(04-27-2014 08:47 AM)oasispirate Wrote:  P5 are going to ruin college athletics

"Going to"?

Damage has been done...

Louisville contributed more to the AAC in one year than some schools will ever contribute. They have a great athletic program. We should simply thank them for the contributions and wish them well.

(04-27-2014 09:14 PM)Cubanbull Wrote:  

(04-27-2014 09:11 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-27-2014 07:51 AM)BigEastHomer Wrote:  

(04-27-2014 07:36 AM)ArmoredUpKnight Wrote:  Pass me some if that koolaid.

I'm just enjoying being Man of the Year. The AAC has stood out this year and no conference can expect more than that.

This past year, the AAC was in fact a Power conference, BCS-AQ, and we had the results of Louisville, one of the 10 best athletic programs in the country the past 5 years, in our major sports column.

Neither will be true next year. That's when the "AAC" really starts as a conference.

This was what you said look above. And yes losing UL is not good for the league but the point that I and others are making was that they were NOT the ones that won the BCS Bowl nor the National Championship. Those two are part of the AAC next year. So to say the AAC starts next year is NOT completely true.
Now had UL been the AAC football champ and the BCS bowl winner plus the NCAA basketball champion then you could really said that the league would have received a huge hit by losing its standard bearer in both sports.
The AAC started this year and did damn well in both of the major sports and both of those schools are still in the AAC next year.

Nothing in what I said above discounts what UCF and UConn did.

Obviously, the AAC started this past season. But what I have objected to is using this past year to predict how we will do in the future. We are losing two very big things - AQ status, and Louisville, our best-performing and highest-status athletic program.

Seems that the mistake being made is that some are wrongly equating the performance of single teams as reflecting the performance of the conference. E.g., UCF had an outstanding season, but the AAC as a whole played much worse football than the Big East did its last year, there was a significant drop-off, and now we're losing the football school that performed best OOC.

So the AAC "starts" next year in that the 2014-2015 results are much more likely to be representative of our results going forward. As to what those results will be, we will see.

(04-27-2014 11:01 AM)BigEastHomer Wrote:  

(04-27-2014 10:55 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  The stepping stones to get to the power conference level are not going to be easy to attai, but being in the "power 5 autonomy voting block" is the least important.


1) Power Confernce TV exposure---CHECK. I'd say we have that.

2) Power Confernce Paycheck---nope. We are a long way from that.

3) Contract game---nope. But by dominating the G5 slot we can at least appear similar.

4) Power Conference Attendance--nope. But unlike other factors, this one is directly within our control and can lead directly to obtaining #2 and #3 above. We all need to be spending on marketing and the game experience in order to push attendance. If we can average 40-50K as a legue in football, we will in effect become the 6th power conference regardless of the P5 desires. At that level of attendance, the networks will pay more for televising a product that exhibits that type of support and better bowls would be far more interested in a league with attendance numbers in that range. The ability to sign a contract bowl becomes a legitimate possibility.

And, as I said (it's like the chicken and egg analogy)... I think exposure is a key ingredient that drives those other points. It's about being in the consciousness of the sports fan. We DEFINITELY were in the consciousness this year. Raising the bar with regards to coaching hires is a great sign of things to come.

That consciousness includes having the sports fan surmise that seeing well attended AAC games on TV accentuates the notion that he/she is watching a big time conference. It is about perception. Being on TV every week but averaging 26K fans will not move anybody's needle.

(04-27-2014 04:20 PM)Pirateoracle Wrote:  Kentucky... Don't forget where you live.. Ecu in the 8 most populous state.. More people in our back yard than in you state...See ya... Rememenber u a Cusa wanna be... I'll be at the beach u choke on bad pizza....

This guy! Now my fav-0 Pie-rates fan-boyo! Here ya go feller, just for ya!

(04-27-2014 07:05 PM)NBPirate Wrote:  He's the worst ECU fan on the internet. Please ignore.

Relax, Your no longer stuck on that mountain in Chille..Change your diet, have some pizza and a beer on me....

(04-28-2014 12:39 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  So the AAC "starts" next year in that the 2014-2015 results are much more likely to be representative of our results going forward. As to what those results will be, we will see.

The teams that won national recognition for the conference this year WILL ALSO BE HERE in 2014-2015.

LOL. I see where he is going with this so if our champ doesn't make BCS game and win this year which is a very possible and we don't win the national championship highly likely then QUO can crow that he was correct and the league flopped after Louisville left even though UL didn't accomplish either one of those two things this year

Yeah losing the team that finished second in most sports is a game changer.

(04-28-2014 05:21 AM)Cubanbull Wrote:  LOL. I see where he is going with this so if our champ doesn't make BCS game and win this year which is a very possible and we don't win the national championship highly likely then QUO can crow that he was correct and the league flopped after Louisville left even though UL didn't accomplish either one of those two things this year

Not at all.

Remember, I have consistently said that it is silly to judge the strength of a conference primarily on whether a single school has great success. E.g., when many have touted UCF winning the Fiesta Bowl, I noted that our Sagarin rating was #6, almost identical to the MWC and FAR below the level of the Big East in 2012.

Likewise, I noted that in basketball we were the #7 RPI conference, which indicates our true overall performance, not UConn winning the national title.

So I would never do that. If we don't make a BCS next year but the computers say we were the 4th strongest conference, I would say we had a clearly better year than we did this year. Conference strength is based on the performance of all teams, not what the best team did.

(04-28-2014 04:42 AM)BigEastHomer Wrote:  

(04-28-2014 12:39 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  So the AAC "starts" next year in that the 2014-2015 results are much more likely to be representative of our results going forward. As to what those results will be, we will see.

The teams that won national recognition for the conference this year WILL ALSO BE HERE in 2014-2015.

Louisville won more overall national basketball + football recognition than anyone in the AAC. E.g., in football, Louisville was ranked every week of the season, and they spent 6 weeks in the top 9, whereas no other AAC team spent even a single week in the top 9. UCF wasn't even ranked at all until the 9th week of the season.

Louisville also had the most OOC success. They were unbeaten OOC, including a win over an SEC team and over a blue-chip program, Miami, in a bowl game. UCF did beat Baylor, the best OOC win we had all year, but they also lost to SEC also-ran South Carolina.

Nobody else came close to having the seasons-long national relevance in football and basketball that Louisville had. They were easily our most prominent national athletic program.