A few quick points:

-ECU's AD says that they've never had more than 400 visiting fans from an opponent in CUSA. This includes the vaunted traveling fan base of Marshall.

-He says he wants to take the Pirate football stadium up to 60,000 seats but that is nearly impossible to do playing a Crap USA home schedule.

-He would love to get ECU into the SEC and even talked to the Big XII about pairing with West Virginia but thinks Louisville will end up with that spot.

-The Big East is now more geographically challenging than the conference ECU is now in, as strange as it may seem. He likes the idea of the merger and playing in one solid division of schools rather than rotating divisional opponents to build rivalries.

-He thinks the merger will still end up 20 or 24 teams, maybe beyond. He likes the idea of adding more schools that play in the Eastern Timezone.

http://www.790thezone.com/instantreplay/...x?PID=1773

(02-09-2012 01:43 PM)Louis Kitton Wrote:  A few quick points:

-ECU's AD says that they've never had more than 400 visiting fans from an opponent in CUSA. This includes the vaunted traveling fan base of Marshall.

-He says he wants to take the Pirate football stadium up to 60,000 seats but that is nearly impossible to do playing a Crap USA home schedule.

-He would love to get ECU into the SEC and even talked to the Big XII about pairing with West Virginia but thinks Louisville will end up with that spot.

-The Big East is now more geographically challenging than the conference ECU is now in, as strange as it may seem. He likes the idea of the merger and playing in one solid division of schools rather than rotating divisional opponents to build rivalries.

-He thinks the merger will still end up 20 or 24 teams, maybe beyond. He likes the idea of adding more schools that play in the Eastern Timezone.

http://www.790thezone.com/instantreplay/...x?PID=1773

Dump CUSA and look toward SBC.

C-USA & MWC will merge. The teams from the MAC, Sun Belt, and FCS with the biggest budgets, markets, fanbases and potential for growth will be added.

That's my guess.

(02-09-2012 01:43 PM)Louis Kitton Wrote:  A few quick points:

-ECU's AD says that they've never had more than 400 visiting fans from an opponent in CUSA. This includes the vaunted traveling fan base of Marshall.

-He says he wants to take the Pirate football stadium up to 60,000 seats but that is nearly impossible to do playing a Crap USA home schedule.

-He would love to get ECU into the SEC and even talked to the Big XII about pairing with West Virginia but thinks Louisville will end up with that spot.

-The Big East is now more geographically challenging than the conference ECU is now in, as strange as it may seem. He likes the idea of the merger and playing in one solid division of schools rather than rotating divisional opponents to build rivalries.

-He thinks the merger will still end up 20 or 24 teams, maybe beyond. He likes the idea of adding more schools that play in the Eastern Timezone.

http://www.790thezone.com/instantreplay/...x?PID=1773

Any institution that joins a 24 team merger (they are talking a whole conference at this point) needs to take their AD and president behind the woodshed and beat some sense into them.

24 teams is an insane number of hoops squads and a Bat$h!t crazy number of teams for football teams.

CUSA needs to do the smart thing and raid the WAC (so as not to piss off the MWC) and then maybe set up a scheduling agreement with the MWC to strengthen their profile.

(02-09-2012 01:55 PM)MUsince96 Wrote:  C-USA & MWC will merge. The teams from the MAC, Sun Belt, and FCS with the biggest budgets, markets, fanbases and potential for growth will be added.

That's my guess.

MUsince96 -- Is this where you see Temple?

From the sounds of it everything is on the table at this point.

CUSA and MWC were about to sign off on the merger and Memphis contacted the Big East at the last second to see if they were interested before the agreement was finalized.

Now that has left CUSA and MWC spinning as many AD's on both sides want to just reload their conference rather than toy around with a super conference full of small market mid major teams.

(02-09-2012 01:59 PM)Owls Head Wrote:  

(02-09-2012 01:55 PM)MUsince96 Wrote:  C-USA & MWC will merge. The teams from the MAC, Sun Belt, and FCS with the biggest budgets, markets, fanbases and potential for growth will be added.

That's my guess.

MUsince96 -- Is this where you see Temple?

Honestly I don't know Owl. I don't see you all joining for all sports unless we landed a TV deal that Temple just couldn't turn down moneywise. And I don't know if The Alliance would want Temple for football only, unless it was to balance the way Hawaii is football only in the West.

I do know that our AD indicated this afternoon at a luncheon the merger is on.

(02-09-2012 01:55 PM)MUsince96 Wrote:  C-USA & MWC will merge. The teams from the MAC, Sun Belt, and FCS with the biggest budgets, markets, fanbases and potential for growth will be added.

That's my guess.

And it's a stupid one since CUSA has nothing to offer and MWC is too far.

My guess is UAB, ECU and Marshall go to SBC begging for entry (with Troy holding a lot of clout).

Meanwhile, Rice and Tulane have to decide whether they team w/ the likes of La Tech, or suck up travel costs.

UNT is in an awkward spot in all of this. They fit well w/ Tulsa and UTEP.

I would really like to see Ohio, Temple, and Old Dominion from FCS make the move up. They sell 16K season tickets with a waiting list of more. Have a budget of 30M and have a good market. IMO they are a sleeping giant.

(02-09-2012 02:06 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  

(02-09-2012 01:55 PM)MUsince96 Wrote:  C-USA & MWC will merge. The teams from the MAC, Sun Belt, and FCS with the biggest budgets, markets, fanbases and potential for growth will be added.

That's my guess.

And it's a stupid one since CUSA has nothing to offer and MWC is too far.

My guess is UAB, ECU and Marshall go to SBC begging for entry (with Troy holding a lot of clout).

Meanwhile, Rice and Tulane have to decide whether they team w/ the likes of La Tech, or suck up travel costs.

UNT is in an awkward spot in all of this. They fit well w/ Tulsa and UTEP.

C-USA & MWC will merge. The teams we want to add will be added. Except Temple, they are the wildcard that can do what they want.