(04-05-2013 11:00 PM)arkstfan Wrote: ...
Jacksonville State desires FBS and has been in contact with the Sun Belt on a regular basis for a number of years. They face the problem that the league already has two FBS members within the state and new member Georgia State is actually closer than the two in-state members.
The fact that Jacksonville State is 3:28 from Troy and 4:59 from USA (google drive times), but only 1:40 from Atlanta ought to count as a plus rather than a minus for the Sunbelt. I think of the stability added to the MAC by having the three Michigan Directionals in the conference, and of the benefit of having the closest school being a potential inter-state rival.
Quote: James Madison is weighing whether FBS fits their future. The people I talk to say they are relatively early in the process of weighing their choices. They renovated the stadium in 2011 using basically the same logic as Missouri State. The primary focus being a stronger FCS but providing themselves with the opportunity to move should they so choose and to leave the door open to have options. They have not accepted any overtures nor have they rejected them, they are analyzing what they should do.
Well, the Sunbelt is not going to achieve absolute stability in the near term future, so if JMU decides to go for FBS later this year, opportunities to invite them are likely to come up down the track.
(04-05-2013 06:25 PM)Maryland Monarch Wrote: Do you realize how far apart Cedar Rapids and Fargo are? They measure the distance in light years, not miles.
6:36 google drive time ~ even though a road trip in one part of the country can be a Saturday afternoon drive in the Great Plains, that's still a fair piece.
If you are flying into a larger airport rather than the closest regional airport, they are both flights followed by longish bus rides, but they are't automatic travel partners in the Pac-12 USC/UCLA sense of flying into the same airport every year, just heading off to different stadiums, since the Twin Cities is not automatically the best larger airport to reach Cedar Falls / Waterloo.
For the Sunbelt, they'd both just be "a long way away", FB-only schools that Sunbelt schools would fly to regardless, but for the MAC the difference between Northern Iowa and NDSU is substantial. Cedar Falls is 3:45 to Dekalb, Illinois, and 6:38 to Kalamazoo, MI, while Fargo is 8:57 to Dekalb, IL and 11:51 to Kalamazoo, MI.