(10-03-2019 06:35 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote: I am a fan of trying to build a national P6 by extending full invites to AFA, Colo St, BYU, and Boise St and football membership to Army.
The service academies, BYU, and Boise St all add a lot of name recognition and having those mountain time zone schools will allow the AAC to play in the late night a lot.
That line up pretty much gives the AAC a stranglehold on the G5 slot as I am doubtful that even an undefeated G4 would struggle to unseat a 1 loss AAC champ.
I love it - so great to hear someone from outside the AAC proposing to increase the number of "Power" conferences from 5 to 6, and also proposing to share the wealth even further by increasing the size of the AAC, which would help establish it as a 6th "P" conference, to increase the market for the media companies, allowing them in particular to distribute the wealth just a bit more equitably than has hitherto been the case.
Most of the AAC fans, including myself, would love to see the AAC - in the process of becoming a power conference - become the home of all the service academies if that would be agreeable to the AFA and West Point.
It has been noted that Army, Air Force, and Navy - which have at times in NCAA history been considered the national FB powerhouses - are determined to play in conferences where they can be competitive. While it might have been a concern in previous years, Air Force and Army are certainly competitive enough today that they could have successful seasons as members of a 6th power conference.
Adding AFA and Army FB programs could definitely be among the keystones to building the AAC into a consensual power conference, and adding them would probably have shared benefits for all concerned.
There is some reason to believe that Colo St, BYU, and Boise St FB programs might all be welcomed to the AAC at some point in the coming years, depending on how quickly ESPN could generate the revenue needed to ramp up the payment schedules that each of these institutions would need to make such a move be cost-effective.
Beyond this broad discussion, there is a more immediate point, which is that if any of these institutions were to make a very strong and immediate application to replace UConn's FB program, they might have a very good chance to be granted the opportunity as soon as the 2000 or 2001 FB season, as ESPN would probably appreciate getting the infusion of $$$ from the media market to be added (and in the case of the service academies, this would be a nation-wide and to some extent international media market).
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One further point to emphasize that this should not be a matter of greed on the part of the AAC:
Most of us in the G5 conferences know far too well how unfair the payment distributions have been to the G5 conferences. Many G5 institutions, including the AAC before the new deal goes into effect have received extremely low distributions, and this is not right. It has made the rich richer and the poor among the G5 poorer.
The AAC as a conference has been starting to benefit and will continue to benefit from an increase in revenues from media payouts. But all of the conferences, including the AAC will be receiving only a fraction of the amount distributed to the P5 conferences, and when it comes to funding for education, our nation stands for equality of educational opportunity as a fundamental principle.
Thus, just as we in the AAC look forward to a more equitable share of the wealth generated by the sports media companies going forward, I hope that we will all take a stronger and stronger stand in favor of distributing much more equal payments to all of the G5 conference institutions, until all of these institutions have a chance to compete on an equal playing field.
Students at the poorer G5 universities deserve just as much - if not more - support from conference distributions stemming from the hundreds of millions in annual profits of the media companies every year.
The P5 brand of football is not a quantum leap higher in quality than the G5 brand of football. True, there is not complete parity, but many of us actually find G5 football more interesting than P5 football - and the same goes for NCAA basketball.
Hopefully, we will hopefully see a day in our lifetimes when the B1G conference receives no more money from the national sports media than the Mountain West or MAC or C-USA or Sun Belt Conference receives.
As the distributions to the poorer conferences increase, the average American will no doubt benefit from the distribution of funds to a much wider range of FBS institutions. Not only will the quality of competition benefit, but the benefits of university medical research and all the other benefits to American communities that come from fully-funded universities will also increase.
So if the AAC does become the next true power conference, many of us hope that the spreading of the wealth will not end there, but will continue until all the G5 universities are lifted up to something approaching parity within our lifetimes.
That is not too much to ask of the dominant sports media, for no one doubts that they too will find a way to benefit as much or more from any future arrangements that will be made in the years ahead.