RE: Does the AAC invite UMASS and JMU to get to 12?
Just to clarify, Benson was commissioner of the MAC when the WAC voted to go to 16 and arrived as the new schools did.
From a geography standpoint, EKU makes better sense for the Sun Belt than JMU, basically same distance from App as JMU but closer to everyone else. But they would seem to be at least a year from having everything ready.
ESPN has in its Sun Belt deal (as it used to do with C-USA and WAC, and I presume does with MAC) prohibited the league from distributing its games on TV except on higher tier deals (ie sports package) outside of states with a Sun Belt team or bordering such a state.
With the current line-up the SBC cannot distribute football tier II in:
Pacific and further west: California, Alaska, Hawaii
Central: North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky
Eastern: Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, DC, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine.
If the league could get a deal with a CBSS, or NBCSN, or even an FS2 it would be possible to expand football and/or all sports in such a way to essentially render the territorial limitation moot.
Missouri State picks up: Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky.
EKU picks up: Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia
JMU/Liberty picks up: Kentucky, West Virginia, DC, Maryland.
UMass picks up: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont.
Now it is EXTREMELY unlikely that the Sun Belt would hand out say full invites to Mo State, EKU, and JMU/Liberty with a football only to UMass and one more (maybe a UNI or someone like Portland State) just fight the territorial restriction but it is an interesting exercise to consider.
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