http://pilotonline.com/sports/college/ol...abcf2.html

Harry says regional realignment will be driven by finances. I think he is right, with the only question remaining is when will it happen.

Please let this happen in the next 3 years!

A large part of why ODU moved up to FBS football was visibility in the Texas and Florida markets. A merger where Texas markets for ODU no longer exists defeats that purpose. Let's see, no TV money, No good options for TV coverage, outrageous travel costs plus extra costs due to the stipend. Not to mention a one bid Basketball league. Someone please remind me again what was the benefit of this move?

I'm not going to address the idea but rather the last line in the article that the financial model is broken. The financial model is broken because so called non profit educational institutions that control the power operate more like a cartel than a non profit. We are in these far flung leagues because we have chased money to stay competitive. We have chased money because of a flawed system that allows power and resources to be consolidated among only a handful of conferences. Not even the NFL and MLB operate this way and they actually are for profit entities. It's absurd that pro sports operates more like a non profit and collegiate sports operate more like an illegal transnational criminal organization.

I'm all for letting the market set some paremeters here. The SEC should get more than C-USA for a TV package because more people watch them but there should be caps and some shared revenue across all D1 for the TV money. But with that said the P5 leagues should not be getting 85% of all other revenues while the other five leagues scrape by with the remaining 15%. As usual no one is willing to step up and address the underlying problem instead focusing on a symptom of the bigger problem. And the media buys it hook, line and sinker every time.

(04-08-2017 08:58 AM)cmett003 Wrote:  

Please let this happen in the next 3 years!

Better be careful of what you wish for....


ODU is a better fit with Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and JMU

Sounds like the making of a great basketball conference all you need to do is add in Marshall and UNCC then find one more and I see a top...30 basketball conference. I don't think you could find another school that would join that conference. Well other than Liberty

(04-08-2017 09:35 AM)WKUYG Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 08:58 AM)cmett003 Wrote:  

Please let this happen in the next 3 years!

Better be careful of what you wish for....


ODU is a better fit with Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and JMU

Sounds like the making of a great basketball conference all you need to do is add in Marshall and UNCC then find one more and I see a top...30 basketball conference. I don't think you could find another school that would join that conference. Well other than Liberty

So we would basically be in the same boat with basketball with better travel options for fans, more regional rivalries, less travel expenses. So whats your point?

(04-08-2017 09:35 AM)WKUYG Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 08:58 AM)cmett003 Wrote:  

Please let this happen in the next 3 years!

Better be careful of what you wish for....


ODU is a better fit with Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and JMU

Sounds like the making of a great basketball conference all you need to do is add in Marshall and UNCC then find one more and I see a top...30 basketball conference. I don't think you could find another school that would join that conference. Well other than Liberty

Don't put Marshall in that Steaming Pile. We left the SoCon in 1996, and that looks worse than the SoCon.

I nor most of the Marshall fans that I know do not want to ever be associated with GA State or Coastal Carolina. Not now or in 15 years.

(04-08-2017 10:13 AM)cmett003 Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 09:35 AM)WKUYG Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 08:58 AM)cmett003 Wrote:  

Please let this happen in the next 3 years!

Better be careful of what you wish for....


ODU is a better fit with Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and JMU

Sounds like the making of a great basketball conference all you need to do is add in Marshall and UNCC then find one more and I see a top...30 basketball conference. I don't think you could find another school that would join that conference. Well other than Liberty

So we would basically be in the same boat with basketball with better travel options for fans, more regional rivalries, less travel expenses. So whats your point?

Little or no hope of improvement.... basically 3 start ups in football. If you think CUSA is bad that conference would be in the running for the play in game most years. But honestly you would probably have to dip down into Alabama for your 9th member and hope Troy st would join. No way in hell would Marshall join a conference like that. I think they would rather ride with...

Middle, Western, UAB, S. Miss, Tech as a core 6 schools and then FIU, ULL or ASU and USA. Now that would be a great conference with good solid travel partners other than FIU. But I think Western, Marshall, Middle would like to be in a conference with one Fla school

(04-08-2017 10:27 AM)WKUYG Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 10:13 AM)cmett003 Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 09:35 AM)WKUYG Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 08:58 AM)cmett003 Wrote:  

Please let this happen in the next 3 years!

Better be careful of what you wish for....


ODU is a better fit with Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and JMU

Sounds like the making of a great basketball conference all you need to do is add in Marshall and UNCC then find one more and I see a top...30 basketball conference. I don't think you could find another school that would join that conference. Well other than Liberty

So we would basically be in the same boat with basketball with better travel options for fans, more regional rivalries, less travel expenses. So whats your point?

Little or no hope of improvement.... basically 3 start ups in football. If you think CUSA is bad that conference would be in the running for the play in game most years. But honestly you would probably have to dip down into Alabama for your 9th member and hope Troy st would join. No way in hell would Marshall join a conference like that. I think they would rather ride with...

Middle, Western, UAB, S. Miss, Tech as a core 6 schools and then FIU, ULL or ASU and USA. Now that would be a great conference with good solid travel partners other than FIU. But I think Western, Marshall, Middle would like to be in a conference with one Fla school

I would rather ODU be with that group too, but it wasn't an option in the article. Another option not mentioned is just cut the Texas schools. 2 to the MW and 2 to the SB.

(04-08-2017 10:23 AM)HerdZoned Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 09:35 AM)WKUYG Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 08:58 AM)cmett003 Wrote:  

Please let this happen in the next 3 years!

Better be careful of what you wish for....


ODU is a better fit with Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and JMU

Sounds like the making of a great basketball conference all you need to do is add in Marshall and UNCC then find one more and I see a top...30 basketball conference. I don't think you could find another school that would join that conference. Well other than Liberty

Don't put Marshall in that Steaming Pile. We left the SoCon in 1996, and that looks worse than the SoCon.

I nor most of the Marshall fans that I know do not want to ever be associated with GA State or Coastal Carolina. Not now or in 15 years.

Georgia St won their conference and upset Baylor in the NCAA Tournament. When was the last time the great Marshall basketball program made the NCAA tournament and won a game?

Let's talk about the financial model being broken - and why his proposal at the bottom RE-CREATES the exact same broken financial model.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were numerous incentives for conferences to move to 12 members. The rules at the time called for 12 members to be able to have a football championship game. For the BCS conferences this added significant money (and for the MAC at the time, it added another million to the deal) and it created a prime exclusive window on national television back in a time when there were only two major distributers and availability and exposure were more exclusive that now. Conferences had options to ether consolidate the footprint or expand into new markets and increase revenues during a time of exploding sponsorship and television deals.

That's not the market today. Conference football championship games have been deregulated, so long as you play a round robin you can have a title game. The market has changed that availability is everywhere and assumed, and ESPN has learned it doesn't need to overbid for rights. If you keep an autobid to the NCAA tournament, then the objective there is to keep the numbers as low as reasonable to decrease the number of ways to split the distribution. The travel expenses is not a primary reason to regionalize (replace La Tech with Ga Southern? guess what, my program is still flying to both destinations), but rather regionalization allows for development of Tier 3 deals, sponsorships, and the ability to generate attended basketball tournaments and finding people that want to bid on attracting regional teams.

Taking the C-USA and Sun Belt members into a bucket and simply splitting them out east vs west without regard to organic revenue or ability to generate dollars to justify a conference distribution split IS the financial model breakdown in this new environment of non-growth in television and sponsorship dollars. Any conference proposal larger than 8 or 9 schools is recreating the reason C-USA is struggling now.

The 5 northeast members of C-USA (Marshall, ODU, Charlotte, WKU, MTSU) need to get Southern Miss, UAB, and La Tech to play along with an 8 team league that finds some way to keep its share of the Access Bowl payout revenue. If you can't get everyone to play along, the next largest G5 revenue generators are Arkansas State and Louisiana-Layafette. Get 8 schools, get some decent OOC games to add to a package and have a conference football title game... that's the way forward. Getting back to 12 in any configuration is not an improvement over what we have today.

(04-08-2017 09:16 AM)ThreeifbyLightning Wrote:  I'm not going to address the idea but rather the last line in the article that the financial model is broken. The financial model is broken because so called non profit educational institutions that control the power operate more like a cartel than a non profit. We are in these far flung leagues because we have chased money to stay competitive. We have chased money because of a flawed system that allows power and resources to be consolidated among only a handful of conferences. Not even the NFL and MLB operate this way and they actually are for profit entities. It's absurd that pro sports operates more like a non profit and collegiate sports operate more like an illegal transnational criminal organization.

I'm all for letting the market set some parameters here. The SEC should get more than C-USA for a TV package because more people watch them but there should be caps and some shared revenue across all D1 for the TV money. But with that said the P5 leagues should not be getting 85% of all other revenues while the other five leagues scrape by with the remaining 15%. As usual no one is willing to step up and address the underlying problem instead focusing on a symptom of the bigger problem. And the media buys it hook, line and sinker every time.

Money is ruining college sports, unless of course you are a fan of one of the P5 schools. I have thought about the things you have mentioned here for at least the past 10 years. Over the years the NCAA has become a corrupt organization. One need only look as far as the just completed NCAA Basketball Tournament. The champion (UNC) should not have even been allowed to participate due to their grade/cheating scandal. To my knowledge they have never been disciplined for that, and it should have been a very harsh discipline over several years. Had it been one of our C-USA schools it would have been swift and harsh.

If NCAA Tournament money is split up among the participants depending on how many games they played, then season long TV revenue could be split up among all of the teams that participate in that sport regardless of whether they were on TV or not. The NCAA acts like it wants to keep the playing field equal with its rules, but in reality they are doing anything but by allowing the money to be so one sided without trying to spread it out. It is killing the non-P5 schools and as bad as it has gotten, it will only get worse unless something is done by the NCAA to reverse the trend.

(04-08-2017 10:27 AM)WKUYG Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 10:13 AM)cmett003 Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 09:35 AM)WKUYG Wrote:  

(04-08-2017 08:58 AM)cmett003 Wrote:  

Please let this happen in the next 3 years!

Better be careful of what you wish for....


ODU is a better fit with Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and JMU

Sounds like the making of a great basketball conference all you need to do is add in Marshall and UNCC then find one more and I see a top...30 basketball conference. I don't think you could find another school that would join that conference. Well other than Liberty

So we would basically be in the same boat with basketball with better travel options for fans, more regional rivalries, less travel expenses. So whats your point?

Little or no hope of improvement.... basically 3 start ups in football. If you think CUSA is bad that conference would be in the running for the play in game most years. But honestly you would probably have to dip down into Alabama for your 9th member and hope Troy st would join. No way in hell would Marshall join a conference like that. I think they would rather ride with...

Middle, Western, UAB, S. Miss, Tech as a core 6 schools and then FIU, ULL or ASU and USA. Now that would be a great conference with good solid travel partners other than FIU. But I think Western, Marshall, Middle would like to be in a conference with one Fla school

This...

If you're the Sun Belt, why do you entertain the idea of the merger or geographic reorganization? It's not the SBC that is scrambling to figure out what we're going to do because of lost TV money.

The value of the SBC TV contract is supposed to go up when it's renegotiated, but even if we lose every penny of what the TV contract is worth we will have lost pocket change instead of close to a million dollars like CUSA.

I don't want any part of this merger, but I wouldn't be opposed to trying to entice, say, ODU or WKU to come over by the member schools pitching in for the exit fee.

(04-08-2017 11:23 AM)EigenEagle Wrote:  If you're the Sun Belt, why do you entertain the idea of the merger or geographic reorganization? It's not the SBC that is crambling to figure out what we're going to do because of lost TV money.

The value of the SBC TV contract is supposed to go up when it's renegotiated, but even if we lose every penny of what the TV contract is worth we will have lost pocket change instead of close to a million dollars like CUSA.

I don't want any part of this merger, but I wouldn't be opposed to trying to entice, say, ODU or WKU to come over by the member schools pitching in for the exit fee.

Your post is guaranteed to go over like a turd in the punchbowl.

The only sustainable financial model would be the top of the CUSA/SBC getting together and doing their own thing, kicking struggling institutions to the curb, and probably trying to convince a couple of upper level MAC's that football was meant to be played on 12 Saturday's a year, not 12 Wednesday's. Better chance of getting TV money and interest.

East/West merger is probably more likely because it's far easier to convince University President's to go along with. Especially the Eastern schools. But the Western Schools are probably more likely to turn their noses up and wonder why they should have to associate with the other Western Schools. And then there is the legitimate question of whether or not a National Television Network would be interested in a Geographically tight league.

More or Less Inevitable? My take is strongly LESS.

No viable proposal is mentioned in that article, and it wasn't worth the few minutes that I wasted reading it.

(04-08-2017 11:36 AM)FriscoDawg Wrote:  More or Less Inevitable? My take is strongly LESS.

No viable proposal is mentioned in that article, and it wasn't worth the few minutes that I wasted reading it.

I think some sort of realignment between the two leagues is inevitable simply because I'm not sure either league can continue at it's current alignment for much longer.

I am not sure Geography is the answer. While it works well on paper for the former FCS schools in the East, it doesn't work particularly well for everyone else.

Give it to an ODU beat writer for proposing a model that is wonderful for ODU and terrible for everyone else. Our beat writer would probably propose a model that includes sending Arkansas State to FCS so he can attend more Razorback games.

Interesting that some school administrators reject the idea of minor sports regionalizing while leaving football and basketball alone. That alone would help the finances.

If it comes to reorganizing I would favor having the schools that need a tight geographic league to survive financially to go ahead and organize it, thus leaving the conference name and autobids to those that stay. I really don't think that Marshall, UAB, USM, LT, Rice or UTEP are in that situation. Those 5 along with at least 1 of the Florida schools and UNT, UTSA should stay and maybe eventually build to 10 from there.

(04-08-2017 12:12 PM)MinerInWisconsin Wrote:  I really don't think that Marshall, UAB, USM, LT, Rice or UTEP are in that situation. Those 5 along with at least 1 of the Florida schools and UNT, UTSA should stay and maybe eventually build to 10 from there.

Why 10? Why the extra 2 splits of revenue?