Guess this topic is going mainstream now.
http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journ...nment.aspx

You had ODU and Arkansas St. people commenting. 5 of the CUSA members were in the Sun Belt prior to the last alignment and 4 others have been at some point in time (although only LT in football). I don't see UTEP, Rice and Marshall being too enthused.

Well, with any hope UTEP can skip off to the MWC.

(11-29-2016 06:33 PM)bullet Wrote:  You had ODU and Arkansas St. people commenting. 5 of the CUSA members were in the Sun Belt prior to the last alignment and 4 others have been at some point in time (although only LT in football). I don't see UTEP, Rice and Marshall being too enthused.

I think the AD's and Prez's may come around to this.

The MW will stay a 12.

Possible new west division with NMSU, UTEP, UTSA, TX ST, UNT and Rice.

If I were to wager, what UTEP wants isn't going to be a big initial factor.

Two most important people interviewed are Wood Selig and Chris Massaro. They were pals when Selig was at WKU and doubt that has changed.

I was at a Sun Belt meeting when WKU was still FCS with no plans to move up and overhead Selig trying to convince the UALR AD that the hoops schools needed to defect which was a non-starter for UALR because AState was their big ticket seller and ULM too easy to get to. UNO wasn't going to defect either (pre-Katrina) because they liked having UL Lafayette and USA so close by. But Selig is absolutely the sort of guy who would try to organize a defection and he and Massaro were out front when Bankowsky pitched going to 16 in a move seen as being designed to send UAB to the east countering that ANY expansion of CUSA had to include another eastern school, which would prevent UAB from moving over.

The TV dollars are too small to relevant now
“Finances are going to necessitate logical, reasonable thinking to do what’s best for the student athletes and the institutions,” said Wood Selig, athletic director at Old Dominion in CUSA. “We can’t keep trying to keep up with the SEC or ACC.”

“It’s going to take a fiscally dramatic event to get something to happen,” Middle Tennessee State AD Chris Massaro said. “I’m not sure we’ve hit that financial crisis yet. When you hit a crisis, people will put their egos aside.”

CUSA just took a major financial hit in TV rights, WKU has dropped sports. UAB has revived football but has the ax hanging over their head that institutional contributions are capped at current levels and their share of TV revenue went down has to be replaced. FIU is getting nearly 75 cents of every athletic dollar from the school.

The powder is just waiting for the spark and unless UTEP and Rice shock me by taking a defection leadership role in the west, the spark will come from the east.

Every time someone gets enthusiastic about this topic, they avoid talking about all of the difficulties (i.e., the reasons it hasn't happened yet).

It's not just things like Louisiana Tech refusing to be in the same league as UL-Monroe. (Note the amusing fact that the maps in that SBJ article don't put Monroe in any of their proposed realigned leagues.)

It's also business considerations:

Why would the SBC schools give up the financial advantage of having only 10 football teams? They just kicked out NMSU and Idaho in order to split their future football money 10 ways instead of 12.

What would happen to the non-football members in the SBC? The SBJ article (again avoiding the problems) doesn't deal with them. Maybe neither conference would want them and somebody would have to pay them to join another league like the Southland, as when VCU and Va Tech joined the A-10 upon being excluded from the first version of CUSA. The CUSA founding schools had to shell out more than $2 million for that, and it was 20 years ago. Who's going to pay, say, a total of $4 million to get UT-Arlington and UA-Little Rock to leave themselves out of this league swap?

What's to stop any schools dissatisfied with how the leagues would be divided from just vetoing the idea, or forming their own league with the schools they choose themselves while leaving everyone else to clean up? Any scheme that completely reshuffles both leagues could be scuttled by one or two of these 26 schools saying no.

Why would anyone think fans unmotivated to buy tickets for Louisiana Tech vs. Florida Atlantic will flock to the ticket booth for La Tech vs. Texas State? The ticket sales between those two matchups will not be significantly different.

(11-29-2016 08:30 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  The powder is just waiting for the spark and unless UTEP and Rice shock me by taking a defection leadership role in the west, the spark will come from the east.

You might be right that a group might try to Make Something Happen, but there are huge institutional roadblocks that The Powers That Be probably can't be bothered to remove. The power conferences are not going to look kindly on a new one-bid league being created and taking away an at-large bid. So I don't think they're going to loosen up the rules that killed the Great West.

I looked at the guy's map before I read the whole article, and I noticed--he kicks ULM out of FBS. ULM dropping FBS is a pretty big assumption, and the idea that someone would effectively get kicked out of their conference, and then the upstart group asking for NCAA rules changes on grounds of "fairness" (the old continuity rules), isn't going to fly.

This would have a lot more credibility if the geographic splits were more obvious. The journalist "solves" a lot of those problems by swapping ULM for James Madison.

They have James Madison on the map. Kissing from the map are Missouri State, Northern Iowa, UTRGV, Wichita State, Eastern Kentucky, maybe a North Florida in the future, Youngstown State as travel partners to Marshall, Stony Brook, Delaware and so forth. I could see some Texas schools get added as well. Would the MWC take a risk in taken UTEP, West Texas A&M, Rice and North Dakota State? Or replace West Texas A&M with Montana. Montana would leave little brother behind because of the academics in most of the MWC plus reuniting with several Big Sky schools.

None of these proposed realignment concepts are ever going to happen. Teams that left the Belt are in no hurry to return. Sure C-USA is spread out, but the divisions are not bad. C-USA West is really nice. North Texas fans travel well to games at Rice, UTSA, and LA Tech, and their fans travel well to our stadium too.

Simply put, it is easier to get our fans excited about watching us play teams like Rice, UTEP, Southern Miss, LA Tech, and Marshall, then any school currently in the Sun Belt. That isn't a knock on the Belt. They have some schools that play some good football. Our fans just don't want to see them. And, that is what this article fails to address.

Sun belt is pretty stable right now. Frick CUSA. It's a mess

(11-29-2016 08:30 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  If I were to wager, what UTEP wants isn't going to be a big initial factor.

Two most important people interviewed are Wood Selig and Chris Massaro. They were pals when Selig was at WKU and doubt that has changed.

I was at a Sun Belt meeting when WKU was still FCS with no plans to move up and overhead Selig trying to convince the UALR AD that the hoops schools needed to defect which was a non-starter for UALR because AState was their big ticket seller and ULM too easy to get to. UNO wasn't going to defect either (pre-Katrina) because they liked having UL Lafayette and USA so close by. But Selig is absolutely the sort of guy who would try to organize a defection and he and Massaro were out front when Bankowsky pitched going to 16 in a move seen as being designed to send UAB to the east countering that ANY expansion of CUSA had to include another eastern school, which would prevent UAB from moving over.

The TV dollars are too small to relevant now
“Finances are going to necessitate logical, reasonable thinking to do what’s best for the student athletes and the institutions,” said Wood Selig, athletic director at Old Dominion in CUSA. “We can’t keep trying to keep up with the SEC or ACC.”

“It’s going to take a fiscally dramatic event to get something to happen,” Middle Tennessee State AD Chris Massaro said. “I’m not sure we’ve hit that financial crisis yet. When you hit a crisis, people will put their egos aside.”

CUSA just took a major financial hit in TV rights, WKU has dropped sports. UAB has revived football but has the ax hanging over their head that institutional contributions are capped at current levels and their share of TV revenue went down has to be replaced. FIU is getting nearly 75 cents of every athletic dollar from the school.

The powder is just waiting for the spark and unless UTEP and Rice shock me by taking a defection leadership role in the west, the spark will come from the east.

Ive now heard similar comments from the AD's at ODU, Arky St, and Appy St. made in public radio interviews. Now Massaro at MTSU is chiming in--so 20% have already indicated they are willing to take a look at this idea. With the revenue being virtually identicle ($200K vs $140K per year), my guess is a lot of other CUSA/SB AD's feel the same way.

I think its just a matter of time before you see a few AD's take up a leadership role and begin to really push this thing. Once that happens I think the movement will be hard to stop because it will free up at least a million in every schools budget and will likely create a much more marketable home schedule increasing ticket sales and local interest. The Fox SW footprint almost perfectly fits the footprint of the western conference in the article. Such a FBS conference would likely hold a lot of appeal for Fox-SW.

All this is lacking is some leadership.

(11-29-2016 09:55 PM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  None of these proposed realignment concepts are ever going to happen. Teams that left the Belt are in no hurry to return. Sure C-USA is spread out, but the divisions are not bad. C-USA West is really nice. North Texas fans travel well to games at Rice, UTSA, and LA Tech, and their fans travel well to our stadium too.

Simply put, it is easier to get our fans excited about watching us play teams like Rice, UTEP, Southern Miss, LA Tech, and Marshall, then any school currently in the Sun Belt. That isn't a knock on the Belt. They have some schools that play some good football. Our fans just don't want to see them. And, that is what this article fails to address.

That is yet another reason the east is the powder keg and spark if it ever happens.

For the sake of simplicity, let's say CUSA East pulls out as a group. You have Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, and Coastal Carolina in the Sun Belt that none of the former Sun Belt schools ever played against while they were in the Belt and Georgia State only played WKU one season.

If you want a 10 team league that's essentially four to pick from for three spots that their fans don't associate with their Sun Belt years and that's assuming they've not brought UAB with them.

(11-29-2016 10:38 PM)jarmzet Wrote:  

(11-29-2016 05:55 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Guess this topic is going mainstream now.
http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journ...nment.aspx

You could do 4 9 school conferences if you could get permission from the NCAA to hold cross conference football championship games.

Then everybody in each conference would play each other in football every year and basketball can play everybody in the conference twice every year.

And you can divides the schools up so that they make the most sense geographically (and redo this whenever need be).

You could ask, won't happen.

(11-29-2016 10:19 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(11-29-2016 08:30 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  If I were to wager, what UTEP wants isn't going to be a big initial factor.

Two most important people interviewed are Wood Selig and Chris Massaro. They were pals when Selig was at WKU and doubt that has changed.

I was at a Sun Belt meeting when WKU was still FCS with no plans to move up and overhead Selig trying to convince the UALR AD that the hoops schools needed to defect which was a non-starter for UALR because AState was their big ticket seller and ULM too easy to get to. UNO wasn't going to defect either (pre-Katrina) because they liked having UL Lafayette and USA so close by. But Selig is absolutely the sort of guy who would try to organize a defection and he and Massaro were out front when Bankowsky pitched going to 16 in a move seen as being designed to send UAB to the east countering that ANY expansion of CUSA had to include another eastern school, which would prevent UAB from moving over.

The TV dollars are too small to relevant now
“Finances are going to necessitate logical, reasonable thinking to do what’s best for the student athletes and the institutions,” said Wood Selig, athletic director at Old Dominion in CUSA. “We can’t keep trying to keep up with the SEC or ACC.”

“It’s going to take a fiscally dramatic event to get something to happen,” Middle Tennessee State AD Chris Massaro said. “I’m not sure we’ve hit that financial crisis yet. When you hit a crisis, people will put their egos aside.”

CUSA just took a major financial hit in TV rights, WKU has dropped sports. UAB has revived football but has the ax hanging over their head that institutional contributions are capped at current levels and their share of TV revenue went down has to be replaced. FIU is getting nearly 75 cents of every athletic dollar from the school.

The powder is just waiting for the spark and unless UTEP and Rice shock me by taking a defection leadership role in the west, the spark will come from the east.

Ive now heard similar comments from the AD's at ODU, Arky St, and Appy St. made in public radio interviews. Now Massaro at MTSU is chiming in--so 20% have already indicated they are willing to take a look at this idea. With the revenue being virtually identicle ($200K vs $140K per year), my guess is a lot of other CUSA/SB AD's feel the same way.

I think its just a matter of time before you see a few AD's take up a leadership role and begin to really push this thing. Once that happens I think the movement will be hard to stop because it will free up at least a million in every schools budget and will likely create a much more marketable home schedule increasing ticket sales and local interest. The Fox SW footprint almost perfectly fits the footprint of the western conference in the article. Such a FBS conference would likely hold a lot of appeal for Fox-SW.

All this is lacking is some leadership.

The economy is still very strong in Texas. North Texas, UTEP, and UTSA should not be struggling for cash. Rice has more money then everyone, so they are fine too. I don't know the financial situations at LA Tech or Southern Miss, but I know LA Tech likes conferencing with the Texas programs. If you notice, it seems like eastern program ADs seem to be the only ones speaking on this topic. I can't see those eastern presidents and ADs swaying enough western presidents and ADs into a swap.

C-USA is improving. LA Tech, WKU, ODU, MTSU, Southern Miss, North Texas, and UTSA are all going bowling. Marshall was down this season, but other programs are stepping up. ODU is young, but they put together an amazing season. Both North Texas and UTSA are much better then they were last season. Next season UAB returns to football. There is no need to realign with the Belt. The AAC is just as far flung as C-USA and the Belt. No one is writing an article about them needing to realign.

I do think that C-USA West is a perfect fit for Fox Southwest.

(11-29-2016 10:51 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(11-29-2016 09:55 PM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  None of these proposed realignment concepts are ever going to happen. Teams that left the Belt are in no hurry to return. Sure C-USA is spread out, but the divisions are not bad. C-USA West is really nice. North Texas fans travel well to games at Rice, UTSA, and LA Tech, and their fans travel well to our stadium too.

Simply put, it is easier to get our fans excited about watching us play teams like Rice, UTEP, Southern Miss, LA Tech, and Marshall, then any school currently in the Sun Belt. That isn't a knock on the Belt. They have some schools that play some good football. Our fans just don't want to see them. And, that is what this article fails to address.

That is yet another reason the east is the powder keg and spark if it ever happens.

For the sake of simplicity, let's say CUSA East pulls out as a group. You have Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, and Coastal Carolina in the Sun Belt that none of the former Sun Belt schools ever played against while they were in the Belt and Georgia State only played WKU one season.

If you want a 10 team league that's essentially four to pick from for three spots that their fans don't associate with their Sun Belt years and that's assuming they've not brought UAB with them.

If the east were to pull out of C-USA, The West would keep the name and rake in the exit fees. It would not be hard to add 2 or 3 programs and have a nice 8 or 9 team conference. No way C-USA West would just take the western half of the Belt.

(11-29-2016 11:13 PM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  The economy is still very strong in Texas. North Texas, UTEP, and UTSA should not be struggling for cash. Rice has more money then everyone, so they are fine too. I don't know the financial situations at LA Tech or Southern Miss, but I know LA Tech likes conferencing with the Texas programs. If you notice, it seems like eastern program ADs seem to be the only ones speaking on this topic. I can't see those eastern presidents and ADs swaying enough western presidents and ADs into a swap.

C-USA is improving. LA Tech, WKU, ODU, MTSU, Southern Miss, North Texas, and UTSA are all going bowling. Marshall was down this season, but other programs are stepping up. ODU is young, but they put together an amazing season. Both North Texas and UTSA are much better then they were last season. Next season UAB returns to football. There is no need to realign with the Belt. The AAC is just as far flung as C-USA and the Belt. No one is writing an article about them needing to realign.

I do think that C-USA West is a perfect fit for Fox Southwest.

UNT shouldn't be struggling for cash but about 30 months ago UNT was cutting millions and that was before the state overcharge came out. Stuff happens.

Hooray for Texas but the economy is still lagging elsewhere. Louisiana is cutting and cutting higher ed funds. Kentucky cut higher ed funding (remember WKU has dropped some sports). In most states across the CUSA footprint budgets are being cut stressing the ability to transfer funds to athletics.

Why is no one talking about realigning AAC?

The AAC is relevant. Houston got major attention this year, Navy may yet jump into the access bowl. Then there is hoops.

Also AAC is getting per team in TV money about what CUSA is splitting 14 ways.

The only G5 AAC could shuffle with and be revenue neutral is the MWC and they are sort of already arranged in a sensible manner

CUSA and Sun Belt shuffles could be income positive. AAC has no income positive options.

What's prevented CUSA and SBC realigning is the constant realignment rumors from the B12 and other places that if triggered provide a vehicle to make change happen without complete restructuring.

As an example.

B12 (Houston, Colorado State)
AAC (Rice)
MWC (UTEP)

Something like this solves 2 issues for CUSA.

1. The issue of UTEP so far away from everyone else.
2. The issue of CUSA having 14 football members as a G5 conference.

If you are CUSA East to go for a split OR do you try to politic for the AAC? Moving to the AAC is going to make more money for you than splitting ever will.

If you are the SBC you don't have as many issues with only 10 schools and no UTEP, ODU, FAU, FIU super far flung members.

(11-29-2016 08:48 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Every time someone gets enthusiastic about this topic, they avoid talking about all of the difficulties (i.e., the reasons it hasn't happened yet).

It's not just things like Louisiana Tech refusing to be in the same league as UL-Monroe. (Note the amusing fact that the maps in that SBJ article don't put Monroe in any of their proposed realigned leagues.)

It's also business considerations:

Why would the SBC schools give up the financial advantage of having only 10 football teams? They just kicked out NMSU and Idaho in order to split their future football money 10 ways instead of 12.

What would happen to the non-football members in the SBC? The SBJ article (again avoiding the problems) doesn't deal with them. Maybe neither conference would want them and somebody would have to pay them to join another league like the Southland, as when VCU and Va Tech joined the A-10 upon being excluded from the first version of CUSA. The CUSA founding schools had to shell out more than $2 million for that, and it was 20 years ago. Who's going to pay, say, a total of $4 million to get UT-Arlington and UA-Little Rock to leave themselves out of this league swap?

What's to stop any schools dissatisfied with how the leagues would be divided from just vetoing the idea, or forming their own league with the schools they choose themselves while leaving everyone else to clean up? Any scheme that completely reshuffles both leagues could be scuttled by one or two of these 26 schools saying no.

Why would anyone think fans unmotivated to buy tickets for Louisiana Tech vs. Florida Atlantic will flock to the ticket booth for La Tech vs. Texas State? The ticket sales between those two matchups will not be significantly different.

There's really not much to overcome. You make the arguments any AD might make. Lets go through a few---

1) Non-football members----The only way this works is if the two leagues effectively reorganize by simply swapping members. Basically--this effort would have to be cooperative and it will have to result in nobody being kicked out. The reality is---there isn't much money to fight over. Football money will need to stay with football playing schools. Basketball money will be split among all schools playing basketball. The existence of 2 extra basketball teams just makes travel expenses drop even more.

2) Dissatisfied schools and objections---Again, its going to need to be a cooperative effort. Thus, you'll need enough votes to add teams and waive entry/exit fees. Thus, you'll need a 75% super majority within both conferences for the effort to work. The schools unhappy with effort can try and do something different---but if they wont have the votes to stop it, and they wouldnt have the numbers to create a new conference (even if they did---it would be even more spread out with no NCAA autobids and no TV contract). Or they could stay in the newly reorganized conferences and enjoy about a million in annual travel savings. Not much of a choice there. If the vast majority of the schools get behind it---its going to happen.

3) Why would you sell more tickets to G5 games against close by schools than similar games vs far away schools---Well, the best answer is---if it doesn't make any difference either way, then why spend money flying across the country to play G5's when there are similar G5's nearby? The real answer is its more likely that significant numbers of alumni from close by schools live in your town and would be interested in seeing their school play the local school. Plus, the closer the school and the easier the drive---the more likely the opponents students and fans might drive to the away game. We had way more visiting fans make our game vs Texas St in TDECU last year than UConn fans who traveled to the game here this year. UConn has a much higher average attendance and a larger fan base than Texas St---its proximity that made the difference.

(11-30-2016 01:16 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(11-29-2016 08:48 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Every time someone gets enthusiastic about this topic, they avoid talking about all of the difficulties (i.e., the reasons it hasn't happened yet).

It's not just things like Louisiana Tech refusing to be in the same league as UL-Monroe. (Note the amusing fact that the maps in that SBJ article don't put Monroe in any of their proposed realigned leagues.)

It's also business considerations:

Why would the SBC schools give up the financial advantage of having only 10 football teams? They just kicked out NMSU and Idaho in order to split their future football money 10 ways instead of 12.

What would happen to the non-football members in the SBC? The SBJ article (again avoiding the problems) doesn't deal with them. Maybe neither conference would want them and somebody would have to pay them to join another league like the Southland, as when VCU and Va Tech joined the A-10 upon being excluded from the first version of CUSA. The CUSA founding schools had to shell out more than $2 million for that, and it was 20 years ago. Who's going to pay, say, a total of $4 million to get UT-Arlington and UA-Little Rock to leave themselves out of this league swap?

What's to stop any schools dissatisfied with how the leagues would be divided from just vetoing the idea, or forming their own league with the schools they choose themselves while leaving everyone else to clean up? Any scheme that completely reshuffles both leagues could be scuttled by one or two of these 26 schools saying no.

Why would anyone think fans unmotivated to buy tickets for Louisiana Tech vs. Florida Atlantic will flock to the ticket booth for La Tech vs. Texas State? The ticket sales between those two matchups will not be significantly different.

There's really not much to overcome. You make the arguments any AD might make. Lets go through a few---

1) Non-football members----The only way this works is if the two leagues effectively reorganize by simply swapping members. Basically--this effort would have to be cooperative and it will have to result in nobody being kicked out. The reality is---there isn't much money to fight over. Football money will need to stay with football playing schools. Basketball money will be split among all schools playing basketball. The existence of 2 extra basketball teams just makes travel expenses drop even more.

2) Dissatisfied schools and objections---Again, its going to need to be a cooperative effort. Thus, you'll need enough votes to add teams and waive entry/exit fees. Thus, you'll need a 75% super majority within both conferences for the effort to work. The schools unhappy with effort can try and do something different---but if they wont have the votes to stop it, and they wouldnt have the numbers to create a new conference (even if they did---it would be even more spread out with no NCAA autobids and no TV contract). Or they could stay in the newly reorganized conferences and enjoy about a million in annual travel savings. Not much of a choice there. If the vast majority of the schools get behind it---its going to happen.

3) Why would you sell more tickets to G5 games against close by schools than similar games vs far away schools---Well, the best answer is---if it doesn't make any difference either way, then why spend money flying across the country to play G5's when there are similar G5's nearby? The real answer is its more likely that significant numbers of alumni from close by schools live in your town and would be interested in seeing their school play the local school. Plus, the closer the school and the easier the drive---the more likely the opponents students and fans might drive to the away game. We had way more visiting fans make our game vs Texas St in TDECU last year than UConn fans who traveled to the game here this year. UConn has a much higher average attendance and a larger fan base than Texas St---its proximity that made the difference.

You're re-emphasizing my point. "Basically--this effort would have to be cooperative and it will have to result in nobody being kicked out."

The fact that it would require the cooperation of 26 different schools is the biggest reason why it's very unlikely to happen.

It's just too easy for any dissatisfied school or small group of schools to block it. Any one school that's asked to switch to the other conference can block it, because you can't force a school to leave its current league.

Any small group that's unhappy with a proposed alignment can block it. As one example, the Texas schools in CUSA plus Louisiana Tech is a group large enough to block any plan that would stick "their" conference with La-Monroe and the no-football schools. Assuming that a hypothetical "eastern" group also doesn't want to be stuck with Monroe, Little Rock, and Arlington (an incredibly safe assumption), then you have a deadlock before any plan could get off the ground.

Or, if a group of that size feels that a proposed new alignment screws them over badly (like the MWC instigators believed about the WAC-16), and that leaving is the only way to stop it, then they'll start a new league with their own chosen membership, and roll the dice on getting NCAA autobids in the near future (like the MWC did). It would be easiest for a block of CUSA schools to do this, because they'd be leaving enough schools behind for the conference to theoretically continue. E.g., 6 western CUSA schools plus NMSU, or 6 eastern CUSA schools plus UMass, start a new league, leaving 8 in CUSA.