(02-20-2014 12:37 AM)Savacool Wrote: I understand after expenses each Sunbelt member receives approximately $40,000 per year in TV revenues from ESPN with little football and basketball exposure other than ESPN 3. Sadly your Sunbelt commissioner maybe Wright Waters locked the conference by written contract into this miserly amount through 2020 with no hope of change. Other conferences such as CUSA known as the Sunbelt 2 is getting over a million per year per team at least until the contract expires and then it will drop drastically. I guess that is why every team in the Sunbelt wants out of the conference.
Its been hard to get a market niche going for the SBC.
1) Lack of recognizable Division 1 names. There are still some schools in CUSA that have names for accomplishments they made in decades past. UAB, WKU, Charlotte, UTEP in basketball for example that the college sports fan recognizes.
Schools in the SBC with the exception of a few instances don't have a lot of tradition at the Division 1 level, often by not being a historical member of D1. FAU, FIU of CUSA also have that problem but its worse in the SBC.
2) Lack of performance in football. The SBC has good conference wide years but never has anyone in the conference won 11 games and challenged for a final Top 25 ranking. The MAC in contrast has had BG, Ohio, Kent, NIU and Ball St win 10+ in the last couple of years with NIU hitting 12 wins the last 2.
I don't know what can be done because those schools have been shoved out of a chance to compete nationally in basketball like schools of SBC past were able to do and play horrifically strong non-conference schedules in football.
One idea maybe is to grow to 16 or 18 overall members and take in non-FB schools like UT-Chattanooga and pitch a large saturation of their footprint. They could construct a conference that without doubt would be superior in numbers and quality to the Southern, OVC or Southland conferences.
They are at 11/11 right now so if they could add NMSU all sport, EKU all sport, UTC that would put the SBC at a 12/14 split. Sounds like a product that could have potential.