstfan

Eagle you are missing the point. Name means NOTHING. Would you rather be in a Sun Belt that has all the CUSA Texas schools and call it the Sun Belt, or would you rather be in a conference called CUSA that had Marshall, ECU, UCF, FIU, FAU, Troy and none of the Texas CUSA schools? There are two key players. TV execs and bowl organizers. The names mean nothing to them just who is in them. If CUSA membership dramatically changes the new CUSA will not keep the bowl ties or the TV merely because of the shoulder patch, those will be determined solely based on what value TV and bowls see in the new alignment. I don't give tinkers damn what label applies to a conference. You can call that conference out west the WAC all you want but the bottom line is Arizona and Arizona State aren't there any more so the WAC is no longer tied to the Fiesta. UNLV isn't there any more so they are no longer tied to the Las Vegas Bowl, San Diego State isn't there any more so they are no longer tied to either bowl in San Diego. Those WAC shoulder patches didn't help them keep any of that. As to building the conference. You damn well better care what the rest of the league is doing because if it is doing poorly it means a good UNT program can miss opportunities, UNT failed to improve in the early years of the Sun Belt and promptly went from winning 30 something games in a row to losing 10 out of 14 tries and did it with teams that were as good as some of the champion teams. Don't feel like you are special because you are UNT fan first. Unless you are on the league payroll no SANE human is anything but a fan of their team first and foremost. When UNT is in non-conference play win 'em all because its good for the reputation of the league ASU is in. When you play ASU, UNT needs to go down in flames, and when playing anyone else in conference play my sole interest is in seeing the team win that makes my path to the title the simplest. Everyone feels that way if they've got even the barest capability to think beyond "me hungry". If the egos and banty rooster strutting ever clear out of the way CUSA and Sun Belt for the sake of ALL the teams need to realign geographically. I don't care boo about FIU and FAU except as it directly relates to ASU. ECU has made it clear they don't care boo about SMU-Rice. SMU and UNT need to be in the same league. Same goes for ASU and Memphis, same goes for FIU/FAU/UCF, same for UAB/Troy

AUUUUUGGGGHHHHHHH You have just proven yourself to be the new Craig Thompson. When the Sun Belt and American South merged they opted for the Sun Belt name because the Sun Belt had better TV contracts. Guess what. They ALL EXPIRED WITHIN TWO YEARS AND DIDN'T GET RENEWED! The people who run the GMAC bowl don't care whether they are contracted with a conference called CUSA, Sun Belt, or Dippity Doo. They want teams close enough to bring fans but far enough to rent hotel rooms, who will play an entertaining game. When the Mountain West formed, people laughed and said they were in trouble because the WAC had all the TV and bowl contracts. Well TV said, we had a contract with a league that had these 16 members and 8 of them are gone and you've added a new team, renegotiate for less money or we will declare the contract breached. The WAC 16 sent teams to Las Vegas, Liberty, one of the Hawaii bowls and got lucky and snuck TCU into the Sun Bowl when the Big 10 was short but they had only two bowl deals. The WAC had three games under contract. The next year the MWC plays its first season locked into the Las Vegas Bowl, the Liberty Bowl and ended up with a team in the Motor City. That 8 team group had two contracts vs. the 3 the 16 team league had and sent another at-large. Let's call the eastern alignment Sun Belt and western CUSA for the sake of argument and look at the bowls. New Orleans. No change they'll still take SBC vs. CUSA. Pappajohns. Currently Big East vs. CUSA, would become Sun Belt because of the eastern schools. GMAC. Currently MAC vs. CUSA could go either direction based on who ends up in which group or might even dump the MAC and go SBC v. CUSA (I suspect Mobile is considering a second game so both could end up tied in along with the MAC, and either Big 12, Big East, or ACC) Texas Bowl is Big 12 vs Big East/CUSA. With a more regional league could drop the Big East tie. Liberty. CUSA v. SEC. Probably aligns with whichever side takes Memphis. Armed Forces. CUSA v. Mountain West, aligns with the western schools. So you would likely see the eastern Sun Belt aligned with New Orleans, Birmingham, Memphis and maybe Mobile and the western CUSA aligned with New Orleans, Houston, Fort Worth, and maybe Mobile. As to television, a western CUSA is made for Fox SW in addition to whatever ESPN and CSTV deals can be cut. An eastern Sun Belt is probably ESPN, CSTV, and some mix of regionals.

Space I've commented on your post on Beltboard so I won't rehash here. Gray I keep having a hard time figuring the Big East situation out. I think a 9th football member is important. Come 2009 every FBS conference except the Big East will play an 8 or 9 game conference schedule except the Big East who will play 7. That makes non-conference scheduling difficult and it gives you the 3/4 split which is pretty lousy. I see the Big East going one of two ways. 1. Split football and basketball and that would likely mean adding a full member and probably would also mean that Notre Dame would follow as a non-football member. That would give them 10 hoops and 9 football and that's about as sweet as it gets (18 game double round robin in basketball, 8 game round robin in football). If that were the case, I think Temple is a solid front-runner because the value of the Big East basketball TV contract would take a huge hit for the football schools with no New York, Chicago, or Philadelphia (three of the four largest TV markets) adding Temple helps that despite their awful football and absent stretching all the way to Memphis no other candidate brings credible basketball. If the Big East does that, there is no impact and the CUSA/Sun Belt/Tech group is still 22 mis-aligned schools that can be reformed into a 12 and a 10 team conference each more regional. 2. Count the dollars and find that Big East 16 works (and that is quite possible) in that case add a football only member. Only Temple, Army, Navy, and Notre Dame could join Big East football and not lose their basketball conference membership. Notre Dame won't and Army and Navy have said no. Temple as football only doesn't make sense. So who else would consider it and be potentially viable? East Carolina, Marshall, and Central Florida. UAB and Memphis wouldn't do it. If the Big East took that plan of action then CUSA could lose UCF, ECU or Marshall, one but not all. That still leaves CUSA, Sun Belt, Tech as 21 misaligned schools that can be reformed into a 9 and and 12 team conference each more regional. When you look at the map two groups naturally align together due to geography or affinity. In the west UTEP, SMU, Rice, Houston, UNT, Tulsa, Tulane, ULL. In the east Marshall, ECU, UCF, FIU, FAU, Troy, UAB, MTSU, WKU. The remaining schools, Tech, ULM, ASU, Memphis, USM due to where they are easily can plug into either group. ASU for example would happily align with SMU, Rice, Houston because we are the only folks outside of Texas who have a market that still regards those schools as having name value due to Arkansas's SWC membership, yet we would just as happily align east with Memphis and USM because Memphis is our oldest series and we are only 70 miles apart and USM is well regarded here, ASU would consider itself to have won the realignment war if it ended up with the former SWC schools or if it ended up with Memphis. USM could easily go west with nearby Tulane or east with UAB and Memphis. Memphis is like ASU at cross-roads between the two and could go either direction though I suspect they would go east if one of the east schools went Big East because it gives better basketball prospects. Tech and ULM likewise are geographically suited to go either direction. It's that middle flexibility of who goes where that makes this appealing. The core eastern and western groups come out feeling like winners because they have shed those folks so dang far away and there are positives to each group for the central group so that they can walk away from such a realignment feeling like they have won as well.

Look at the Sun Belt and CUSA on a map. There is no similar overlap of similar teams. The WAC used to look like a doughnut with the MWC and Sun Belt filling the hole. That isn't as true now since the western belt left but the MWC is pretty compact for a western league. You have the front range schools, the Utah schools, UNLV, SDSU, and TCU. Very compact for the west except for TCU. If you live in Denver you could drive to 6 schools easily for a game and come back home that night. The MWC schools are on the same page. The WAC schools are more spead out but mostly on the same page and for the most part a WAC school can't be added to improve the MWC's fit. MAC pretty compact and on the same page. But CUSA... that's a different world. SMU, Tulsa, Tulane, Rice fundamentally look at athletics differently from the other 8. Marshall, ECU, UCF, and USM basically play basketball because they have to. They fundamentally look at their athletic programs differently from the other 8. Memphis, UTEP, UAB and to a lesser degree Houston understand playing high level basketball, get them cornered and the fans and administration at Memphis and UAB, and probably UTEP and maybe Houston would choose a Final Four appearances over top 10 in football. Any two of those groups can likely find enough common ground to co-exist, all three, not likely. How different are they? The four privates campaigned against 12 game seasons in football the other 8 were strong advocates. Memphis and UAB argued against going to 12 when TCU bailed and actually advocated going to 9 rather than 12. Only bringing UTEP into the mix appeased them. The Sun Belt / CUSA competitive gap is narrowing, if not for a really strong Memphis this year the two were fairly close in basketball last year and if not for the FIU disaster football was close. If those gaps continue to narrow the question of why are are putting up with people we don't get along with will be asked and the question of why are we playing someone hundreds and hundreds of miles away when someone just as good is close enough to bus to will be asked and a shake-up is the next logical step.

Real grad 88, you are correct. If you look at the current alignments outside the rich six leagues, CUSA and Sun Belt are the most geographically out of whack. The idea of UNT and SMU players waving at each other as they both board planes to Florida or West Virginia is bizarre. ASU and Memphis standing in the same airport catching flights to Florida or North Carolina is completely out of whack. Sooner or later that is going to cause a CUSA/Sun Belt shuffle.

Pretty neat. Not sure how all-time winning percentage fits in given that the number takes into account games played before the player was born, the player's parents were born, and possibly the player's grandparents at some schools and also takes into account games played by some schools while in the NAIA, Division III, Division II, I-AA or played while a junior college. A minor quibble but overall a nice idea, glad someone has time to track it.

Yeah Arkansas is staying put. I agree Colorado only leaves for the Pac-10. I've spent a lot of time in Boulder, they fit the Pac-10 model. Baylor, agree completely. Every conference needs somebody to wail on on the field. Pac 10. Colorado State doesn't fit the Pac-10 model. BYU with never on Sunday and their views on certain lifestyles would never be tolerated in the Pac 10, Fresno is part of the state system rather than University of California system, automatic disqualification, Utah wouldn't be a bad choice if they could get their support up instead of it going 45 minutes down the road to BYU. MWC expansion? Iffy that they expand, MWC was formed over rivals not playing every year, without a 9 game league schedule some games are going to have to be skipped. CUSA expand? Not without a loss and that's not terribly likely soon, a parting of ways within the league (see Metro Conference break-up and Great Midwest formation) is possible. SBC image slowly improving. The first three Thursdays of the season feature games with Belt teams, that's quicker than I ever expected. Facility wise we've passed the MAC, just have to execute. Build a fan base is the only option for UNT. Changing conferences doesn't mean much if the league you join changes (see La.Tech's happy affilation with SMU, Rice, Tulsa) or you don't have the resources to compete at the new conference level. Cellar dweller sucks unless paid handsomely for the role. Boise has demonstrated that not being in the best non-BCS league (generally not even second best) is no bar to national recognition.

Pointless comment there. If a school gets it act together the conference gets better, if it doesn't, they weigh us down. Nobody gives a crap about building the conference except in pushing the bottom schools to get their feces together and stop being a liability. The only concern I have toward the conference in wanting ASU to continue its improvement is that everyone else be working on that same goal so we can get better power ratings and a better perception. Conference improvement is nothing but short-hand for everyone needs to work on fixing their problems. FIU last year was a prime example. In Sagarin where you are comparing results, it is difficult to assign true value to how strong a team is when it doesn't win and they undervalue. FIU went winless and hurt everyone's power ratings. Conversely when you don't lose it is hard to assign value which has resulted in such oddities as Harvard being top 40 a few years ago or Boise being ranked over teams like Wisconsin or Auburn that it would have been very unlikely to beat.

Just summer boredom. The final say on conference membership is the beast called the university president or chancellor. They might agree to join a different club but they aren't likely to kick people out of their club (see the Board of Directors over-ruling the Management Council on I-A criteria). The only kick-outs I can think have involved serious scandals or a wink and nod from the school being kicked out. Arkansas to the Big 12? Makes wonderful geographic sense, but compare checks. Arkansas is staying put. Pac 10 requires a unanimous vote to expand and absent Texas and Colorado coming calling that's unlikely and both said no when they finally got around to an invite. Real football talk can't arrive soon enough

16 can only work when you have a cluster of 8 that doesn't care if they play the other 8 and vice versa. In basketball that just isn't the case with the Big East. What they need is for the football 8 to leave if they can convince Notre Dame to come. Notre Dame doesn't have to join in football but just agree to play a limited set of non-conference games against them. If they then added one football member they'd be in great shape, 9 for football giving a balanced schedule and 10 for basketball giving a balanced schedule without open dates.

A ton depends on what the Big East football schools want to do next. Right now it appears they wanted someone that would join football only. Army/Navy make sense. Looking around the universe. UCF and ECU would do it because hoops are an after thought. Memphis would not. But what if the Big East football schools choose to leave the non-football schools? Temple all of a sudden becomes viable. The Big East TV contract is huge in large part because the basketball component is huge. A football Big East loses presence in the #1, #3, #4, #8, and #33 television markets for basketball. Temple despite their problems become viable because of their strong basketball support in Philadelphia. If playing the weaker MAC schedule under the new coach revives their football program, they become even more viable. The only reason Temple got kicked out in the first place is because the president who had previously killed football at another school didn't do the usual dance with the Big East of sitting down with the commissioner and explaining the latest version of the great plan to meet the Big East standards and get a waiver. He sat down said Temple didn't meet the standards and never would and left the commissioner no choice. The president thought that would allow him to kill football. Instead the board got fired up and begged the Big East to let them stay, but the commissioner had already made the thing public and only extended how long before they were expelled. Temple did not leave on bad terms and outside of the president, still has a great relationship with the other members.

Just like the old joke. Coach sits down at his new desk and finds a note from the previous coach and three numbered envelopes. The note says when things are really bad open an envelope. The team goes 1-11 He opens the first enevelope and it says. Blame me So he tells everyone things will be better when his recruits are playing. The fans are satisfied. The next year they go 3-9 He opens the next envelope and it says.. Blame the media The coach rants about bad press and message boards hurting the team and recruiting. The fans are satisfied. The next year they go 4-8 He opens the next envelope and it says... Prepare three envelopes. Dodge will get a pass this year unless there are just wild mistakes like not getting the right number of players on the field at critical times. No matter what happens long-term, Dodge will be worth his money for the next two years simply due to the positive attitude brought to fans and for the attention created for the casual fan UNT needs to lure in to fund a high caliber program.

The first high school seniors who entered what is now Central Florida are around 58 years old now. The first high school seniors who entered the year they added Division III football are around 46 years old now. The first high school seniors who entered the year they went to Division I-AA football are around 35 years old now.

You sound like my mom. Or me talking to my son.

It means one trip every other year in football and several other sports and one trip a year in men's and women's basketball and some other sports. In other words not much of a burden. Count noses. The WAC has six schools together for five or more years and 9 together for four or more years after this upcoming season. A Division I conference wanting an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament needs 7 members. Six must be together for five years, but if a program leaves there is a two year grace period. This is the first season since the great CUSA migration that the WAC could lose a member and fall within the grace period.

Tech cannot leave because they do not have the financial base to do it. Again back to the numbers. Spending $8,000 less than Arkansas State but pulling in $1 million more in league revenue and $1 million more in game guarantees. The difference is in donations, sponsorships, ticket sales, and athletic fees. They can't add enough in game guarantees to assure they can make budget. Without special dispensation from the WAC they have to play a lame duck season there with no conference revenue. How do you play a year of a WAC schedule as the only central time zone team with $1 million sliced from your budget? Obviously they could divert at lot of their current expenditures once out, but you've got to survive to get there, and after all the CUSA or bust talk from the leadership and all the talk about separation, etc., how do you return to the Sun Belt without losing some donors? You can scrape by on a barely make-it budget much more easily than you can survive a one-time $1 million hit to the budget. Tech will not be back unless the situation becomes so critical and the rest of the WAC so ready to have them gone that they are willing to permit an immediate departure or they are willing to let them go lame duck for a year and still draw a league check. I suspect Tech's long-term planning at this point is to hope that the Big East takes a CUSA school in the next three years or so and they end up getting the opening.

The Sun Belt is a crap shoot in any given year. The 2003 UNT squad was an impressive 4-0 on the road in the Sun Belt and the largest margin of victory on the road was 10 points. An injury, the wrong guy getting the stomach flu, a pass dropped by a d-back is caught instead and it could have fallen apart that easily. In 2005, ASU gave up one sustained drive to ULM, a two-minute drill comeback, that was only relevant because of an earlier pick by ULM setting up a TD. Hold off ULM and we take the league outright. Likewise ULL salts away a 15 point lead over ASU at the start of the 4th quarter that season and ULL could have won the conference. In 2006, Troy recovers an onside kick on the way to scoring twice in under 2:30 to beat MTSU sending Troy to the New Orleans Bowl. Weird things change the fate of a season. In 2005 ASU's wildly inconsistent placekicker hit walk-off game-winners in consecutive games and hit three field goals in a 9-3 win over Troy. Last year ULM misses a chance to tie Kansas thanks to a missed PAT and then falls short on a 2 point conversion that could have sent the Kentucky game to overtime. FIU missed a PAT that would have tied MTSU, a PAT against USF AND fumbled to set-up a short drive that gave USF a one point win, FIU threw a pick on a pass that could have beaten Maryland, and had a PAT blocked that helped lead to the 7 OT game with UNT. While the conference is better than it was in 2001 and has shown continual progress, depth is a major issue, couple that with closely matched teams and you can get some pretty wild results.

Yeah but the site supposedly deducts points for acquittals but they've yet to do so.

ASU had five arrested in a single incident related to a frat party and they were all acquitted.

In 2005-06 Tech received $1 million more from the WAC than ASU did from the Sun Belt and $1 million more in game guarantees and spent $8,000 less on athletics.

There was never a WAC offer to take 2 Sun Belt teams when UTEP left. All that was offered was to snub Idaho in favor of UNT and then a threat to leave UNT twisting in the wind by taking the Cajuns and leaving UNT and Idaho out. ASU and MTSU were only spoken to as possible 9th teams in the event UNT and ULL turned down offers.

You are correct. Idaho wasn't on the table. The offer was only to UNT who wanted time. The WAC told UNT take it or the Cajuns will. They called the Cajuns who laughed in their face and promptly sent UL System data on La.Tech's revenue and expenses to UNT. The WAC inquired of MTSU and ASU but did not offer and found a similar warm reception. UNT countered with a 12 team format and the WAC said NO and UNT with the real numbers staring them in the face declined. Then the WAC ended up inviting Idaho.

What SHOULD have been done was to go to 16 because that could have been done correctly. An 8 team Western Division and an 8 team Eastern Division with a three tier television package. A national coverage package, a regional package independently negotiated for each division, with any leftover inventory for the teams to deal with. A more "eat-what-you-kill" approach to revenue sharing for TV, any bowl net revenue, and basketball, that addresses Fresno's opposition to the big expansion and unlike the old WAC 16 where rivalries had to be split up, that alignment would not have split rivalries and would have led to very limited inter-divisional play.

The WAC was pitched the idea of 12 teams (sans Idaho) taking four Sun Belt schools plus Tech and NMSU to form an eastern division and they rejected that idea. The bottom line for a Central time zone school is this. 1. Tech has made some fair money but those numbers have been temporary. - The final year that UTEP, Rice, SMU, Tulsa were in the league they forfeited their share of league revenue so it was only split 6 ways rather than 10. - USU, Idaho, and NMSU paid $750,000 each in entry fees. That boosted per team revenue sharing in the WAC by $375,000. If UNT had been in the WAC last season the conference check would have been less than that. The WAC shared around $10 million split nine ways. If UNT had accepted it would have been split 10 ways reducing it by about $200,000 and then another $250,000 for entry fee. - The BCS revenue is a one-time thing that can't be counted on. Boise doesn't return a pick 61 yards for a TD against Wyoming or fails to get in field goal range on its final possession against San Jose State and you might have had Notre Dame in the BCS and Boise is playing its bowl game at home. 2. Check Tech's budget. It is roughly a Sun Belt budget but they aren't putting money in facilities at the pace of Sun Belt schools. Check this site put together by Tech fans that shows the deficiencies in facilities there. What upgrades are underway are upgrades we were all (or most of us) were bragging about 1 to 5 years ago but ours were paid for out of our regular budgets and fund-raising, their's are being funded in large part by the one-time money from WAC entry fees and BCS revenue. They had to play some road games in women's basketball in home jerseys because they had been delayed being able to get new road uniforms. Tennis nearly had to forfeit out of the WAC tournament one season because of a budget short-fall. To make budget they've played three money games a year five out of seven seasons. 3. The time zone issue cannot be pushed aside. A 7:00 pm Hawaii kickoff or tipoff is 11:00 pm here. A game that finishes the next day isn't in the next day's paper. The value of radio ads on the network are diminished by the late time. A 7:00 pm Pacific time zone game is a 9:00 pm here. That means limited if any write-up the next day and again a lowered value to the radio network for games that are heard so late at night.

You can cut it any way you like it but absent that one time check and the bonus checks while Idaho, NMSU, and USU were paying their dues to join and the WAC is a more expensive proposition. Some time one of the newspapers there did an article comparing costs and found it about dead even, problem was the years they based it on Tech went to Hawaii in a non-conference game and played Rice and Tulsa in conference play. Think of every sport UNT uses a bus for most or all conference games. In the WAC, Tech has to fly to every single one of them.