Wku's Run - Who Will Benefit ?

[NT80]

The money may be there, but the facilities for each of those schools are similar to UNT. Tulsa's football stadium is awful, Moody Coliseum is terrible, and Autry Court is worse than every D-1 arena except Texas Hall in Arlington. To me, Fouts is god-awful, but the Super Pit is terrific, much like Ford Stadium is great. The thing about the Sun Belt is that there are schools that have made tremendous strides in the last 10 years--much like Tulsa, who I don't include in the mix with SMU or Rice. The other two have not made significant progress in anything as far as winning goes. If the Belt can continue winning in tournaments and bowls and CUSA keeps struggling, it wouldn't surprise me to see the public schools in CUSA leave these schools behind (SMU, Rice, Tulane) and get into a conference with other state schools that have much more in common. It is not easy for me to see SMU ever letting UNT in a conference with them. It is not hard for me, though, to imagine a day (in less than a decade) where a conference existed like this:

UNT UAB

Houston Troy

So.Miss ULL

Arkansas State Memphis

UTEP La Tech

New Mexico State Middle Tennessee

These schools are large, public, and in need of good traveling crowds. You would get the Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, El Paso, Memphis, Birmingham, and Nashville markets, which are all growing with large alumni bases of each school. What gets me going the most is that the private schools in the state (Baylor, TCU, SMU, and Rice) think that they deserve to determine who they should be conference-mates with. It ought to be the other way around. SMU should never be able to dictate if North Texas gets in a conference, whether we are talking SWC or CUSA. It galls me to no end that our leadership over the years has let that happen. Those schools may have money but there support in terms of viewership is piss poor-and it ain't gonna get better. The SBC/CUSA public schools have the potential to do just that if they would sit down and find some common ground. It would make for a better sports world in football and hoops--that I can guarantee myself.

Tulsa is re-doing their football stadium (actually losing 10,000 seats). SMut's stadium is fine but Moody is a 1940-ish nightmare. Rice has a 72,000 seat stadium (for if they ever play Michigan) and some has been covered off but I believe there are new chairback seats in the mid-sections. Rice was in the New Orleans Bowl more recently than us and has a quality Baseball team, which we have none.

I like the conference proposal although only two are near 250 miles away, too far!

[FirefightnRick]

You mean the hanger? It's a great place to watch basketball game. The demon mascot goes a little over board, just ask Talon 90 and FFR.

Hey wait a minute. The FFR'ed Scrappy kicked his ass as well as that SFA lumberjackel. He was just pissed to see a bird drop a mid-court sky hook on him on his home court.

Rick