Realignment thoughts considering basketball

[Matt from A700]

Disclosure: I know it's hard to find any information on Twitter right now that isn't just pure speculation. But admittedly, speculating is fun.

I have long been in the boat to move to a rebuilt Pac-12 as long as there were enough teams to have several travel partners this far east.

But there's been some rumblings that we aren't pursuing moving conferences again. I assume our exit fee may not be paid for, but also rising travel costs are being considered. The strong rumors now are Memphis, Tulane, and a combination of UTSA/UNLV/USF.

While losing our next biggest rival after SMU, leaving Rice as our next closest regional rivalry, would suck, there should also be considerations about basketball taken into account for how the AAC can keep up.

If the PAC gets at least Memphis and Tulane, I assume UNLV (and there's even talks of Gonzaga/St. Mary's for basketball), the AAC needs to not only go after Air Force, but work on doing its part in annihilating the MWC. We need to go after Nevada, Utah State, and New Mexico - three NCAAT teams in 2024. (If you really want to irk some Mempiss fans on Twitter, you could even argue these moves would replace the "dead weight" in basketball.) 

We are in our greatest period of sustained success in men's basketball and we need to reward our coaches and players - we should be in a conference where 22/23 regular season + conference tourney wins gets us into the NCAAT even if we don't win the conference tournament.

 

[UNTFan23]

I don't see how USF would think of moving to a heavily west coast based conference. You will inevitably have late game starts in all sports, especially on weekdays. This will be especially true for the main three sports, FB, MBB, & WBB. A 7pm PT start time translates to an 11 pm start in the eastern time zone. The PAC can promise to try to accommodate USF all it wants but for some sports (namely both basketball sports) such a late start is a high probability for weekdays.