(01-06-2017 10:15 AM)MplsBison Wrote: (01-06-2017 03:35 AM)chiefsfan Wrote: The Schools that you would contact if you were really interested to join and try to get them on your side are located in Jonesboro, AR, Boone, NC, Statesboro, GA, Troy, AL, and Lafayette, LA.
You're just listing the recent most successful football programs in the SB. But just because those schools are the hottest football programs, doesn't mean they have more than one vote each. And doesn't mean they have power to sway other votes, either.
I could see Coastal saying "We're just so grateful to be here, that we'll vote however App and Southern want us to vote, since they got us in the door". But none of the other SB schools necessarily will have any desire to please Ark St, Lafayette, or Troy, let alone the newbies App and Southern.
(01-06-2017 03:35 AM)chiefsfan Wrote: There are maybe a few teams in FCS who could probably call the SBC right now and would even get token support to join.
The Sun Belt doesn't really need to expand right now, so it can afford to sit back and be very picky ... unless a school like JMU changed its mind. But don't see that.
(01-06-2017 03:35 AM)chiefsfan Wrote: UT Chattanooga and Missouri State probably top those lists
Missouri St seems like a natural fit. With Creighton and soon to be Wichita St leaving the MVC, I could definitely see them doing the calculus that the MVC really won't be that much stronger than the Sun Belt in men's basketball.
So if they desire the FBS one day, and if the Sun Belt would take them now ... I'd highly encourage MSU to explore that possibility.
(01-06-2017 03:35 AM)chiefsfan Wrote: Wichita State maybe but only if they brought their Olympic Sports.
That's correct, but there's zero chance of that. WSU is likely going to the AAC as a non-football member.
(01-06-2017 03:35 AM)chiefsfan Wrote: Any FCS schools based in Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina. or named Liberty are all blocked in all likelihood.
On one hand you'd perhaps like to think that Troy would vote for Jax St, an old rival, to be included. But on the other hand, you can see where the rest of the league would have little interest in another Alabama School.
UTC would be an interesting option. I'd throw out EKU as well, but probably only if the Sun Belt suddenly needed/wanted another school and that was the only one reasonably ready to go in short order.
There are 12 full members in the Sun Belt. Of the 10 football playing members only two are located within the 100 largest metro areas in the country. The three newest additions are all smaller markets.
The prototypical Sun Belt school is a state school, located in a small television market where local media gives significant to major coverage of the local team. In Jonesboro AState leads the typical sports segment on TV and one FM station carries sports talk from morning to night all locally produced and each show either primarily focused on AState or exclusively focused. In Lafayette local radio carries not just football, men's hoops, women's hoops, and baseball (as is the case in Jonesboro) but also women's softball. In Monroe they split that role with La.Tech but they are still treated as a significant story. In Mobile USA gets healthy local coverage and so on.
The beautiful thing about small markets is so many of the people working TV in them want to move up the food chain. You don't get there by doing lead-ins for segments from your "sister station" in Fayetteville, Baton Rouge and Columbia, you go out and interview the local people, the coaches at the local college.
This creates the environment to potentially carve out your own little local niche athletically.
When there is no emergency, no crisis, presidents contemplating expansion want at least a school that is similar. Located outside the political, population, and economic centers of their states, the leadership at most Sun Belt schools face a lot of common issues. Georgia State, UALR, UTA have more in common with each other than they have in common with AState, Georgia Southern, and Texas State.
As to the idea that ten is the ideal, I think 10 is comfortable. Ten means no urgency. If Monday afternoon Missouri State and UT Chattanooga called the Sun Belt offices in New Orleans expressing a desire to join, I suspect the conference would move fairly quickly once satisfied each had realistic and viable plans to move FBS, the same probably true if JMU rather than UTC called. I believe they could become comfortable with 12 very easily.
Eastern Kentucky was rejected. They are in the Lexington media market, they are harder for local TV to cover than UK, that's a problem. A Vast majority the population with an hour's drive of Richmond is closer to Lexington than Richmond. They will always be a hard sell.
Liberty is private, religious and outside the south, controversial. They too will always be a hard sell.
Jacksonville State would be the sixth FBS in Alabama, they would be the third Sun Belt located in Alabama and they are closer to Georgia State than either of the Sun Belt teams in Alabama. They will also be a hard sell.