(08-20-2017 11:42 PM)arkstfan Wrote: (08-20-2017 11:11 PM)TodgeRodge Wrote: it would not come close to working it would be a total disaster
it would suffer from the same issues as the SWC
eventually the conference would sift to teams (two or at most 3) that were pretty much at or near the top and then teams that are pretty much perpetual bottom dwellers (7 or 8) and a couple that fight to be the 7 to 9 win teams most years and to avoid being the 1-4 win team and once the bottom dwellers become affixed at that position they start to drag down the top teams in national competitiveness and then recruits head out of state in droves and the conference becomes a disaster
there is a reason that an 8 team Big 8 had a decade or longer streak of having more ranked teams year in and year out Vs even a 9 team SWC much less the 8 all Texas team SWC and that was with the teams in the Big 8 not having near the same "Texas" recruiting grounds
over time no one cares that you are the best team in a bad conference and recruits do not care that you are the "top team in a Texas conference" when the vast majority of the teams you are beating suck
the losers get entrenched in that bottom feeder position and never climb out because the limited pool of recruits they can pick from want nothing to do with them and then the top teams are drug down by that as well
Every conference has winners and losers.
But the apparent trend in television money for G5's is the national money will be flat or decrease (maybe shift to payment based on views).
Regional TV is the best hope for G5 to gain television dollars except no one has critical mass.
We are already at the point where the revenue dollars for UTEP, UNT, UTSA, Rice, and TXST are basically identical. If the same happens to Houston and SMU the situation becomes interesting.
But that isn't enough for a conference.
Mix in MWC front range schools or schools to the east and you might have something to work with.
yes, but every conference would not have narrowed themselves down to basically a single state to try and pull recruits from and just as much viewers
you can always give the ridiculous argument that "Texas has so many recruits", but that ignores the reality that those recruits are not constrained to only signing with a school in Texas
conferences with a recruiting base that consist of many more states and even more so just one or two major programs in the same conference in that state have the advantage of the fact that some kids will want to stay in state and then their choices to play in the "top conference" are limited to that one or those two schools
or they want to go where a large number of their friends go and yet at the same time they want to play at a top program.....so again that generally gets them back to looking at the major flagship or land grant university in that state that is also in a major conference
when you start giving a kid 12 choices for "in state" and "in the big time conference in the state" they start looking around at all those choices and 75% of them suck year in and year out well they start looking outside the state rapidly
and as the SWC found out it becomes very hard for that 75% of the teams that suck year in and year out to pull in those recruits and over time it becomes hard for the two or three better teams in the conference to retain the top recruits
and suddenly 60%+ of your huge pool of in state talent is going elsewhere and you can forget pulling in kids from out of state
again there was a reason that the SWC with 8 and even 9 teams consistently had fewer ranked teams almost every year Vs the Big 8 and their 8 teams even with the "Texas recruiting grounds"
and there was a reason that Arkansas was always near the top while they were in the conference.....because Arkansas could hold in state recruits extremely well especially back then and they could dip into Texas
once they were gone and once it was clear that a large portion of the SWC was just going to suck every year and a couple were fighting to make a bowl game and to not fall to being a 4 win team and that even the teams at the top were getting throttled in The Cotton Bowl the flood gates were opened and Texas recruits were going out of state in droves
there is a reason that the 4 teams in the PAC 12 in the same state, the 4 teams in the Big 12 in the same state (no matter the teams), the 4 teams in the CUSA in the same state (no matter the teams), the 5 teams in the MAC in the same state and the 4 teams in the ACC in the same state all struggle to ever consistently be at the top of the conference as a group year in and year out for an extended period of time no matter what the other teams in the conference are doing
and it is because as some of those teams sift to be the "consistent losers" in the state in that conference they can forget about being appealing to recruits in that state and even the one that might consistently be the better of the group struggles against the talent in the state always looking outside the state after they decide their 4 or 5 options in state for that conference really is just one option or one very good option and one "help us get better" and two or three "we just suck, but we really want you" so time to look elsewhere for those recruits
when you look at the real world performance over many many years it is extremely easy to see that too many schools in the same conference from the same state is detrimental to the conference overall and especially to those teams in that state
if you look at the results it is undeniable