(03-24-2019 04:50 PM)MWC Tex Wrote: No it won’t destabilize the MW.
1. We don’t know how much the new TV deal for the MW will be in a month or so.
2. Unlike the AAC, the MW is made of flagship and land grant colleges. They are the first or second college in their states the population pays attention to.
As the population grows so will the MW.
First off, I don't think there's anything the AAC has done or is doing that would destabilize the MWC. As others have said, the geography largely ensures there's little to no chance schools in one would see much appeal in switching to the other. Furthermore, the AAC just signed their new deal - why do any of us think that ESPN is interested in paying an additional ~$7MM/year/team to add any MWC schools to the AAC?
But I think you're WAY overselling the notion that somehow the MWC is going benefit from population growth while the AAC won't. Here are the states that have grown the most since the last census:
#1 - Texas (+3,555,740)
#2 - Florida (+2,494,702)
#3 - California (+2,304,150)
These are the only states to have grown by more than a million people in that time span. 4/12 of the AAC are in those states compared to 3/12 of the MWC (all in California, and none of which are land grant universities nor in the top 6 of options for students from California). Furthermore,
#4 - North Carolina (+847,928)
#8 - Colorado (+666,240)
you have to go down a ways before you hit another state in the MWC. And in case you didn't realize, the enrollments at USF, UCF and Houston are all going up quite a bit, not to mention that the AAC has teams in the #4, #5, #7, #11 and #18 media markets. So I think we can dispense with the notion that somehow population growth in states like Nevada (+333,701), Idaho (+186,556) or Wyoming (+13,970) are going to have a serious impact.
USFFan