(12-15-2010 11:13 PM)LastMinuteman Wrote:  As for UMass hogging a slice of the MAC's revenue pie if it's admitted as a football-only, let's talk about that. You're earning something like $150,000 each from ESPN after your last contract extension, right? I think I read that it was a little under $2 million for the entire conference per year, please correct me if my numbers are outdated. So to bring in UMass, you'd each have to sacrifice 1/13th of that. That's about $11,500 each. And that's if you get absolutely $0 from our next door neighbors ESPN (1 hour drive from UMass) for adding us. I don't think that's much of a gamble.

We're not just splitting the TV money. We're also splitting any money we get from the BCS (worth over $2 million for the MAC in 2009) and the bowls (not much since none of our bowls pay much). Considering the WAC has now become worse than the Sun Belt the MAC is now in line to move up to at least third best non-BCS conference (and could easily compete for 2nd with CUSA not much better) and we will bring in additional BCS revenue (probably another $1 million). Plus, if any MAC school made a BCS bowl UMass would just be another mouth to feed.

Let's say we make $3 million in BCS revenue in 2011 and $2 million ESPN revenue. With 13 teams, each team makes just under $385,000. With 14 teams, each team makes just over $357,000. I'm not sure adding a 1-AA team is worth the loss of $28k, plus the additional expense of traveling all the way to Massachusetts.

The MAC needs to add schools that bring immediate value, such as Army. It has been brought up that Army doesn't want to join a conference. Then that is fine. But just because we can't get them now doesn't mean we should settle. The MAC is not hurting like the WAC.

(12-15-2010 11:13 PM)LastMinuteman Wrote:  the freedom from your 13 team scheduling headache...The scheduling thing alone is probably worth at least that much in terms of negotiation leverage for your non-conference games.

This isn't a headache or a problem. There are already far too many teams in the conference for everyone to play each other anyway. Adding a team for the sake of making it even divisions makes no sense.