CUSA's best incarnation was arguably the inaugural hybrid with Marquette, CLT, Louisville, Houston, Cincinnati, DePaul, Memphis, etc.
IMO, Judy MacLeod has done yeoman's work assembling the current 9. With JSU fresh off beating Florida State and Sam Houston fresh off an FCS Championship, the move-ups have momentum. Same with the Indies, NMSU (beat UConn Hoops) and Liberty.
So, let's say CUSA has 3 spots to work with (to get to 12), why not maximize CUSA's conference strength by luring good basketball programs - who recognize CUSA offers a strong basketball home - while targeting FB-onlys, who can manage CUSA geography with only 1 sport.
IMO, the CUSA-12 Hybrid Concept could put CUSA in the middle of the NY6 (Access Bowl) hunt AND multiple bids in basketball.
Why not this?
ALL SPORTS:
Western Kentucky
Middle Tennessee State
Florida International
UTEP
Louisiana Tech
Jacksonville State
Sam Houston State
Liberty
New Mexico State
Missouri State (add)
FB-ONLY
North Dakota State (add)
South Dakota State (add)
OLYMPIC SPORTS ONLY
University of Texas at Arlington (add)
Florida Gulf Coast (add)
In a perfect world, this would inspire FGCU and UTA to add football down the road. Missouri State may jump at the opportunity with the Dakotas involved.
A hybrid conference is always going to lead to breakups. It happened to the Big East, it happened to CUSA 1.0, and it happened to the Sun Belt. A conference of similar athletic programs is always best. The only exception would be if a school adds immense value like Notre Dame in the ACC or Dallas Baptist Baseball to CUSA. Those olympic sports schools listed only offer travel partnership possibilities. That's not worth the hassle of adding them IMO. The Dakota schools also seem to have no intention of joining CUSA based on rumors from this board. Missouri State as well seems to be uninterested.
In general, CUSA is fine where it is now. There's no need to go beyond 9 full members now unless some bigger opportunity comes along.
(05-22-2022 04:09 AM)TroyTBoy Wrote: [ -> ]CUSA's best incarnation was arguably the inaugural hybrid with Marquette, CLT, Louisville, Houston, Cincinnati, DePaul, Memphis, etc.
IMO, Judy MacLeod has done yeoman's work assembling the current 9. With JSU fresh off beating Florida State and Sam Houston fresh off an FCS Championship, the move-ups have momentum. Same with the Indies, NMSU (beat UConn Hoops) and Liberty.
(snip)
To me, only Liberty was a good addition for CUSA. They were undervalued by all conferences because of politics.
The others IMO are dregs dredged up from the bottom out of desperation, like backfills usually are. Like the AAC's dredging of CUSA was.
If UTA wasn’t inspired to add football by the Sun Belt kicking them out then they won’t if they join CUSA.
Hybrids are a way of life in FCS and that was the big thing I hated about being in the OVC. When the Big East started sponsoring football I knew it wouldn’t last.
The closest FBS has to hybrids are:
Hawaii as football only in the MWC, other sports in Big West. Don’t know if they have ever tried to get in as a full member. I assume not due to travel issues.
Navy as football only in the AAC, other sports in the Patriot League. I assume this works out best for Navy.
Wichita State as non-football in the AAC. They dropped the sport in 1986. There seems to have been pushes over the years to revive the sport but none got very far. But they balance Navy in the lineup so it works out.
Notre Dame as non-football in the ACC. They play five ACC football games a year as part of the deal.
Navy and Hawaii are special cases and WSU is there to balance Navy and Notre Dame is always special.
Also, football is mandatory for CUSA membership. UAB was going to be kicked out before they revived football. Charlotte was kicked out once and rejoined a few years later when they started football.
If UTA announced tomorrow they were starting football, I would be OK with them joining while they got it going, even if they weren’t playing in the conference for a couple years.
(05-22-2022 07:20 AM)quo vadis Wrote: [ -> ] (05-22-2022 04:09 AM)TroyTBoy Wrote: [ -> ]CUSA's best incarnation was arguably the inaugural hybrid with Marquette, CLT, Louisville, Houston, Cincinnati, DePaul, Memphis, etc.
IMO, Judy MacLeod has done yeoman's work assembling the current 9. With JSU fresh off beating Florida State and Sam Houston fresh off an FCS Championship, the move-ups have momentum. Same with the Indies, NMSU (beat UConn Hoops) and Liberty.
(snip)
To me, only Liberty was a good addition for CUSA. They were undervalued by all conferences because of politics.
The others IMO are dregs dredged up from the bottom out of desperation, like backfills usually are. Like the AAC's dredging of CUSA was.
I think Jacksonville State was a good addition. They have a history of winning and seem committed to football investment. SHSU is also a winner, but their fan support is not strong, and I think that will hurt them in FBS. I think they're more likely to be the next Idaho or ULM than the next Boise State or Marshall (winners in FCS who failed in FBS). NMSU is great in basketball and all, but that is more than offset by offering a long, long history of losing.
C-USA will compete. They're not going to be 1990s Big West or 2000s Sun "Belch." Some of the remaining members are pretty solid G5 programs; I will be the first to recognize that having watched WKU humble my alma mater App State in bowl season. But their media deal is terrible. It remains to be seen what they can cobble together for their next deal. But I would have a hard time having faith in the conference office on that front.
If I were to venture a guess, I'd say the most likely deal is a continued partnership with CBSSN for 6-10ish games a year along with a lowball offer from ESPN for a small handful of midweek games on ESPU/2, with the rest on ESPN+. I just don't think C-USA can afford to stick with the large number of platforms because that contributed to membership unrest. ESPN knows this and that they almost HAVE to go with them, thus the lowball offer.
Will the Amazon deal with the NFL change the public view on streaming games? The NFL power can make changes others can not.
If it does then media deals for all conferences will be quite different.
I don’t like hybrids in football and basketball. Other sports? Absolutely. C-USA added Dallas Baptist for baseball and that was a good move.
What self respecting school is gonna leave their current conference to go to C-USA?
I don't think UTA or FGCU really add enough basketball wise to add them in; C-USA will already be a fine basketball conference. If C-USA could snag MoState, NDSU, and SDSU I think that would be an unmitigated win for them, with the only issue being how you stack divisions (and heck, maybe C-USA would just move to a 1 permanent rival scheduling philosophy). So if you can pull that off I think you just call it a day. Not sure how interested those parties would be in C-USA, assuming they already accepted and rejected their phone call during the last round of alignment.
(05-22-2022 12:51 PM)_C2_ Wrote: [ -> ]What self respecting school is gonna leave their current conference to go to C-USA?
None.
But it’s not like C-USA 4.0 will struggle in basketball. It actually got stronger this round of realignment with two rivalries:
The Battle of I-10 of UTEP and NMSU.
The One Hundred Miles of Hate of WKU and MTSU.
Plus it helps Louisiana Tech and Liberty are good in basketball and Jax State and SHSU have been to the NCAAT recently. The only question mark is FIU but we had many FIUs in 3.0 so it’s nice to just have one school be an RPI killer (I know it’s no longer used but you get my point).
C-USA doesn’t need any hybrid members in basketball. Football? Look at what’s out there. UConn and UMass don’t help in anything and Army already tried the 1.0 version and didn’t work out for them. So Judy along with the five remaining school presidents did a good job in adding the schools they added and staying at 9. Dallas Baptist for baseball was a fantastic addition.
The only hybrid team I’d be okay with would be Army.
To nobody's surprise I think this would be a terrible idea and very much hope it's not what happens.
ANOTHER thread "sent" over here to die. But-- then again this one probably does deserve to die.
How do we end up with all of these threads but other conference based threads stay on the realignment board?
(05-23-2022 06:52 AM)Gemofthehills Wrote: [ -> ]How do we end up with all of these threads but other conference based threads stay on the realignment board?
I asked the mods of the Conference Realignment forum that question and they told me they are working on cleaning up that forum and have started moving conference specific threads but it does seem we have had three moved here.
(05-23-2022 08:39 AM)WKUApollo Wrote: [ -> ] (05-23-2022 06:52 AM)Gemofthehills Wrote: [ -> ]How do we end up with all of these threads but other conference based threads stay on the realignment board?
I asked the mods of the Conference Realignment forum that question and they told me they are working on cleaning up that forum and have started moving conference specific threads but it does seem we have had three moved here.
First 3 threads on Realignment board
AF & CSU had the MWC over a barrel - like 2013 Boise. Should they have capitalized? (Pages: 1 2 )
Big Ten football schedules from 2023 on suddenly disappear
Sac State to Big West
Moved threads:
Moved: C-USA Spring Meetings
Moved: Could CUSA Revisit the Hybrid Model (and jump the Sunbelt...)?
Moved: Is the NCAAT REALLY going up against the Oscars? in March
Appears CUSA threads are the ones being targeted. No idea the motive of the mod but ....
Have to watch out, the SBC board may move threads here too. Seems CUSA is the main topic of several threads on their board.
If nothing else appears CUSA has gotten into several poster's heads.
On one hand most of these threads are ridiculous troll jobs, so we wouldn't really want them here.
On the other hand, they shouldn't be out in the wild either (because nobody else wants to see them either).
(05-23-2022 09:42 AM)inutech Wrote: [ -> ]On one hand most of these threads are ridiculous troll jobs, so we wouldn't really want them here.
On the other hand, they shouldn't be out in the wild either (because nobody else wants to see them either).
It does seem the Conference Sports & Realignment forum is the Wild Wild West full of utter craziness and nonsensical threads. I think it's the dumping ground for threads that specific conference forums have used to dump threads they don't want. I expect any day for someone to start a thread there about merging the SEC and the SWAC.
Why not just close the threads?
Can we send some to the realignment board?
Could the management set up a troll section to send them to?
Find it odd CUSA threads are the only ones singled out, several in the section are far from reasonable.