CSNbbs

If UTA leaves staying at 11 would work in BBall by playing 20 conference games. FB, no change needed.

Very, very interesting.

I'm a little surprised the Little Rock isn't being thrown out as an MVC candidate. They fit the MVC mould better than UTA.

Be interested to know if LR has had discussions with any conference.

(05-02-2021 10:09 PM)Yosef Himself Wrote: [ -> ]Be interested to know if LR has had discussions with any conference.

I am 85 percent confident they've talked to the Atlantic Sun, and I would not be shocked if they've at least kicked tires with the MVC. They have natural rivals in both leagues, and they really no longer need the rivalry with Arkansas State to be a conference thing since the Arkansas schools are now all regularly playing each other anyway.

For the record, I'm confident the Sun Belt has a plan somewhere for what to do if the non football schools bolt. Given Keith Gil is commissioner now, it may be buried under a pile of dust, but its there.

The ASUN will have 12 OLY schools after the new 3 join. That'd make it hard for LR to get a spot.

If UTA were to leave, the only problem is it puts TxSt out on an even more remote island. No reason to replace UTA or LR if they leave except for full members, no more reason to have non-football members.

Now let’s all regurgitate the same ol conference realignment plans we have for ourselves..

Staying pat at 11 or 10 would be the right move

Once upon a time we were a part of the ASUN when it was known as the Trans-Atlantic conference. We had quite a lot of success in that conference. However, if you asked most of us, we would probably rather join the MVC more than the ASUN if we decided to move. Especially since we play Mo. St., Il. St, and Bradley often in the non-conference. Good basketball conference and it kinda makes sense geographically. However, if we did move, the SunBelt would need to find a replacement football school probably either from C-USA or perhaps a FCS program from the Southland that would want to make the move up. Or you could also get UTA to move too and just stick to 10 teams perhaps.

As for UTA, the MVC would be tough for them geographically speaking. However, which conference would be better to join, I don't really know because of cluster of conferences that take up schools in Texas.

(05-03-2021 10:03 AM)TrojanTeen2 Wrote: [ -> ]However, if we did move, the SunBelt would need to find a replacement football school probably either from C-USA or perhaps a FCS program from the Southland that would want to make the move up. Or you could also get UTA to move too and just stick to 10 teams perhaps.

Why would the Belt need to any any team? If LR or UTA moved on, playing with 11 in OLY is very doable. No need to add anything, especially an SLC team.

(05-03-2021 10:53 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-03-2021 10:03 AM)TrojanTeen2 Wrote: [ -> ]However, if we did move, the SunBelt would need to find a replacement football school probably either from C-USA or perhaps a FCS program from the Southland that would want to make the move up. Or you could also get UTA to move too and just stick to 10 teams perhaps.

Why would the Belt need to any any team? If LR or UTA moved on, playing with 11 in OLY is very doable. No need to add anything, especially an SLC team.

We don't. but we could talk about adding a CUSA School for months on end just to annoy our friends across the street.

Or we can talk about adding Liberty and get the thread to 50 pages.

Being at 11 is odd but the SoCon has been running around with a single Oly only school (UNCG) for a while now.

There has been talk, at least among LR fans, about moving to the MVC for years. Don't know that it has ever gone further then that. I always thought we would be of interest to the Valley if we had decent fan support in basketball. Fans at Valley schools actually support college basketball. While, even with the loss of Wichita State and Creighton, the Valley is somewhat better than the Belt in basketball, I don't see a big advantage in making the move. Fans in Little Rock no nothing about Valley schools, and I doubt it would draw any more fans to our arena. I like being in a "southern" as compared to a "northern" conference. Travel would be somewhat more difficult, but if UTA were added they would be pretty close along with Missouri State and SIU. Overall, I am happy in the Belt, but wouldn't be particularly adverse to a move to the Valley if it were offered. Don't really see it happening, but if both UTA and LR were offered, we might not want to be the only non-football school left in the Belt in that scenario. We obviously don't offer the market UTA does, but we have a "nice" size market, in a capital city, with a good airport. Again, lack of fan support is our biggest negative, but I don't know that we are any worse than UTA or any Belt team other possibly ULL for that matter.

Honestly I'd prefer to keep the current setup. UTA/TxST and ASU/LR make travel out west easy.

(05-03-2021 11:39 AM)mjs Wrote: [ -> ]There has been talk, at least among LR fans, about moving to the MVC for years. Don't know that it has ever gone further then that. I always thought we would be of interest to the Valley if we had decent fan support in basketball. Fans at Valley schools actually support college basketball. While, even with the loss of Wichita State and Creighton, the Valley is somewhat better than the Belt in basketball, I don't see a big advantage in making the move. Fans in Little Rock no nothing about Valley schools, and I doubt it would draw any more fans to our arena. I like being in a "southern" as compared to a "northern" conference. Travel would be somewhat more difficult, but if UTA were added they would be pretty close along with Missouri State and SIU. Overall, I am happy in the Belt, but wouldn't be particularly adverse to a move to the Valley if it were offered. Don't really see it happening, but if both UTA and LR were offered, we might not want to be the only non-football school left in the Belt in that scenario. We obviously don't offer the market UTA does, but we have a "nice" size market, in a capital city, with a good airport. Again, lack of fan support is our biggest negative, but I don't know that we are any worse than UTA or any Belt team other possibly ULL for that matter.

Just because I was curious but here are the averages for 2018-19 and 2019-20. No real surprises other than ULM in 2019. Y'all are far from the top but there's a ton of schools near your numbers. We all need to up our game.

2020:

La.- 3693
USA-3202
Troy-2596
TXST-2285
ULM-1993
GSU-1947
UTA-1754
App-1685
ULAR-1560
stAte-1506
GS -1497
CCU-1330

2019:
La.- 3596
ULM-3341
TXST-3067
Troy- 2368
GS- 1988
USA-1907
UTA-1881
GSU-1716
UALR-1674
stAte-1593
CCU-1199
App-1026

If both UTSA and LR left that would cut stAte's and TXST's travel partners. They could become each others or stAte and ULM team up and TXST and UL. It would keep us on an island but no more than football already does.

I don't really want to force them out but it does make more sense for UTA and UALR to be in a basketball centric conference. With them gone we hold at 10 or make overtures to USM and Marshall which would require a little re-work of the travel partner setup.

I’m in favor of letting the basketball schools head out and trade with CUSA, TxSt for USM, straight up. Nothing against TxSt, but it does make more since for them to be in CUSA with 4 other Texas schools.

No matter what the basketball schools do, no reason to replace them or expand at this point. I’m happy with the conference we have, no reason to fix what is currently not broken and is working very well.

(05-03-2021 12:23 PM)Bobcat2013 Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-03-2021 11:39 AM)mjs Wrote: [ -> ]There has been talk, at least among LR fans, about moving to the MVC for years. Don't know that it has ever gone further then that. I always thought we would be of interest to the Valley if we had decent fan support in basketball. Fans at Valley schools actually support college basketball. While, even with the loss of Wichita State and Creighton, the Valley is somewhat better than the Belt in basketball, I don't see a big advantage in making the move. Fans in Little Rock no nothing about Valley schools, and I doubt it would draw any more fans to our arena. I like being in a "southern" as compared to a "northern" conference. Travel would be somewhat more difficult, but if UTA were added they would be pretty close along with Missouri State and SIU. Overall, I am happy in the Belt, but wouldn't be particularly adverse to a move to the Valley if it were offered. Don't really see it happening, but if both UTA and LR were offered, we might not want to be the only non-football school left in the Belt in that scenario. We obviously don't offer the market UTA does, but we have a "nice" size market, in a capital city, with a good airport. Again, lack of fan support is our biggest negative, but I don't know that we are any worse than UTA or any Belt team other possibly ULL for that matter.

Just because I was curious but here are the averages for 2018-19 and 2019-20. No real surprises other than ULM in 2019. Y'all are far from the top but there's a ton of schools near your numbers. We all need to up our game.

2020:

La.- 3693
USA-3202
Troy-2596
TXST-2285
ULM-1993
GSU-1947
UTA-1754
App-1685
ULAR-1560
stAte-1506
GS -1497
CCU-1330

2019:
La.- 3596
ULM-3341
TXST-3067
Troy- 2368
GS- 1988
USA-1907
UTA-1881
GSU-1716
UALR-1674
stAte-1593
CCU-1199
App-1026

Thanks for that, although I never know how accurate these type of numbers are. I do believe our season ticket sales are comparable to most teams in the conference. We are still primarily a commuter school with the smallest number of students actually living on campus. Thus, our student numbers, which I assume are included in attendance, our likely the lowest in the conference. For years, I've hoped Little Rock would embrace us as their "cities' team", but that has never really happened and, at this point, I doubt it ever will. The numbers across the league are really pretty pitiful and are likely trending in the wrong direction over the last decade or 2. Really don't know how to change that now that basically every game, for most every college or pro team, is streamed somewhere. I remember when we started building our 5600 seat arena, many fans thought it was "too small". In a dozen years, or so, we may have had a "sell-out" or 2, but I've never seen all our seats close to being filled. The vast majority of our "crowds" would fit in an arena half that size.