ESPN: College Football Playoff Expansion, 12 Team Historic Simulations

[ChiefTenBeers2015]

  In reviewing the last several years, ESPN states Conference USA would be the only conference to not have a team in the 12 team playoffs…

[El Paso Eagle]

13 minutes ago, PlummMeanGreen said:

Easy to forecast that the conference strength pecking order will change often among the G5.  
I still think UNT should grow some family jewels, copy 🐸 TCU; that is, remove itself from all the conglomeration of schools who TCU removed itself from & then try to gain admittance to the MWC.   4 from CUSA West Division going westward would be fine, too. 
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Maybe it's time instead of trying to switch conferences constantly we just focus on being the best program we can be

[greenminer]

"Hey, let's start a thread talking about how awful we are!"

[PlummMeanGreen]

2 hours ago, El Paso Eagle said:

Maybe it's time instead of trying to switch conferences constantly we just focus on being the best program we can be

Just looking ahead because we know everyone else will be jockeying for re-alignment position—again, that’s “everybody” else. 
And tired of UNT getting left at the re/alignment train station or having to see how SMU is going to have some say in our conference future. 

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Edited June 12, 2021 by PlummMeanGreen

[RBP79]

If Judy remains....CUSA will never move forward.

 

[DeepGreen]

1 hour ago, RBP79 said:

If Judy remains....CUSA will never move forward.

 

I certainly agree.  But UNT can’t depend on Judy and CUSA.  UNT needs to consistently be the best in CUSA.  We need to win.  In all sports so our name is in the forefront of CUSA. It should be a household name.

[meangreenbob]

2 hours ago, DeepGreen said:

I certainly agree.  But UNT can’t depend on Judy and CUSA.  UNT needs to consistently be the best in CUSA.  We need to win.  In all sports so our name is in the forefront of CUSA. It should be a household name.

I believe there is a better chance of the Rapture occurring than our name making it to the forefront of CUSA or being a household name. 

We had our chance. IMHO

[Mean Green Matt]

10 hours ago, ChiefTenBeers2015 said:

  In reviewing the last several years, ESPN states Conference USA would be the only conference to not have a team in the 12 team playoffs…

This should surprise absolutely no one. 

[untjim1995]

I think the reality for CUSA is that it’s just too far flung and the teams in it all want to move away to the AAC/MWC. Judy sucks as a commissioner, which is why we have games on Facebook, which looks so bush league.  It’s just a bad league.

But the CUSA West side is still the best we have ever had since the MVC days. If we had those 6 teams in a conference setup with Arky State, Louisiana, and Texas State, you’d have the perfect setup. Nine games, plus 3 OOC games every year. Your longest conference game trip would be UAB or UTEP. And that’s the best place we could ideally end up. We need the SBC and CUSA to realign badly.

[NorthTexasWeLove]

4 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

I think the reality for CUSA is that it’s just too far flung and the teams in it all want to move away to the AAC/MWC. Judy sucks as a commissioner, which is why we have games on Facebook, which looks so bush league.  It’s just a bad league.

But the CUSA West side is still the best we have ever had since the MVC days. If we had those 6 teams in a conference setup with Arky State, Louisiana, and Texas State, you’d have the perfect setup. Nine games, plus 3 OOC games every year. Your longest conference game trip would be UAB or UTEP. And that’s the best place we could ideally end up. We need the SBC and CUSA to realign badly.

Need to regionalize, yesterday. It's the only saving grace and should've happened years ago. ALL "G5" Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico universities need to come together and give this region of college football a conference everyone can care about. 

So...

Tulsa, Tulane, ULL, LaTech, A-State, NM, NM St., UH, SMU, TX State, Rice, UTSA, UTEP, UNT. 

Split it east and west, 7 teams in each with 2 cross over games a year and 4 non-con's. 

 

 

 

[MeanGreen_MBA]

4 hours ago, NorthTexasWeLove said:

Need to regionalize, yesterday. It's the only saving grace and should've happened years ago. ALL "G5" Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico universities need to come together and give this region of college football a conference everyone can care about. 

So...

Tulsa, Tulane, ULL, LaTech, A-State, NM, NM St., UH, SMU, TX State, Rice, UTSA, UTEP, UNT. 

Split it east and west, 7 teams in each with 2 cross over games a year and 4 non-con's. 

 

 

 

We could call it The New Southwest Conference. 

[Greenrex]

MG_MBA: "We could call it The New Southwest Conference."

others:  Southwestern Conference, South-West Conference, SouWesCon, Big 14, ESPN+ers, C-SXSW...

[Cougar King]

6 hours ago, NorthTexasWeLove said:

Need to regionalize, yesterday. It's the only saving grace and should've happened years ago. ALL "G5" Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico universities need to come together and give this region of college football a conference everyone can care about. 

So...

Tulsa, Tulane, ULL, LaTech, A-State, NM, NM St., UH, SMU, TX State, Rice, UTSA, UTEP, UNT. 

Split it east and west, 7 teams in each with 2 cross over games a year and 4 non-con's. 

 

 

 

Yes, let's leave the AAC and our billion dollar media contract, our 8 million per team just to play UNT and U-LaLa for pennies that nobody would watch

[NorthTexasWeLove]

2 hours ago, Greenrex said:

MG_MBA: "We could call it The New Southwest Conference."

others:  Southwestern Conference, South-West Conference, SouWesCon, Big 14, ESPN+ers, C-SXSW...

ESPN+ers is better than Facebookers. 

[PlummMeanGreen]

Easy to forecast that the conference strength pecking order will change often among the G5.  

I still think UNT should grow some family jewels, copy 🐸TCU; that is, just remove itself from all the conglomeration of schools (we’re with now) that TCU removed itself from when it left CUSA (& SMU) behind & then we try to gain admittance to the MWC.  Yet I don’t think UNT would be pro-active to do that & would have to be approached by MWC Commissioner Craig Thompson for anything to happen.  (4 from CUSA West Division going to the MWC would be fine, too). I know, this is all pipe dream fodder right now, but we can still dream, right? 😊

🦅Re-alignment in some form  is going to happen again, folks, but where will UNT be this time around when it does?  Pining for some semblance of a nostalgic teacher’s college past or—will we be where other former Missouri Valley Conference schools we “used to be” at the same level were when they went “beep! beep!” right past UNT?  ••• I know one present CUSA school in Texas who will do that to UNT when we’re not watching (& so do y’all). That school is located in a destination tourist city & plays in a stadium that hosts an annual bowl game. 🤕 Honestly, wouldn’t that be the all time “spirit-breaker” (or as some would say) “ball buster” for especially those who’ve followed the UNT athletic program for decades?  
 

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Edited June 14, 2021 by PlummMeanGreen

[untjim1995]

5 hours ago, PlummMeanGreen said:

Easy to forecast that the conference strength pecking order will change often among the G5.  

I still think UNT should grow some family jewels, copy 🐸TCU; that is, just remove itself from all the conglomeration of schools (we’re with now) that TCU removed itself from when it left CUSA (& SMU) behind & then we try to gain admittance to the MWC.  Yet I don’t think UNT would be pro-active to do that & would have to be approached by MWC Commissioner Craig Thompson for anything to happen.  (4 from CUSA West Division going to the MWC would be fine, too). I know, this is all pipe dream fodder right now, but we can still dream, right? 😊

🦅Re-alignment in some form  is going to happen again, folks, but where will UNT be this time around when it does?  Pining for some semblance of a nostalgic teacher’s college past or—will we be where other former Missouri Valley Conference schools we “used to be” at the same level were when they went “beep! beep!” right past UNT?  ••• I know one present CUSA school in Texas who will do that to UNT when we’re not watching (& so do y’all). That school is located in a destination tourist city & plays in a stadium that hosts an annual bowl game. 🤕 Honestly, wouldn’t that be the all time “spirit-breaker” (or as some would say) “ball buster” for especially those who’ve followed the UNT athletic program for decades?  
 

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I agree completely. UTSA has more advantages than any school in the three lower G5’s. That they haven’t taken advantage  of that completely is actually pretty lucky for the rest of us. If they ever get really good and ranked, the AAC and the MWC could easily consider them, especially with no one to block them because of sharing a TV market. 

[untjim1995]

11 hours ago, NorthTexasWeLove said:

ESPN+ers is better than Facebookers. 

Not to Judy…

[UNTcrazy727]

19 hours ago, NorthTexasWeLove said:

Need to regionalize, yesterday. It's the only saving grace and should've happened years ago. ALL "G5" Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico universities need to come together and give this region of college football a conference everyone can care about. 

So...

Tulsa, Tulane, ULL, LaTech, A-State, NM, NM St., UH, SMU, TX State, Rice, UTSA, UTEP, UNT. 

Split it east and west, 7 teams in each with 2 cross over games a year and 4 non-con's. 

 

 

 

UNM and NM St? Hell no.

It shouldn't take much convincing to get UAB and Southern Miss to join that conference and they're light years ahead of the New Mexico schools. 

[greenminer]

38 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

I agree completely. UTSA has more advantages than any school in the three lower G5’s. That they haven’t taken advantage  of that completely is actually pretty lucky for the rest of us. If they ever get really good and ranked, the AAC and the MWC could easily consider them, especially with no one to block them because of sharing a TV market. 

I don't see it at all.

6 hours ago, PlummMeanGreen said:

That school is located in a destination tourist city & plays in a stadium that hosts an annual bowl game. 

"Destination tourist city" - my impression: it's a Longhorn market already.  Any attempt to "move in" will have to include an effort to diminish UT's presence.

"Hosts an annual bowl game".  Literally any city with a football field can host a bowl.  Maybe there is a desire to invade SA and take an existing bowl slot, but i'm skeptical.  It appears to be a lot easier to just create a new bowl game.

[untbowler]

On 6/12/2021 at 4:09 PM, DeepGreen said:

I certainly agree.  But UNT can’t depend on Judy and CUSA.  UNT needs to consistently be the best in CUSA.  We need to win.  In all sports so our name is in the forefront of CUSA. It should be a household name.

Well we are certainly spending plenty of money, now it is time for a good ROI. 

[untjim1995]

4 hours ago, greenminer said:

I don't see it at all.

"Destination tourist city" - my impression: it's a Longhorn market already.  Any attempt to "move in" will have to include an effort to diminish UT's presence.

"Hosts an annual bowl game".  Literally any city with a football field can host a bowl.  Maybe there is a desire to invade SA and take an existing bowl slot, but i'm skeptical.  It appears to be a lot easier to just create a new bowl game.

Every major city in this state is already dominated by some combo of Longhorns, Aggies, Red Raiders, and Sooners. San Antonio is no different than DFW or Houston on that front. 

But similar to UH, when you win, as a state school supported by city students and citizens of a big city, you CAN get a lot of support and media coverage. IOW, UH doesn't really have any pressure or competition from Rice, Houston Baptist, Texas Southern, or Sam Houston State up the road. UTSA has Incarnate Word in its town to compete with for local fans who aren't driving and paying lots of dollars to go to a game in the P5 stadiums. When we are good here in Denton, we get some pub in DFW, but we all know that we are always well below the pro teams, the Big XII/SEC regional schools, including TCU and Baylor and the teams mentioned above, then SMU. If you live in DFW, you have a lot amount of choices to go watch a sport being played live within 45 minutes. Maybe I'm missing the big competition UTSA gets for coverage in the SA Express-News, their local TV outlets, and the local sports stations down there, but the Spurs are the big draw down there and they don't really get going until November, so beyond the Big XII/SEC teams, it would seem UTSA easily is next on the list there before the Spurs get going. 

Can you imagine UNT being second on the list of college football coverage in the local DFW media? That would be absolutely amazing...UTSA has no reason not to enjoy that dream scenario every week of their season. Even UH can't get that, just because of the pro teams in Houston. That UTSA hasn't taken advantage of this to any great length is a huge gift to the rest of in the SBCUSA.

[greenminer]

7 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

Every major city in this state is already dominated by some combo of Longhorns, Aggies, Red Raiders, and Sooners. San Antonio is no different than DFW or Houston on that front. 

I see a city that is less than two hours away from Austin, and the local SWC-lovers have not had to share media space with any hometown D-1 university up until less-than 15 years ago when UTSA athletics came into being.  That is nothing like the rest of the state.

You could be right! But I haven't seen anything from the AACs/MWCs of the world that says "hey, let's get a UT-Satellite campus!" It wouldn't surprise me to know there is some politic-ing going on too, to keep the "other" UTs from getting too big.

[untjim1995]

20 minutes ago, greenminer said:

I see a city that is less than two hours away from Austin, and the local SWC-lovers have not had to share media space with any hometown D-1 university up until less-than 15 years ago when UTSA athletics came into being.  That is nothing like the rest of the state.

You could be right! But I haven't seen anything from the AACs/MWCs of the world that says "hey, let's get a UT-Satellite campus!" It wouldn't surprise me to know there is some politic-ing going on too, to keep the "other" UTs from getting too big.

The MWC and AAC are waiting out the possible/probable demise of the Big XII and will see what gets left behind. Then, they will fill in the gaps to get Texas exposure. Lets say that TCU, Baylor, Iowa State, and Kansas State get left behind. I can easily see the Texas teams going west and the Big XII North schools going to the AAC. And with the AAC having an odd number right now, at some point another full member will be needed, even if the Big XII stays together. Now, they could add Army as a football-only member like Navy is, then add a non-football playing school from the A-10, someone like Dayton or VCU, just to join like Wichita State currently. But if they wanted another Texas team, UTSA represents their best spot. TV market that is not shared, easy travel games from SMU, Tulsa, UH, and Tulane, and a possible bowl tie-in with the Alamo Bowl.

My view has always been to get good enough to get the MWC's attention and get an invite. Follow TCU's path of letting Texas HS kids compete against the schools out West. It was a massive success for the Frogs. It could be copied again. And I pray the Big XII does stay together, as it would make the MWC's choices for expansion into Texas become limited to G5 schools. DFW was great to them before and could be again. It'd be great to go out there with the other 3 Texas schools in CUSA, as well, which would be ironic since the Texas CUSA West teams have been mostly putrid for the last several seasons, but do represent a ton of eyeballs for TV deals in El Paso, DFW, San Antonio, and Houston. Those four metro areas provide over 17 million potential viewers. Except for their California teams, that probably represents more than the other MWC markets combined...

[MrAlien]

I agree the MWC would be the best option should UNT leave CUSA in its current alignment. 

however I also think our basketball program might be key to joining a new conference

[NorthTexasWeLove]

On 6/13/2021 at 9:19 PM, Cougar King said:

Yes, let's leave the AAC and our billion dollar media contract, our 8 million per team just to play UNT and U-LaLa for pennies that nobody would watch

Yeah... I'm sure your ECU vs Temple ratings are banging. Or should I switch over to the Tulsa vs Memphis game? Or the Tulane at USF game in USF's empty NFL stadium? You guys have a good media contract.  But ultimately nobody cares about your games all that much either, regardless of how good your commish is at negotiating.