C-USA could go to 16 members; who could be added?

[Harry]

Conference USA could grow even further after recently pushing its membership to 14, CBSsports.com recently reported.

This isn't much of a surprise considering C-USA commissioner Britton Banowsky at one point promoted a C-USA/Mountain West merger that could grow to as many to 24 or 28 teams.

That alliance fell through, but Banowsky can now pursue his own plan of building a league that relies on strength in numbers.

The real question is: Which schools would C-USA actually want considering the remaining options?

The CBS Sports report listed UL-Lafayette and Arkansas State as potential candidates.

* While Arkansas State has made huge strides with its football program, I tend to doubt that C-USA will look to the Red Wolves. If you've ever had to make the trip to Jonesboro, Ark., you would understand why. I'm not saying it's a bad town or anything, it's just isolated and completely lacking any attractive market for C-USA.

Read more: http://www.sunherald.com/2013/04/10/4585278/c-usa-could-go-to-16-members-who.html

[Arkstfan]

I'm not sure his logic will match the presidents if they reach consensus to go to 16.

First I think people learned a valuable lesson from the AAC TV figure coming in so far below what the "experts" projected. The tout was it was the largest league in the nation in TV markets and it didn't beat CUSA's two year old deal by much and remember NBC Sports set the price, they were bidding to get college football on their channel so their bid included a premium for that. ESPN simply matched and that was probably because they considered it a decent value to keep NBCS out of the competition more than an assessment of what the games were actually worth.

Second the people who will be bidding for rights are subscriber oriented networks who want to keep cable and satellite happy enough to pay their price or pass on potential increases. They don't think nearly as much about markets as they do states and fan base sizes. The Ragin Cajuns are worth more to them than Tulane because more people care if they get the Cajuns than the Green Wave and those people are spread across a wider geographic area meaning they are important to more cable systems, geographic diversity even matters to satellite if most of the support is in places where people are less likely to have satellite then Direct and Dish care less, if your fan base lives in apartments or condos that won't permit satellite or you can't get a view of the satellite you don't matter much to them. Georgia State may be worth more than James Madison despite JMU having already establishing competent football and a good fan because CUSA is already in Virginia but isn't in Georgia and Georgia Southern is probably worth more than Georgia State because they do have a decent size interested fan base in state they don't have but isn't concentrated in one small urban area.

Third 20% of the membership is a bet that they will pan out to be contributing members in football who can actually transition and be decent in football. CUSA needs to be relevant for TV rights in the next negotiation.

Fourth, CUSA lost serious basketball clout. The league has been averaging about as much in NCAA units as half the total TV package so take your pick it is equal to the Fox deal or the CBS deal or basically 1/3rd of the league's primary revenue. Another quality basketball team may well be on radar.

If CUSA goes down the path to 16 I bet at least one new state is added if not two and either two based on football or one for football and one for basketball.

[Arkstfan]

And I'd watch carefully what sort of opposition a particular school might encounter.

For example, does Rice want another large public in their backyard? That might be a problem for Texas State and even Louisiana. Is the school the "home" team in a market that someone else recruits and "elevating" them make them stronger recruiting competition.

[shaft]

I say add'em both and bump CUSA up to 16 for a few reasons.

1. Protects against a future raid from the Big East because they were raided by the ACC because they were raided by the SEC, Big Ten, or Big 12.

2. Push Southern Miss and UAB into the Eastern Division.

3. Tighter geographic fit = decreased travel costs

4. Two divions of 8 means rarely having to go to the East.

5. Hurts the SBC keeps them from having a championship game.

[GTWT]

Hurts the SBC keeps them from having a championship game.

The best way to 'hurt' the SBC (& I'm not sure why we should care) is to leave them the way they are now.