Sun Belt dumping Idaho and NMSU

[greenb.o.g.]

I feel sorry for 'em ...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/sunbelt/2016/03/01/sun-belt-football-idaho-new-mexico-state-leaving/81159780/

[greenjoe]

Wow.  Those Texas State boys join a conference one day and the next day they're running it.  I call that leadership.  My wife calls it being a "bossy butt."

 

And by the way, I never hear anyone making the mistake of calling Texas State by they're former name.  Is that because we had such a long an colorful history with our prior name or because the Texas State Sports Information Director makes sure people know the correct name ? 

 

GO MEAN GREEN

[THOR]

 

for some reason, greenrex put this same thing in the mean green other sports forum

Edited March 1, 2016 by THOR

[GreenTexan13]

http://www.fbschedules.com/2016/03/idaho-new-mexico-state-depart-sun-belt-after-2017-season/

I didn't think NMSU was to much out of the geographic boundary of the SBC. Idaho makes sense, but I seriously feel really bad more for NMSU.

[forevereagle]

Poor Idaho and NMSU.

[outoftown]

Wow. Put out to pasture by Karl freaking Benson. I guess he did what he had to for them by throwing them a lifeline in the first place. But being booted by the comissioner who brought more programs to FBS in football and DI in basketball than any other comissioner in history is really tough.

[letsgiveacheer]

I'm not sure what would be worse...getting kicked out of the Sun Belt or losing to Portland State by the worse margin in NCAA history.

Joking aside, I am sorry for these guys. My wife went to "State" and I also think we have played them more than any other school. Plus, they have the most politically incorrect fight song in the business. 

[NorthTexan95]

At some point in the not too distant future I could see other conferences kicking out schools for lesser reasons (or more reasons, as in more money).  

[Mean Green 93-98]

52 minutes ago, letsgiveacheer said:

Plus, they have the most politically incorrect fight song in the business. 

You piqued my curiosity.

Quote

Aggies, Oh Aggies! 
The hills send back the cry, 
We’re here to do or die! 
Aggies, Oh Aggies! 
We’ll win this game or know the reason why! 

And when we win this game, 
We’ll buy a keg of booze, 
And we’ll drink it to the Aggies 
‘till we wobble in our shoes! 

(CHANT) 
A---G---G---I---E---S--! 
AGGIES! AGGIES! 
GO AGGIES! 

 

[SilverEagle]

geez it reads like it was written by a committee of fraternity members......mostly KA's.

[Mike Jackson]

They both belong in the MWC.  Maybe CUSA and MWC can make a trade.  Idaho should be in the MWC come hell or high water.  The Boise State is keeping them out like SMU kept us of CUSA with them.  So now looking at the south-eastern most schools in MWC you have both New Mexico Schools, Air Force, Colorado State, and Wyoming.  I would like to give them UTEP and get one the 4 schools I just mentioned.  But what I would love most is a new conference that stretches from Southern Miss to Wyoming with a lot of Texas schools.  

North Texas

New Mexico St

New Mexico

Colorado State

La Tech

Southern Miss

UTEP

Rice

UTSA

Wyoming

Air Force

Tulsa or Tulane or Texas State to make 12 team and 2 divisions

 

 

[caseyorourke]

Idaho is a member of the Big Sky for basketball and their Olympic sports.  There is an open invitation for their football team to also rejoin the Big Sky.  But if you read their forums, the majority of fans are dead set against that because they don't want to give up the revenue sharing that comes from conference participation in bowl games and the CFB playoffs.  What they are hoping that with the rumors of conference realignments, they will decide to save the shared revenue for the next two years, go independent and hope they can find a stable conference to join up with or take the Big Sky offer as a last resort.

In reading their forums, you also get the sense that their is a lot of Boise State envy going on because of their success on the field, so they believe that if they stick with the FBS, they will become as successful as BSU.  

They have been rumors that the Big Sky is going to split into two separate "divisions." one an FBS division for the schools who want to move up but want to avoid having to look for a conference or going independent and the other, an FCS division for the schools who have no interest in moving up.  

Frankly, before that occurs, Japan will finally apologize for starting WWII or hell's going to freeze over.  

Edited March 2, 2016 by caseyorourke

[untcampbell]

MJ, count me in.

 

 

GMG

[oldguystudent]

I responded to this in the wrong forum.  Please excuse the repost.

Quote

“This 10-team football league will maximize the Sun Belt’s on-field performance, push us to the top ranking of our four peer conferences, and will give us the best opportunity to soon place a team in one of the  College Football Playoff’s New Year’s Day bowl games,” said Sun Belt Commissioner Karl Benson. 

A:  Top ranking of the P5 conferences.  Laugh...out...loud

B:  A Sun Belt team in a New Year's Day Bowl (with the word "playoff" subtly included).  Guffaw...out...loud

C:  Karl Benson.  KARL BENSON! is kicking football teams out of his conference?  Wait for it.  He'll be crawling back to Las Cruces and Moscow in about five years after half the Sun Belt has fled for the newly depleted CUSA.  

Nobody kills football like Karl Benson kills football.  F that guy.

[untbowler]

makes sense as they were both only Football members with Idaho in Big Sky and New Mexico St in WAC

[Arkstfan]

1994-2012 Benson lost 17 schools 2002-2015 Bankowsky lost 15. Birds of a feather I suppose.

As I stated in the other thread, the CFP formula has changed from $1 million per team up to $12 million to $10 million per league with the other money put in the performance pool. Financially the Sun Belt makes more being at 10 than being at 12 no matter where we finish in the performance pool. The change means the 12 team leagues (MWC, MAC, AAC) make less unless they finish 1 or 2 and CUSA makes less unless the league finishes 1.

The Sun Belt had a four year contract with the two schools, they've gone 4-12 in league play the last two years combined so there wasn't any real interest in bothering to extend the contract, Sun Belt loses two of the three worst performers which should bolster the performance money.

Sun Belt, like CUSA has seen a power shift to the east so the efforts of Arkansas State and Louisiana Lafayette to get NMSU in as a full member went nowhere.

[untjim1995]

I would imagine that this will be the beginning of several G5 conferences looking at their membership and seeing where value lies and where it doesn't. NMSU and Idaho gave the SBC nothing--no TV, no decent travel, no bowl revenue...just gave them a ton of cost.

NMSU and Idaho really ought to just give up on FBS football. Decide if FCS is what you want and go from there. NMSU could join the Southland and Idaho can go back to the Big Sky. IN the years ahead, if these conferences won't align geographically, this type of thing will happen more often. Right now, CUSA stretches from El Paso to Virginia. There is no way that UTEP gives ODU (or vice versa) any major benefit of being aligned together in a conference, nor does Texas State and Appalachian State in the SBC. At some point, this type of setup will mercifully end. As I have said before, the MWC and MAC both have their geographic setup done perfectly, split between even divisions, based on geography. The SBCUSAAC could certainly help themselves immensely for the long-term if they would stop letting certain schools look down on other schools in their state and region to the point of keeping them away from being conference mates (see SMU and La Tech as major examples here).

[Arkstfan]

24 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

I would imagine that this will be the beginning of several G5 conferences looking at their membership and seeing where value lies and where it doesn't. NMSU and Idaho gave the SBC nothing--no TV, no decent travel, no bowl revenue...just gave them a ton of cost.

NMSU and Idaho really ought to just give up on FBS football. Decide if FCS is what you want and go from there. NMSU could join the Southland and Idaho can go back to the Big Sky. IN the years ahead, if these conferences won't align geographically, this type of thing will happen more often. Right now, CUSA stretches from El Paso to Virginia. There is no way that UTEP gives ODU (or vice versa) any major benefit of being aligned together in a conference, nor does Texas State and Appalachian State in the SBC. At some point, this type of setup will mercifully end. As I have said before, the MWC and MAC both have their geographic setup done perfectly, split between even divisions, based on geography. The SBCUSAAC could certainly help themselves immensely for the long-term if they would stop letting certain schools look down on other schools in their state and region to the point of keeping them away from being conference mates (see SMU and La Tech as major examples here).

I fully expect Idaho to announce FBS by the May 4th deadline from the Big Sky. They don't have any games after 2016 scheduled with anyone in their student-recruitment area and not many against teams in their athlete recruitment areas.

NMSU talk about regret. Ditched Sun Belt full membership for the WAC and what did it gain them? Going further back, ditched the Valley to keep I-A football and went to the Big West. If they drop football or drop to FCS what wasted number of decades when they could have been in the Valley all that time in hoops.

When CUSA did the mega-expansion that was the biggest surprise to me. I fully expected CUSA would take UNT and figured IF CUSA were to add two that FIU would be the other. I really thought ECU and USM would balk against purely market driven expansion having seen how poorly it worked for them as programs but thought UNT was in good shape along with FIU because of the interest in playing in Florida and Texas for recruiting. Instead added a school that had never played football, two more that had never played a down of FBS ball.

The idea of yelling market, market, market was utterly baffling to me. Showed a horrifying lack of understanding about how television works in the 21st century. Markets have declined in importance since the 1980's. Between the Nielsen metering, the services that provide realtime data about what channel your cable or satellite box is tuned to, to the internal data regarding how many people are streaming online, the old model of we guess about this percentage will watch and there are this many in the market is a dead model.

If you aren't so big that a large number of customers will switch providers if you aren't on to drive carriage fees, the game is all about eyeballs.

The market talk showed the leadership didn't even understand the game they were playing. It's a new era. More people watched AState and Mizzou on ESPN3 than watch La.Tech and Rice on FS1 or watched eight other ESPNU telecasts (mix of MAC, MWC, AAC, and Sun Belt telecasts). Yet MARKET!

Viewership for G5 home games is pretty easy to understand if you start looking at it. Team success and team support (attendance) are generally the best predictors of TV viewership. You can have moderate success and good attendance and draw an audience (ECU) or great success and little attendance (NIU) and post nice numbers. This Houston was pretty much the beast of the G5 in audience, AState and App battling for first in the Sun Belt was one of the better watched ESPNU games this year among G5 telecasts and it had competition from NFL, Big XII and SEC (two teams that draw well, two teams playing fairly well).

The ideal conference in this era is either spread out superstars who draw a big home numbers and are contenders for being ranked or lacking that, the ideal is 10 teams with decent support who make up a fairly compact league. AAC as constituted works well. CUSA and Sun Belt not so much, both leagues are way too big geographically for the product value.

[Cerebus]

3 minutes ago, Arkstfan said:

CUSA and Sun Belt not so much, both leagues are way too big geographically for the product value.

I still think the logical end game to all of this is CUSA and SBC leadership sitting down and trading teams to make two compact conferences.  Short distances mean cheap travel for the teams and the fans.

[untjim1995]

16 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

I still think the logical end game to all of this is CUSA and SBC leadership sitting down and trading teams to make two compact conferences.  Short distances mean cheap travel for the teams and the fans.

Exactly.

UNT, UTEP, NMSU, UTSA, Texas State, Rice, ULL, ULM, La Tech, Arkansas State, Southern Miss, and UAB

Troy, MUTS, WKU, FIU, FAU, Charlotte, ODU, Appy State, Ga State, Ga Southern, Marshall, and South Alabama

[Cr1028]

Big West bretheren. These may be two of the few FBS teams that have been worse than us over the last 20 years.

[UNTLifer]

21 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

Exactly.

UNT, UTEP, NMSU, UTSA, Texas State, Rice, ULL, ULM, La Tech, Arkansas State, Southern Miss, and UAB

Troy, MUTS, WKU, FIU, FAU, Charlotte, ODU, Appy State, Ga State, Ga Southern, Marshall, and South Alabama

Makes too much sense plus La Tech will never be in a conference with ULM and ULL, and honestly, I don't want to be reunited with ULM.

[GreenTexan13]

1 hour ago, UNTLifer said:

Makes too much sense plus La Tech will never be in a conference with ULM and ULL, and honestly, I don't want to be reunited with ULM.

Does that have to do with money? If not, I don't understand why La Tech would want to isolate themselves in one state?

[caseyorourke]

Interesting article in Forbes about NMSU and Idaho possibility of dropping down and how in the long run doesn't really hurt them.

Idaho And New Mexico State Considering Dropping Down In Football-More Should Think About It

Quote

Division I-A FBS is not all its Cracked up to Be!

I have read several articles on the Sun Belt vote and I was heartened to hear University of Idaho president Chuck Staber actually say that moving down a division to their former home, the Big Sky Conference in Division I FCS (formerly known as Division 1-AA), is a more attractive option than trying to make another go as a 1-A independent in the hope that another long shot conference opening will become available. Good to hear a university president actually make a sensible statement on college athletics for once, instead of trying to be something athletically they will never be. 

 

A Flawed Argument to Stay FBS

 

Many naysayers will first point to a mythological belief that NCAA Division 1-A status in football somehow defines a university and makes it better. Some call it the “Front Porch Theory.” This means if the front porch, meaning athletics, looks good then the rest of the institution benefits. This theory is flawed and has been dis-proven many times. In fact Idaho and NMSU still exist and thrive as universities despite their football front porch being less than stellar....

Just the ability to compete on a more level playing field alone makes things better for lower level football programs in FCS football. Developing  regional rivalries would enhance the game day atmosphere regardless of “level” of play. Selling your soul and being a punching bag for Power 5 institutions just to get a big paycheck is counter-intuitive in my view. If you have to do that to support your athletic department then you really need to examine your priorities and how you are doing business. It is not fair to anyone to do that and any athletic department can be effective and robust without prostituting itself.

.

 

Financial Savings

There are several competitive and financial benefits that a move to the Big Sky would mean to both schools. The most obvious cost savings is  a drop to the FCS level and a cut of 22 football scholarships. This is a huge cost savings. Conservatively it could be in upwards of a half million or more dollars immediately saved. Travel costs and time would be drastically cut. Operating in a different market would also enable salaries and overhead to be balanced. I reject any argument that fund raising, marketing, or sponsorship sales would be dramatically impacted. People want to be associated with winners. If these two football teams become successful at the FCS (Division 1-AA) level, they will actually increase interest and involvement. Students will get more excited as will the fans. The product will be better and corporations and individuals will want to be involved with that rising tide. Sponsors want the ability to sell their product and leverage the sports product to do that. These two teams will be a much better sell by dropping down, being successful, and showing others that bigger in this case is definitely not better.

 

I hope other teams in the Group of Five conferences are listening. This is a logical move that many could make and the sport of college football and respective institutions would be much better for it.

 

Edited March 7, 2016 by caseyorourke

[untjim1995]

I've wondered about this for a long time. For G5s, it's always gonna come down to how much money you spend (both administration and alumni) to keep you going. This is where your UH, SMU, East Carolina, UCF, and USF have a huge advantage. 

We know where we stand on this in Denton.