ColoradoEagle

The SEC is already at 16. Seeing them go to 18 or 20 would be wild. Not out of the realm of possibility, I would just assume that the PAC12, B1G, and ACC all get to 16 first.

I have to believe this rumor, because every conference ends up winning except CUSA, which stays losing. It's the natural order.

Kevin Sumlin might be available.

This has always been the dumbest damn thing to me, and it's been almost 20 years now since I went to my first game. No matter how the North Texas chant starts, it always ends with people bored of doing it and getting quieter and quieter. Would it really be that difficult to coordinate "North... Texas... North... Texas... North... Texas... (both sides) NORTH TEXAS" or "GO MEAN GREEN". This is low hanging fruit and it's so sad that this simple of a thing isn't worth anyone's time or effort in the athletic department.

My posts are getting repetitive, so I'll just leave it at people are anointing UTSA when they have shown nothing historically to earn that praise the way programs like UCF or Cincinnati have. I think discussions of an undefeated 2021 season are a bit premature.

Yeah, but then they played lights out for three years, including an undefeated season and Peach Bowl win over Georgia. UTSA went 7-5 and lost in the First Responders Bowl to a Sun Belt team...

Are you talking about football? They're rumored to be on the waiting list for the Big 12. If you're talking about attendance, their attendance did get a decent bump from being ranked. Keep in mind, you're not going to see the same gigantic leap in attendance for a small private school as you would a large public school. They did get a ton of media coverage for that and when they were running the table in basketball. I don't think you can really parlay lack of history into promise of future success. In their first 9 years (not counting this season) they went 48-60. If they really hit the ground hard, I could see some of the argument for it being a program on the come up. But they've been basically an average G5 program, and all the current talk is ~potential~, which plenty of schools, including our own, have.

If either program were to start racking up top 25 rankings, they'd deliver their markets. You'd see wall to wall coverage in San Antonio or DFW. The Alamo Dome would sell out. Apogee would sell out. Some games may need to be played at Jerry World until Apogee can be expanded. But neither team is in that situation. That's why if you're comparing apples to apples, UNT is in a far better position than UTSA, as you said. The past 13 months are not going to determine who ends up in which conference.

I'm not saying ours is much better. However, the "they have no competition in the SA market!" part doesn't match up with reality. So if they can't even beat us in attendance, it means that whole argument holds no water.

Success is fleeting, though, for most G5 teams. They haven't really proved anything yet, and they have some severe negatives (low athletic budget, rented football stadium, laughable basketball arena, no basketball success, etc). The one thing they have going for them is exclusivity in the San Antonio market, but that isn't helping them fill up the Alamo Dome or anything. It's hard to reconcile 'possibly a sleeping giant, because of the San Antonio market' with the first two games of the season drawing 16k. If anything, their history and lack of attendance show they're a project.

Enough people on here parroting this line that you'd think UTSA is some world beating, top 10 ranked football program. They went 7-5 last year folks and a combined 22-38 the five years before that. Tap the damn brakes.

I would be surprised if anything happens before the end of the season. Mac was fired mid-season, but that was also a wildly humiliating loss to an FCS team and we were 0-5 at that point. This was a very lopsided loss to the team a lot of people expect to win CUSA East. Also keep in mind that Seth probably has the tiniest bit more leash this year since last year was not standard. Not justifying anything, just saying it's not the same situation as 2015.

Pride. Also why it will never happen.

Stadium is local channel 47-1 in DFW. It’s also on Sling, Fubo, YouTube TV, and the Roku Channel.

I would be in favor of joining an AAC that reloads with Colorado State, Air Force, North Texas, and UAB. If CSU and AFA don't move, then MWC is the better option compared with an AAC that reloads with 4 CUSA schools.

Mini IPF, Moody is probably a push with the SP after the renovation, Apogee is noticeably better than Ford. Mostly our facilities are just newer, thus slightly better and not wildly better.

What doesn't make sense to me is UNT instead of SMU in this rumor. SMU has a much bigger athletics budget, more success on the field/court, and better academics. The only place where they lag us is in facilities, and barely. Only guess, if there's any truth to it, is that SMU told them to pound sand. That'd be a hard stance to take in this day and age.

Nah, McCarney had us at 5 and 4 wins the two seasons prior to the CUSA invite. We weren't the worst in FBS, but we weren't far off.

When we were in the Sun Belt, it was pretty suffocating. A bunch of schools that were never able to get over the hump, and it severely limited recruiting. That conference made smart decisions in bringing up FCS powers to shake up that perception and limitation. Since we've been in CUSA, it's not been the conference holding us back. All our wounds are self-inflicted.

The media is surface level. Also it's a bit of a feedback loop. If someone starts saying "UTSA is a sleeping giant who could dominate San Antonio," then they're all going to buy into that to some degree, despite there really being nothing to back that statement up other than ~potential~. And honestly, I'm not even trying to pick on UTSA. As Rowdy said above, we all have struggles unique to our schools. My aim is more to show that the narrative in the media of UTSA being the next big thing is not backed up by cold, hard facts. It's based purely on a "What If..." situation.

Quoting myself here instead of muddying up an already long post. The one thing I noticed putting this all together is that if anyone were going based on winning alone, La Tech is #1 and it's not even close. They've had the most wins in each of the categories the past 10 years. I expect them to become more and more a part of the realignment discussion.

I spend half my days working with spreadsheets, so I wanted to quantify this in a way that isn't colored in perceptions. I made a comparison in 10 categories. I weighted in the following order: Football - 30% Basketball - 15% Facilities - 15% Financials - 15% Location/Media Market - 15% It Factor/Perception 10%* - *I actually doubled this number just to make a point All categories are a ranking out of a possible 10 with some ties. Highest rank gets 10 points, lowest gets 1. This applies to all except facilities, location, and media market. Those are calculated as follows: Facilities - I did my best to rank these based on prior knowledge and pictures only. Schools could get up to 10 points for a new stadium. 2 points were removed if the school doesn't own the stadium. 2 points were removed (red) if no IPF. I left UAB at 8, despite their IPF not really being an IPF. Basketball arena was pure eyeball and no adjustments were made (eg. IPF with football) Location - If the school is within the footprint, they automatically get 2 (poor UTEP). If they're next to a major international airport, 8 points are added. If they're near secondary airport, 6 points are added. If they're near a regional airport, 4 points. Media Market - This is the only category to go to 100. Schools get a percentage based on their market size compared with the largest DMA of the options (DFW). Just to talk for a moment about the "It Factor" and Perception...I think this is vastly overrated. Short of a team coming off back to back top 25 appearances, I'm not sure why anyone would gravitate towards one school more than the other for a realignment that could last years or even decades. That said, not only did I make it 10% of the ranking, I doubled the points as an added handicap. You'll notice the only school I marked worse than UNT is Charlotte in that category. This is not justification for people's reactions (or my view of UNT), so much as trying to work perceived bias into what will no doubt be an overall picture these conferences look at. So with all of that out of the way... *Quick note for Rice financials. They're undisclosed, so I gave them half a point for each. Could be higher or lower, but not really fair to assume either direction.