What Conference do we want?

[Quoner]

Five member institutions up and vanished under Banowsky's leadership between 2003 and 2005 after the Army pulled out too soon. He should be in jail and I will never forget Cincy, DePaul, Marquette and whoever else was involved.

[PlummMeanGreen]

1 hour ago, RBP79 said:

I'm thinking if MWC comes to Texas they will stop in Denton to talk with Dr. Neal Smatresk. I mean he came From UNLV and would think he continues to keep in touch with old friends.........Also, I feel the North Texas area, DFW, is a better recruiting ground than the SA area and that to me would have a greater impact on the selection of a member in MWC.

It will be our being in the (soon to pass Philly') 4'th ranked USA TV market that will be our biggest selling point.   Again, a sizeable TV market for a G5 conference is no small thing.

GMG!

[greenminer]

Depends on how regional you want things.

[Ryan Munthe]

Until we win CUSA consistently, stay in CUSA.

[GTWT]

There are fewer former Sun Belt teams in the MWC so I vote MWC.  Have I ever mentioned that I hate the Sun Belt?

[aztecskin]

The  biggest complaint about the conference is the money. I can see a scenario where all this bowl winnin' translates to a better TV contract, but its an unlikely scenario. Also, back-to-back conference champs WKU had a hard time selling out the conference title game. So there's that. 

[Cerebus]

8 minutes ago, aztecskin said:

The  biggest complaint about the conference is the money. I can see a scenario where all this bowl winnin' translates to a better TV contract, but its an unlikely scenario. Also, back-to-back conference champs WKU had a hard time selling out the conference title game. So there's that. 

Every non P5 is going to take a hell of  haircut soon.  In fact,  one of the reasons the P5 will contract into a P4 (leaving some current P5 teams out) is that ESPN will be losing money very soon:

OTK:  ESPN Loses Another 555,000 Subscribers Per Nielsen

Quote

It seems pretty clear that within five years ESPN will be bringing in less subscriber revenue than they've committed for sports rights.  

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So what happens if I'm right and the cable and satellite bundle is collapsing?

Couldn't ESPN go over the top to consumers?

Nope, that violates their currently existing cable and satellite contracts -- ESPN promised it wouldn't do this in order to get the companies to pay them so much money, Plus, it begs the larger question, if ESPN is going over the top to consumers, why wouldn't the leagues just try this directly themselves? Why do you need ESPN to be the middleman if you can handle distribution as well as they can? What's more, an over the top ESPN would need to be insanely expensive to justify their fixed costs, $20, $30 or $40 a month just for ESPN alone. As if that weren't enough, ESPN would be caught in an intractable business problem, one that looks awfully familiar to print newspapers as the Internet rose online. You'd have to run two different businesses -- the cable and satellite ESPN, which would continue to lose subscribers, but still bring in most of your money -- and the over the top ESPN model, which costs much more and has infinitely fewer subscribers. As you promoted the over the top model then the cable and satellite companies would rebel and ask, "Why are we paying you so much to carry your network as part of our packages? We're cutting your channel from basic cable so we can lower consumer costs."

So ESPN would lose all the people giving it money to buy sports rights who never watch sports. At the same time that the vast majority of people were not subscribing to its over the top offering."

Indeed, based on the rapidity with which these subscriber costs are accelerrating in late 2016, saying that ESPN will begin to lose money in 2021 is probably far too generous. 

ESPN make most of its money because of bundling.  Cable companies charge every customer for ESPN whether they watch it or not, and most don't.  As people transition off cable to other services, most people will not pay for stand alone ESPN service, a service that even if they did set up would simply cannibalize their bundled deals and drive down the amount they could force cable companies to charge.  

The influx of TV money changed college football.  The outflow of it to everyone not in the P4 is going to cause changes just as big.  

[shaft]

One, how did this thread get this far without something saying...The Big 12.

Two, why we having this conversation?  Any credible news source predicting another round of conference realignment?

The NCAA voted to allow the conferences to hold a conference championship game without 12 teams, to put an end to conference realignment. 

[Army of Dad]

9 hours ago, shaft said:

One, how did this thread get this far without something saying...The Big 12.

Two, why we having this conversation?  Any credible news source predicting another round of conference realignment?

The NCAA voted to allow the conferences to hold a conference championship game without 12 teams, to put an end to conference realignment. 

To put an end to it? Hardly, delay it sure, but I don't think anyone really believes the last round was the realignment to end all realignments.

[UNTexas]

I'd say it's more in line with the conference we thought we were joining. 

[Aldo]

So when we say "The C", is the "C" a hard "C" like "KHUH" in "C-onference" or a soft "C" like "SEE"?

I personally prefer it "The Hard C". Makes it sound more intimidating.