ODU looking to bail C-USA?

[MeanGreenTexan]

18 minutes ago, Arkstfan said:

When Arkansas faced ECU in the Liberty Bowl, the ECU storyline was all Skip Holtz, son of former Arkansas coach Lou Holtz, not any other accomplishments.

And you cite two schools in AAC rather than CUSA????

Keep up brother.   I’m talking about where we want to go... not where we are.

[Arkstfan]

1 hour ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

Keep up brother.   I’m talking about where we want to go... not where we are.

If AAC is where you want to go you gotta do something about SMU. I remember when the goal was to join Houston and SMU in CUSA but it took them leaving to get a spot.

You better root for regionalism because unless the economics drive AAC schools to seek it this starts sounding like the story of NMSU wanting to join the WAC.

[Arkstfan]

1 hour ago, UNTexas said:

Bottom line with our fans, we wanted out and away from the Sunbelt. We don't want to merge with them and most of us just don't pay attention to the belt anymore. NT is doing a damn good job moving ahead and should not be looking to relive the past. Schools in the end need to do what's best for them, not a conference. There's no chance our current administration is going to try and be a part of the Sunbelt. 

This is just off season nonsense talk because everyone's bored. The next thread will be uniforms...

Realignment in G5 is a uniform discussion. It's about a patch that doesn't mean much to the majority of the people who claim to be college football fans.

[Arkstfan]

I don't buy into the neat clean realignment stuff. It just doesn't happen.

What happens is a critical mass of schools get pissed off and make something happen on their own and leave it to everyone else to make lemonade of what happens.

One might dismiss Harry Minimum as a clickbait troll but I think one might do well to recall that he was also out front telling that the CUSA TV contract had actually been cut when the teams defected to BE/AAC and was going to fall more. He had to get that information somewhere and ODU's administration was almost certainly the source. When Slive said he wanted to go to 16 and media close to Slive said the league was looking to add two in the West, it was Harry Minimum who reported that ODU and MTSU wanted an east/west add with JMU added east.

My guess is Wood Selig wants to lead a breakaway and is willing to speak of it. Before WKU committed to FBS, I overhead him talking to the UALR AD extolling the virtues of the hoops schools breaking from Sun Belt.

So it's in his nature to want to lead these sorts of things.

The logical conclusion is he is tossing this story to Minimum to try to stir up discontent and clear obstacles to getting an eastern league.

[letsgiveacheer]

It's interesting to see Harry Minium called a "click baiter", "troll", and "obscure sports writer." He is 65 years old and has been with the Pilot since graduation from ODU. I have known him since our junior high school days.  He is a fine writer and has been quoted here numerous times as he had information that none of the other beat writers uncovered.

Sure ODU just started football but even before they did, had one of the top athletic budgets in CUSA.  They easily have more national championships than any other CUSA school.  Other than their three WBB championships, the others are in minor sports but national championships none the less.

I second Arkstate Fan's theory. ODU is using CUSA as a stepping stone and wants to be elsewhere. They want to be in the AAC but barring that, will move to form a new conference...wait and see.

[Arkstfan]

15 hours ago, BTG_Fan1 said:

FOr everyone talking about Sunbelt/CUSA merging..

 

Eight year ESPN deal. Going to move some of the content off ESPN3 onto ESPN+

Scuttlebutt says the six schools that don't have the capability produce content up to ESPN standards will have to add that capability because ESPN is wanting more content across more sports.

[Harry]

I have two questions what is keeping them from AAC and what schools would be for and against them?  Why is their budget so high?  Is that derived from their student fees or what?  I always wondered what caused them to have such a bigly budget.

[letsgiveacheer]

11 minutes ago, Harry said:

I have two questions what is keeping them from AAC and what schools would be for and against them?  Why is their budget so high?  Is that derived from their student fees or what?  I always wondered what caused them to have such a bigly budget.

I can't address the AAC question, but Virginia law limits the amount of student fees that can be used for athletic programs. Until ODU moved to FBS, the entire state had only two schools in that division,  UVa and VaTech. They are limited to 20%. ODU was given ten years to reach a maximum of 55% student fees. Right now, they are at about 75% IIRC.

Edited March 1, 2018 by letsgiveacheer

[Cerebus]

1 hour ago, Arkstfan said:

One might dismiss Harry Minimum as a clickbait troll

 

47 minutes ago, letsgiveacheer said:

It's interesting to see Harry Minium called a "click baiter"

Someone can be a good journalist and still write click bait titles.   Sadly, in this day in age you better. 

If he is as old school as you guys claim, then he probably doesn't even write his own headline, that is someone else's job in the old school system.  

 

[Arkstfan]

22 minutes ago, Harry said:

I have two questions what is keeping them from AAC and what schools would be for and against them?  Why is their budget so high?  Is that derived from their student fees or what?  I always wondered what caused them to have such a bigly budget.

Supposedly ODU has to allocate to athletics some expenses that most schools would allocate outside of athletics because of Virginia reporting rules.

[TreeFiddy]

On 2/27/2018 at 11:57 PM, Arkstfan said:

NMSU is a good hoops program and brings value to basketball. There is only one CUSA team rated ahead of NMSU. That was true last year as well. The year before that 2 CUSA were rated higher. This would make you dejected?

Texas State sucks at football and basketball but they've spent some on facilities and hey they are in Texas they can replace the close game you lost with Tulsa.

ULL has been spending money, they had a losing year in football but they look like an at-large in hoops this year.

Troy has been rated higher than all but one CUSA the past two years in football. 

Arkansas State has been rated higher than half of CUSA every year since 2011 and had a season ahead of all of CUSA and several with only one or two ahead and is spending a bundle on facilities, new indoor practice facility, new video boards for football and hoops, new press box, new end zone facility. Would really ruin your reputation to be affiliated with AState.

2005 to 2012 North Texas in football finished ahead of zero of those Sun Belt schools every year except 2010 and then only topped one of them in 2011. 

Uh, no.

ULL has only faced 2 teams in the top 100 in RPI and lost them both fairly comfortably.  Sadly, if ULL does not win the conference tournament, I believe they will be NIT bound even if they only have 5 losses.  No way the committee sends 2 teams from 20+ ranked conference. 

I am not convinced the committee will send MTSU if they don't win CUSA and they have made made some recent noise in the 1st round.  ULL better not lose.

[TreeFiddy]

4 hours ago, Arkstfan said:

I don't buy into the neat clean realignment stuff. It just doesn't happen.

What happens is a critical mass of schools get pissed off and make something happen on their own and leave it to everyone else to make lemonade of what happens.

One might dismiss Harry Minimum as a clickbait troll but I think one might do well to recall that he was also out front telling that the CUSA TV contract had actually been cut when the teams defected to BE/AAC and was going to fall more. He had to get that information somewhere and ODU's administration was almost certainly the source. When Slive said he wanted to go to 16 and media close to Slive said the league was looking to add two in the West, it was Harry Minimum who reported that ODU and MTSU wanted an east/west add with JMU added east.

My guess is Wood Selig wants to lead a breakaway and is willing to speak of it. Before WKU committed to FBS, I overhead him talking to the UALR AD extolling the virtues of the hoops schools breaking from Sun Belt.

So it's in his nature to want to lead these sorts of things.

The logical conclusion is he is tossing this story to Minimum to try to stir up discontent and clear obstacles to getting an eastern league.

Let the break away.  They won't have an automatic bid to the NCAA hoops tournament and they won't receive welfare money from the P5 since the P5 have already named the 5 G5 conferences that receive the checks. 

I encourage them to break away.  If they would convince about 10 or 12 other schools to go with them it would do everyone a huge favor.

[TreeFiddy]

2 hours ago, Arkstfan said:

Supposedly ODU has to allocate to athletics some expenses that most schools would allocate outside of athletics because of Virginia reporting rules.

Keep in mind that ODU is motivated to keep their budget as high as possible due to the rules about student fees as a percentage of overall budget.  I would hazard a guess that at some point this was an accounting trick to allow them to increase budgets in order to lower the student fee percentage of budget.

Frankly, I am surprised other schools have not followed suit to soften the optics of student fees as a percentage of budgets.

[Arkstfan]

44 minutes ago, TreeFiddy said:

Let the break away.  They won't have an automatic bid to the NCAA hoops tournament and they won't receive welfare money from the P5 since the P5 have already named the 5 G5 conferences that receive the checks. 

I encourage them to break away.  If they would convince about 10 or 12 other schools to go with them it would do everyone a huge favor.

After the NCAA let them new Big East and AAC both have auto bids I'm not so sure getting auto bids is going to be so hard.

[Arkstfan]

32 minutes ago, TreeFiddy said:

Keep in mind that ODU is motivated to keep their budget as high as possible due to the rules about student fees as a percentage of overall budget.  I would hazard a guess that at some point this was an accounting trick to allow them to increase budgets in order to lower the student fee percentage of budget.

Frankly, I am surprised other schools have not followed suit to soften the optics of student fees as a percentage of budgets.

Except they were doing it before the student fee law was ever proposed.

[wardly]

Basically the AAC is the old CUSA, the new CUSA is basically the old SBC, and the new SBC is those left behind, 1AA programs that moved up, and startups. Quite honestly, I don't see much difference between CUSA,SBC, and MAC. There is a significant gap between these 3 lower rung G5 programs and both the MWC and AAC. The biggest complaint comes from CUSA members in that what they now have is not what they expected, sort of like an ugly blind date.As I have mentioned in previous posts, getting Arkansas State, La. Tech,ULL, USM, and any of the 3 Alabama programs to move west and play in the same division with 5 Texas universities is, in my opinion, going to be a problem.All of these schools are in the southeast, and I just don't know why given a choice they would go west.

[untjim1995]

2 hours ago, wardly said:

Basically the AAC is the old CUSA, the new CUSA is basically the old SBC, and the new SBC is those left behind, 1AA programs that moved up, and startups. Quite honestly, I don't see much difference between CUSA,SBC, and MAC. There is a significant gap between these 3 lower rung G5 programs and both the MWC and AAC. The biggest complaint comes from CUSA members in that what they now have is not what they expected, sort of like an ugly blind date.As I have mentioned in previous posts, getting Arkansas State, La. Tech,ULL, USM, and any of the 3 Alabama programs to move west and play in the same division with 5 Texas universities is, in my opinion, going to be a problem.All of these schools are in the southeast, and I just don't know why given a choice they would go west.

They would go west for recruiting, bigger TV markets, and alumni centers. New Orleans, Houston, DFW, and some of the smaller markets, such as Shreveport, Tyler/Longview, and Beaumont/Lake Charles have lots of alumni for Arky state, USM, and the Alabama schools.

[wardly]

9 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

They would go west for recruiting, bigger TV markets, and alumni centers. New Orleans, Houston, DFW, and some of the smaller markets, such as Shreveport, Tyler/Longview, and Beaumont/Lake Charles have lots of alumni for Arky state, USM, and the Alabama schools.

Maybe you are right, but for the lower rung G5 programs TV markets don't mean anything. With the exception of La. Tech and ULL the other schools you mentioned primarily recruit east, not west.As far as their alumni in the smaller East Texas markets you mentioned, I doubt they are enough to matter. In addition, why would UAB play UTEP if given a choice? It will be interesting to see how this shakes out, but for most G5 conferences strung out across America this model is no longer working. With no TV revenue and increasing costs something has to give. ODU is just exploring its options like they should, as I assume are most CUSA and SBC members.

Edited March 3, 2018 by wardly
left out word

[wardly]

On ‎3‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 10:36 AM, Arkstfan said:

I don't buy into the neat clean realignment stuff. It just doesn't happen.

What happens is a critical mass of schools get pissed off and make something happen on their own and leave it to everyone else to make lemonade of what happens.

One might dismiss Harry Minimum as a clickbait troll but I think one might do well to recall that he was also out front telling that the CUSA TV contract had actually been cut when the teams defected to BE/AAC and was going to fall more. He had to get that information somewhere and ODU's administration was almost certainly the source. When Slive said he wanted to go to 16 and media close to Slive said the league was looking to add two in the West, it was Harry Minimum who reported that ODU and MTSU wanted an east/west add with JMU added east.

My guess is Wood Selig wants to lead a breakaway and is willing to speak of it. Before WKU committed to FBS, I overhead him talking to the UALR AD extolling the virtues of the hoops schools breaking from Sun Belt.

So it's in his nature to want to lead these sorts of things.

The logical conclusion is he is tossing this story to Minimum to try to stir up discontent and clear obstacles to getting an eastern league.

I would be interested to hear your take on A-State's conference preference and why.

[GrayEagle]

On 2/28/2018 at 10:31 PM, Arkstfan said:

If AAC is where you want to go you gotta do something about SMU. I remember when the goal was to join Houston and SMU in CUSA but it took them leaving to get a spot.

You better root for regionalism because unless the economics drive AAC schools to seek it this starts sounding like the story of NMSU wanting to join the WAC.

There are some differences this time. 

The biggest difference is there's a new AD.  If it can be done, I'd put my money on him.  He is far better connected to both our fans and to other members of the AAC.  He also has full support from the UNT president.  Becoming a Carnegie Tier 1 Research Facility has cracked open another door or two.  SMU will play us for the foreseeable future anyway.  A new series is scheduled with Houston.  The series with the Mustangs is benefiting both parties  in attendance and reduction of expenses.  I believe that the same will be said of Houston.  Our students have stepped in and our revenues will become par with AAC members.  

Not to rub it in but it appears that basketball may soon be competitive with at least the middle tier of American Conference.

Academics continue to improve as does research funding.  We've had a terrific fund-raising year.  

There are no guarantees but our chances have definitely improved.  

 

 

 

[wardly]

On ‎3‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 2:43 PM, TreeFiddy said:

Let the break away.  They won't have an automatic bid to the NCAA hoops tournament and they won't receive welfare money from the P5 since the P5 have already named the 5 G5 conferences that receive the checks. 

I encourage them to break away.  If they would convince about 10 or 12 other schools to go with them it would do everyone a huge favor.

Getting an automatic bid to NCAA should be no problem. And you are right. They would be doing both CUSA and SBC a huge favor by forcing both conferences to get real with realignment. If they start the ball rolling, they probably would be reborn as the new CUSA or SBC ,taking one of those names and P5 money with them. The other 12 or so western CUSA/SBC schools would do the same. Bottom line is I see no negatives other than does ODU or anyone else have the balls to push the button.Stay tuned.

[Cerebus]

3 minutes ago, wardly said:

Getting an automatic bid to NCAA should be no problem. 

That is 100% a huge problem and what always puts a damper on this "create a new conference" talk.  Do you think the P5 would be ok with the mid major schools breaking apart the G5 into smaller conferences and taking away slots from them in the tournament?  

No new configuration of G5 teams is going to get an autobid.  NCAA has more or less made that clear.  

[wardly]

All you need to do is shuffle the CUSA/SBC deck, realign , and you keep existing automatic bids as you are not adding another conference, just rearranging the furniture.

[Arkstfan]

On 3/3/2018 at 8:54 AM, wardly said:

I would be interested to hear your take on A-State's conference preference and why.

AState's priority is aligning with Alabama schools. It's our core recruiting base. We are 140 miles closer to Birmingham than Dallas and 50 miles closer to Florence, AL than Texarkana

[wardly]

I talked with a few administrative people from ODU at the basketball tournament regarding CUSA. They are not happy with the conference as it now, and would like to move to AAC. I told them that the AAC wasn't hiring, and did they have a plan "B". My takeaway was that they are doing their do diligence , there is a more involved that just realigning CUSA and the Belt,and than a number of conferences would be involved in any changes. Basically they want to better themselves, which I took as moving away from CUSA.