http://www.tennessean.com/article/D4/201...t|Sports|p

The Sun Belt proposed a massive four-conference merger, tried to persuade four current Conference USA members to switch leagues, put a 48-hour deadline on two other prospective schools to join the Sun Belt and even listed 21 schools (including Belmont University) as potential targets in Sun Belt expansion.

All these plans unfolded before Benson eventually added Georgia State, Texas State and Texas-Arlington to the Sun Belt membership for 2013.

And now we know why CUSA took so many schools. Brilliant. And why Old Dominion and Charlotte got CUSA bids, thus saddling CUSA with the same number of move ups as the Belt (CUSA had to protect ECU). Also Brilliant.

My guess is that ECU used the opportunity of a contact from the Sun Belt to complain - again about their travel costs. I don't think ECU was serious about bolting, but CUSA couldn't risk that. ECU, you can play that song like a drum anytime you want the CUSA to respond to "how high" when you say "jump".

To ECU, USM, and Marshall....if our newbies perform better than yours....and you get sick of the travel....remember that door is still open.

However, I'm surprised that CUSA didn't take the opportunity they had this year (which may not look as good next year) to take our best programs. It was fortuitous for the Belt that MTSU had a bad year last year.

The Belt is will be weaker next year than last year (with two teams coming off of FBS transitional years, and one coming over from FCS). But CUSA lost much more.

(07-08-2012 11:34 AM)troy4ever21 Wrote:  

The Belt wasn't seriously considering adding Belmont and Liberty. Benson was just simply showing a slide with the potential teams available, if needed.

We stopped at 10. And we just closed the gap - significantly - with CUSA. I'm glad they ended up with Charlotte, who will now begin a process Georgia State, USA, and Texas State started three years ago.

What didn't you like about how things turned out. It was correct, IMHO, for Benson to contact schools that are in our footprint who might be willing to trade some conference reputational capital for stability. None took the bait, but I think the offer may have forced CUSA's hand. Old Dominion was completely unprepared for the CUSA bid. They werent expecting it. It shows that CUSA might have been rattled. Also, I liked the ultimatum to Louisiana Tech and UTSA. Yes, we would have given you a bid, but don't just sit on it. Instead of losing our best programs, we lost the fourth and fifth place teams in the Belt. We still have a presence in the two markets we lost teams from (WPB-FLL-MIA and DFW (although not in football in Dallas)), Our closest conference competitor diluted their product massively (to the point that the Belt could conceivably fight off a real raid by CUSA in the future) and reduced the distance between the two conferences by a lot.

And from reading between the lines, it looks like at least one of the better CUSA programs gets it. The new CUSA isn't much better than the Sun Belt. Even before they added ODU, UNCC, and UTSA.

I think Benson played this perfectly. It helps that there were just too many places the Belt could have gone for CUSA to kill us off when they had the chance.

Good to see some truth in all of the BS that went flying over the last 6 months.

CUSA is also talking about it.

http://csnbbs.com/showthread.php?tid=577125

I can't say that article surprises me in any way. As with all realignment though there's a pecking order and teams don't willingly move to leagues considered lower on the pecking order. Benson has always been a guy to try bold moves, but I just don't think the Sun-Belt could have ever made the type of guarantee's ECU would have needed to make that move.

The new CUSA has two good teams, in my opinion, and that is ECU and USM. CUSA and the MWC lost all but a very few of their good teams so now the difference between SBC, CUSA, MAC, and MWC is not terribly significant . . WAC is no longer an FBS player.

Go stAte . . Go SBC !!

We will surpass CDOA within the next 10 years.

(07-08-2012 12:33 PM)ManzanoWolf Wrote:  The new CUSA has two good teams, in my opinion, and that is ECU and USM. CUSA and the MWC lost all but a very few of their good teams so now the difference between SBC, CUSA, MAC, and MWC is not terribly significant . . WAC is no longer an FBS player.

Go stAte . . Go SBC !!

I think you are undervaluing Tulsa a great deal but your overall point isn't wrong. In the grand scheme of things all of the non-AQ leagues just got bunched together and are much closer to each other than they were before. There are a few programs who stand out, but not many anymore.

Besnon was right, a 4 league merger just made way too much sense to get done.

I wish we'd just combine the best of CUSA with the best of the Sunbelt / MAC and leave everybody else behind. Lets be honest all 3 conferences have consistent bottom feeders. If we could eliminate them completely a pretty solid football conference could be built. I can think of one school in Alabama I'd GLADLY trade for UAB right now.

(07-08-2012 12:54 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  Besnon was right, a 4 league merger just made way too much sense to get done.

What kind of TV deal could such a merger have gotten? We couldn't get enough TV money with the MWC/C-USA merger to make up for lost tournament credits and buyouts, how would going bigger with the Sun-Belt, and WAC or whoever else have worked? I just can't imagine that 30+ team merger could have gotten a TV deal that would have even been able to pay every team over 1 million per team per year.

(07-08-2012 01:13 PM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(07-08-2012 12:54 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  Besnon was right, a 4 league merger just made way too much sense to get done.

What kind of TV deal could such a merger have gotten? We couldn't get enough TV money with the MWC/C-USA merger to make up for lost tournament credits and buyouts, how would going bigger with the Sun-Belt, and WAC or whoever else have worked? I just can't imagine that 30+ team merger could have gotten a TV deal that would have even been able to pay every team over 1 million per team per year.

About the same that the leagues are getting now. The big savings would have been on travel.

As both of our leagues has discovered, only BCS schools get significant TV Money.

(07-08-2012 01:21 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(07-08-2012 01:13 PM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(07-08-2012 12:54 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  Besnon was right, a 4 league merger just made way too much sense to get done.

What kind of TV deal could such a merger have gotten? We couldn't get enough TV money with the MWC/C-USA merger to make up for lost tournament credits and buyouts, how would going bigger with the Sun-Belt, and WAC or whoever else have worked? I just can't imagine that 30+ team merger could have gotten a TV deal that would have even been able to pay every team over 1 million per team per year.

About the same that the leagues are getting now. The big savings would have been on travel.

As both of our leagues has discovered, only BCS schools get significant TV Money.

Not really, it took C-USA adding 2 FCS schools to actually get ECU a savings on travel. That merger wouldn't have helped us out in any way. C-USA did the only thing that actually could have saved us money on travel. C-USA gets over 1 million a year right now, do you think that 33 team merger would have done the same or better? I personally don't, because you are adding multiple leagues dead weight. Each non-AQ league has 3-4 teams that really are just annual bottom feeders, so joining up and then having 12 or so complete dogs in one league does no one any good. Now if you wanted to take the top from all the non-AQ leagues to form something completely new that would make some sense, but that's just not feasible.

(07-08-2012 12:40 PM)Atlanta Trojan Wrote:  We will surpass CDOA within the next 10 years.

With all due respect to both you and the rest of our conference, I simply don't see it happening.

There are a litany of reasons, but to give just a handful of empirical reasons:

1) Budget. There is very little overlap in budget. We have several schools operating on the type of budgets that FCS and non-football D1 schools operate on and I just don't see that changing within ten years. Budgets may increase at the schools at the bottom, but C-USA programs likely will as well. Nearly half our conference operates with a budget smaller than their smallest budget and nearly half their conference operates with a budget higher than our highest budget.

2) FB & MBB attendance. Again very little overlap. We might close the gap some if we continue to see growth at some of our top programs and if their bottom programs continue to stagnate, but even programs like UAB and Tulane have shown that with a winning product they can put fans in the stands as well as anyone in the Sun Belt. Perhaps we close the gap some, but (if membership stays relatively the same) in ten years, they'll still be averaging more fans in the stands than us and not just because East Carolina typically averages double what any Sun Belt member does(outside of Cajuns in 2011).

3) Instability. Not exactly empirical I realize, but we always talk about the stability of our conference and while I do agree it's a strength, it's not exactly set in stone. Rumors still have C-USA coming back for more Sun Belt programs in the coming years and I doubt very seriously anyone turns them down.

Look, I'm all for the Sun Belt putting C-USA in our crosshairs and trying to take them down. With continued growth, perhaps we can seriously close the gap and come close to being on par with them in the next yen years. As far as on the field product in football and MBB, it very well may be possible, at the top we're not far behind as it is, but I just don't think putting them in our rear view mirror in the next ten years is a reasonable expectation. Not in football, not in basketball, and certainly not as a collective group of overall athletic programs, not so long as we have schools operating on shoestring budgets and pumping the majority of that small budget into football and letting other sports wither on the vine.

(07-08-2012 01:21 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(07-08-2012 01:13 PM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(07-08-2012 12:54 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  Besnon was right, a 4 league merger just made way too much sense to get done.

What kind of TV deal could such a merger have gotten? We couldn't get enough TV money with the MWC/C-USA merger to make up for lost tournament credits and buyouts, how would going bigger with the Sun-Belt, and WAC or whoever else have worked? I just can't imagine that 30+ team merger could have gotten a TV deal that would have even been able to pay every team over 1 million per team per year.

About the same that the leagues are getting now. The big savings would have been on travel.

As both of our leagues has discovered, only BCS schools get significant TV Money.

That is 100% correct. Dollars would have been the same, but travel cost would have been greatly reduced as the pods would have been made up of teams very close one another.

Also, before people get down on Benson, he was correct to try and strike first because the writing was on the wall that CUSA was going to take SBC schools. Whether we tried to strike first or not, we were going to get raided. At least we tried to strike first. So, I applaud the action.

(07-08-2012 01:12 PM)blunderbuss Wrote:  I wish we'd just combine the best of CUSA with the best of the Sunbelt / MAC and leave everybody else behind. Lets be honest all 3 conferences have consistent bottom feeders. If we could eliminate them completely a pretty solid football conference could be built. I can think of one school in Alabama I'd GLADLY trade for UAB right now.

I hate to tell you this but this just happened and guess what. You didn't make the cut. The top programs in the nation consolidated (Again) and your program was well one of the "bottom feeders" I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the rest of us. You never know who will rise to the top from here. We very well could see a LA or State program take down a BCS giant in the very near future.

(07-08-2012 03:59 PM)TXSTCAT Wrote:  

(07-08-2012 01:12 PM)blunderbuss Wrote:  I wish we'd just combine the best of CUSA with the best of the Sunbelt / MAC and leave everybody else behind. Lets be honest all 3 conferences have consistent bottom feeders. If we could eliminate them completely a pretty solid football conference could be built. I can think of one school in Alabama I'd GLADLY trade for UAB right now.

I hate to tell you this but this just happened and guess what. You didn't make the cut. The top programs in the nation consolidated (Again) and your program was well one of the "bottom feeders" I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the rest of us. You never know who will rise to the top from here. We very well could see a LA or State program take down a BCS giant in the very near future.

I don't think that's really what just happened, not at the non-AQ level anyhow. Not all the programs that moved up were "top programs".

(07-08-2012 02:54 PM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  

(07-08-2012 12:40 PM)Atlanta Trojan Wrote:  We will surpass CDOA within the next 10 years.

With all due respect to both you and the rest of our conference, I simply don't see it happening.

There are a litany of reasons, but to give just a handful of empirical reasons:

1) Budget. There is very little overlap in budget. We have several schools operating on the type of budgets that FCS and non-football D1 schools operate on and I just don't see that changing within ten years. Budgets may increase at the schools at the bottom, but C-USA programs likely will as well. Nearly half our conference operates with a budget smaller than their smallest budget and nearly half their conference operates with a budget higher than our highest budget.

2) FB & MBB attendance. Again very little overlap. We might close the gap some if we continue to see growth at some of our top programs and if their bottom programs continue to stagnate, but even programs like UAB and Tulane have shown that with a winning product they can put fans in the stands as well as anyone in the Sun Belt. Perhaps we close the gap some, but (if membership stays relatively the same) in ten years, they'll still be averaging more fans in the stands than us and not just because East Carolina typically averages double what any Sun Belt member does(outside of Cajuns in 2011).

3) Instability. Not exactly empirical I realize, but we always talk about the stability of our conference and while I do agree it's a strength, it's not exactly set in stone. Rumors still have C-USA coming back for more Sun Belt programs in the coming years and I doubt very seriously anyone turns them down.

Look, I'm all for the Sun Belt putting C-USA in our crosshairs and trying to take them down. With continued growth, perhaps we can seriously close the gap and come close to being on par with them in the next yen years. As far as on the field product in football and MBB, it very well may be possible, at the top we're not far behind as it is, but I just don't think putting them in our rear view mirror in the next ten years is a reasonable expectation. Not in football, not in basketball, and certainly not as a collective group of overall athletic programs, not so long as we have schools operating on shoestring budgets and pumping the majority of that small budget into football and letting other sports wither on the vine.

Good post.