ChristopherRyanWilkes

I don’t think that’s even close to the main factor. SMU easily fits the AAC profile and we don’t. We are close, but outside the top 4 candidates all things being equal and without any SMU animosity. I put UAB, Army, Rice, Charlotte, and FIU ahead of us. Now if Army isn’t interested, things may get interesting.

He thinks they are one of the viable options based on Big 12 fit, but I’m not convinced. I think Big 12 ignores academics and goes with football in this next round and grabs Boise State and Memphis. They could easily stand pat as well. Any move to the MWC would make more sense if Boise State is gone.

A consultant did a fascinating presentation on a Big 12 radio show where he took a look at all of the metrics most important to college ADs and presidents and compiled it into several insightful graphs. He found that the recent Big 12 additions made perfect sense not only from a football standpoint but also based on academic culture and overall sports success. He made a similar finding with all the other conferences, and also the newly formed "alliance" of the Big 10, ACC, and Pac-12, who all have schools that best balance academic and athletic success. I thought this graph was especially telling: A few notes that are relevant to UNT and our hopes of getting into a better conference in this round of realignment: Fans tend to overemphasize recent football success, but that is only one factor of many that administrators look at. Football is only one part of a school's overall "brand," and they want to be grouped with other schools that fit that brand. Your school's President and overall trajectory is also important. He factors in all of this in the graph above. We are definitely not a slam dunk for either the MWC or the AAC. The fit problem with the AAC is that we are not either an academically prestigious private school or a school that is successful enough in sports to offset that fact. Just based on the metrics, the only slam dunks I see for them are Rice or Army. We fit better with the MWC as far as school profile goes, as the MWC is composed primarily of "quasi-commuter schools" of average academic prestige in the western US. We also have Smastresk who presumably has relationships from his time at UNLV. That could be a big advantage. Our fit problem with the MWC is that we are geographically distanced and would not elevate the conference either academically or athletically in any way. Since the MWC doesn't have to expand anymore, they probably have no reason to bring in any schools that would instantly be in the bottom half of the conference. We probably group where we currently are better than we do with either the AAC or MWC. I know this isn't what most want to hear, but facts are facts. He terms our group the G-3, composed of the Sunbelt, CUSA, and MAC. These are all composed of schools that struggle either academically, athletically, or both relative to their FBS counterparts. Given all this, things may end up standing pat more than we would hope. The only upward move that seems eminent at the moment is UAB to the AAC. You can see from the above why they were their 5th option, and the AAC can't be stoked about any of the recent developments. I bet Army will also be heavily involved in the AAC expansion conversations. Source Link

Didn’t we basically do this in the 90s when we returned to FBS?

And Boise. But still think the point stands. CUSA is in a bad deal and our teams are sinking to MAC level. I’ve seen a lot of people say after the top of the MWC leaves (BSU, SDSU, CSU, AFA) the MWC will backfill with the top Texas teams they can get, which makes sense to me. Heading west with UTSA, UTEP and NMSU may be better situation than CUSA.

Brett McMurphy made a quick mention in his podcast that CSU and AFA are going to announce their move to AAC next week. It was short but didn't sound like speculation. https://www.csnbbs.com/thread-930742.html

Does anyone outside of the AAC/MWC spend $50M? I think if anything MWC will end up standing pat and AAC is going to be in trouble. If Boise and Memphis leave for Big 12, all of the remaining G5 conferences are pretty weak. Even Houston relies heavily on institutional support and student fees.

AAC. They apparently have some differences of opinion on direction of the conference.

New word on the street is MWC may only lose AFA and CSU. Perfect scenario. Mountain West all the way.

I agree.

Aresco (AAC commissioner) used to work for CBS, so I’m willing to bet he is feeding this to a former buddy. Another tweet already shut down the MWC schools being interested in joining (likely now coming from their school’s sources). That leaves UAB and the alternative list, which only mentions FAU, UTSA, and North Texas. Interesting piece is MWC trying to nab North Texas and Tulsa before AAC has a chance to finalize any moves. May be a situation where we have an opportunity to choose, best case scenario. Both are positive pieces of news.

Those who are saying even a depleted MWC wouldn’t be better than CUSA are fooling themselves. Fans being able to go to road games is way down on the list of considerations. CUSA is in the gutter and we’re potentially being offered a lifeline. If this is reliable, of course we would take it.

I’m not convinced it’s dead forever. I get folks are salty the SEC is going to dominate for years to come, but eventually they will want the extra money and chance at a playoff that currently only a few blue chips have. TV markets were more important back then. Those moving to the Big 12 teams have also easily have had the most success. Memphis may be on their way up too due to recent success. If you’re not named Texas, very few schools are moving up due to those things alone. Being middling or having a couple down years is one thing, but we are shaking years of losing stigma as well.

I get the argument if you're consistently winning even 7-8 games a year like SMU was before it got into the AAC. With what they've just lost they aren't going to want to bring in a team that just showed it's bottom of the AAC stepping in. I hope you're right, I just don't see it happening solely because of those things. Conference promotions in college football have historically been due to success, with the CUSA actually being the only exception I can think of, going for markets (with some schools at least) and seemingly paying the price now.

To me it’s more that our only appeal would be market, and the revenue and facilities that come with that. But if you want market, they already have a team in DFW. Those teams are consistently winning programs, that’s what they bring that we don’t.

I've been on this boat for a while now. Historically, if your team isn't a good football program, you focus on basketball. That forms your decisions with regards to conference, resources, etc. North Texas is in a weird position where it is sitting on the fence. You can tell they want to be a football program, but it just isn't happening. It's far too late to go all in on basketball though, since they've already sunk so much money into football. I'm not sure where you go from here, but if basketball is your primary concern, sticking around WKU, ODU, etc. wouldn't be a bad idea.

I don't see any major changes like that happening. I think it will be AAC adding 2-4 teams out of the lists most people have been floating around, including top CUSA and SBC teams with large enough stadiums, and SBC picks off a few CUSA teams that are also high performers and fit their profile of rural but outkick their coverage schools. CUSA will be left with a mess of "market schools" that under-perform, and likely be in that lowest tier with no shot at the playoffs alongside the MAC.

I'll concede leaving UTSA out, but I still think they have better chance because they have market, are on upswing in performance, and don't overlap like we do with SMU.

Actually it does. Teams want to play other quality teams so they can have a shot at being the top ranked G5 and place themselves in the expanded playoff. That's going to be the top consideration, because even one playoff appearance could catapult a program. If the playoff expansion happened today, the only conferences with a chance would be SBC, MWC and AAC. They are going to all try to keep it that way.

Recent history says otherwise. Based on performance, SBC has been a far superior conference to CUSA in football. I would be very surprised if the poaching was the other way around. My guess is the top performers with decent facilities (App State, UAB, FAU, UTSA) are off to AAC and best of the rest in CUSA (SoMiss, ODU, Marshall, maybe LaTach) are off to SBC. No sources, just based on what has come out from established journalists, which to my knowledge is just the one article from the Athletic at this point.

My understanding is an article in the Athletic this morning says regionalization is likely out because the SBC sees itself as a better conference that can poach the scraps of whatever is left of CUSA after AAC expands. If North Texas misses the cut for AAC, this is the nightmare scenario. I'm not even sure where you go from there if all that's left standing is the bottom half of CUSA. FCS? Don't see any Sun Belt schools wanting to bolt for a lesser conference at that point. That scenario makes the most sense to me considering expanded playoffs and streaming taking over for TV markets. The emphasis will be on performance. North Texas's string of bad hires may come back to bite it big time if, after spending all we have on facilities (and coaching for that matter), we still end up in the worst conference in FBS, essentially back to where we started 10 years ago... We are already basically there and just hoping for a lifeline from the AAC.

No one at this level has TV ratings. The geography thing is taken for granted now because of the era of TV markets, but for a long time two teams in the same market wasn’t unheard of (think TCU and SMU). With streaming, we are basically going to a new era where geography isn’t as important again. Hence the changes. I think you underestimate UNT’s revenue, if nothing else due to its student and alumni population. I don’t disagree that we won’t get an invite, but I think it will be for other reasons (poor football performance, years of negative stigma, etc.)

I'm out of touch with everyone's circumstances these days, but just examples of the types of schools I'd like to see targeted if they would be interested. Sounds like the AAC is taking advantage of the same strategy and has had success with it. I think any conference not in the new P4 will be a "basketball" conference, so would make sense to make that the focus.

I suspect CUSA will lose 1 or 2 members and may look to replace them. I think our best bet is also "thinking about basketball" and making the CUSA a strong basketball conference again. No names immediately come to mind but I bet we could pick someone off by offering a promotion in football like we did with Old Dominion, or even offering "basketball only" invitations. VCU? Wichita State?

Hey guys, Me and a few fellow UNT alum started a podcast to talk Dallas and UNT sports. Most of the guys are RTVF majors. Trying to get off the ground, so we’d appreciate if you gave us a listen. Link Thanks and Go Mean Green, -Chris