(03-02-2016 04:58 PM)wh49er Wrote: (03-02-2016 04:49 PM)arkstfan Wrote: (03-02-2016 04:28 PM)Hopeful Wrote: He didn't post that meme, and I agree with him wholeheartedly.
I don't think two top programs going to the Sun Belt makes it a better conference at all. It'd just be two more established basketball programs running through teams that just aren't up to par. Conference USA as a whole is down. I fully agree with that, but we have a more competitive collection of more traditionally solid basketball programs. To believe that likes of WKU, ODU, UTEP, La. Tech, Charlotte, etc. are consistently going to be down and that the Sun Belt programs at the top of the standings right now are going to consistently trend up over a good stretch of time doesn't seem that likely to me.
I'm not trying to throw shade or anything, either. I respect the work UALR is putting in, but the position they're in says a lot about UALR, not the Sun Belt.
CUSA is "down"
Sun Belt is "a one bid league"
You do understand that CUSA has been "down" for a number of years and hasn't had two teams in since 2011-12.
At some point that is the new reality.
Right now its emotionalism driving the bus not the reality of what is going on. CUSA added NINE new teams in very short order and all since it was last a two bid league. Only five of the current 14 were in CUSA last time it was a two bid league.
Saw a comic once who juggled. He had a hatchet and announced it was the hatchet George Washington used to cut down the cherry tree. Pauses and adds, "Of course the handle has been replaced and the head but it occupies the same space".
Sewing patches on didn't turn Rice basketball into DePaul basketball and it hasn't made UTSA basketball into Memphis basketball.
The big difference you have multiple fanbases in CUSA that actually care about basketball, in the Sun Belt you might have one and that is stretching it. The current conference will probably never be as good as it was the first time we were in it but there are multiple schools that are committed to their programs.
That's a stretch argument and it has a number of flaws.
First unless fan interest = way to pay for it, there are going to be problems. Assuming (and I think it remains to be seen) that per team league revenue is falling $500,000 per, and the units earned continue to fall off, and given the change in the CFP distribution you are looking at having to replace conference money in operating budgets.
Conversely Sun Belt schools are experiencing the opposite with per member share of CFP revenue climbing and NCAA revenue and TV money being relatively constant.
Fan interest tends to be more a function of success and relevance.
When Arkansas State hoops was a regular contender for the old NIT and at times entered the at-large conversation AState attendance was consistently in the top third of the nation for more than a decade. When the good old boy network got the coach extended when he didn't deserve it attendance fell of the map and has sucked for 11 straight years because the administration was content with a program that could crack RPI 120 or better.
Is Arkansas State a fan base that doesn't care about basketball or is it a fan base that does care but won't support a half-hearted effort. John Brady is leaving at the end of the season. Let's see what our current AD does about the hire
Arkansas-Little Rock used to fill up the old Statehouse Convention Center and occasional Barton Coliseum. At Verizon Arena AState-UALR could top 12,000 fans when both teams were good. In their new place ($24 million price tag, $22 million from one donor) they have struggled to sell 5600 seats when they weren't very good. They sold out for AState last night.
Fan base doesn't like hoops or doesn't like irrelevant hoops?
I remember when Memphis had a decades long waiting list for tickets at Mid-South Coliseum. They moved into the Pyramid and weren't very good and attendance fell below what it had been at the Coliseum because there were so many seats you knew you could buy your way back in to the Pyramid, at the Coliseum you had to hold on and hope for the best. Was Memphis not a hoops fan base when their attendance plunged or does Memphis have a fan base that LOVES good basketball?
We've not seen what much of the Sun Belt is capable of in basketball because of pressing football expenditure needs, now that those are being met, logically at least some administrators are going to want basketball to carry more of the financial weight than they currently do. Terry Mohajir at Arkansas State has been plain spoken that most of football's needs are now met and its time for basketball to carry some of the financial load by selling tickets.