The tone of the Charlotte football feasibility reports is very pro-CUSA and anti-A10 in my opinion. Not sure why. Granted, the A10 is an incompetently run conference, but it's definitely the better conference to be in if you don't play football. I think perhaps it's just the Charlotte pro-football side trying to convince people the A10 is terrible because their dreams of a football program can't happen there regardless. If they can convince people that they desperately need to get out of the A10, it's another reason to add a football program.

As for a new eastern football conference, first off, don't have the A10 run it, because the A10 doesn't know WTF it's doing. I wouldn't let the A10 run a rec soccer league, let alone a FBS football conference. I'd start with a blank sheet, an entirely new conference without any of the dead weight from the A10.

And to start that new conference, I think you need these 5 programs as your core: Temple, UMass, Georgia St., Charlotte and Buffalo. Those are the #4, 7, 8, 25, and 50 television markets in the country. You can run those 5 markets right up against the Big East football's top 5: Rutgers (1), USF (13), Pitt (22), UConn (29) and Cincinnati (33). Get the Core Five together, and I think you can make a run at all those programs the Big East is stringing along, like UCF (19) and Memphis (47). Add any 8th member you want, and you're still going to have a bigger maximum market potential than the Big East Footballers. Then it's just a matter of catching up on the field. WVU will probably always be good, but the rest of these guys can be had. It just takes the balls to take the fight to them instead of sitting around waving your hands going, "pick me! pick me!" and hoping to get into the Big East. They don't think they need to take anyone else, and with the BCS re-affirming the Big East's membership, they're absolutely right. Unless they're raided again, they're set, no need to split their money among any more members. So if you want to move up in the East, you're going to have to create your own league.