(09-26-2015 08:22 PM)miko33 Wrote: I guess the question becomes are we talking about universities who field FB teams or are we assuming that these are really FB clubs that happen to have universities attached to them? How you look at it makes all the difference.
Football clubs that have universities attached to them.
The exception is the Big Ten which is only going to look at a land grant university for an addition. Even the Big Ten has minimum athletic criteria. Rutgers had to build its football program up to the point where they made a viable addition.
I've noted this before but all the new schools to the P5 club (Utah, TCU, Louisville, West Virginia, Syracuse, Pitt, Rutgers) all had at least a 45,000 seat stadium at time of admission.
Boise has only 37,000 seats. Boise isn't served by an international airport either. With travel considered its almost like adding a school in Alaska. They've got some growing up to do as a viable P5 market.
An upgraded MWC would help but outside of NMSU, Idaho and Texas State I don't think they have the clout for these schools to pay 2-3 million dollars in exit fees to join another G5 conference.
The Coast-2-Coast AAC could have helped Boise State simply from the angle of looking more like a de-facto power conference.
AAC West: SDSU, Boise St, Air Force, Colorado St, Tulsa, SMU, Houston, Tulane
AAC East: UConn, Temple, Navy, Cincinnati, East Carolina, Memphis, UCF, USF
The AAC would be a more exciting conference to play in than the MWC and definitely the strongest G5. Bowl games would be a clear step up over what the other G5 conferences would.
Instead Boise made the decision to stay in the MWC and there is not enough difference between it an the AAC to convince Boise to jump. It may have been more expensive the first 4-5 years with the travel but by 2020 6 to 8 million dollar TV deal was probable, IMO.