The everyone is looking to leave thing
I think that the writers, talking heads on TV and even conference commissioners often lose sight of WHY schools join the conferences they join.
Yeah money and prestige blah blah blah.
But at the end of the day when the dust settles and another cliche or two, it comes down to aligning with like-minded schools that make geographic sense.
Arkansas State has been in the room for the formation of two conferences. The Southland and American South.
The Southland was Texas schools and Arkansas State. When Trinity and Abiline no longer shared the vision of the membership they left and the SLC became a Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana league.
When Arkansas State, Lamar, and Louisiana Tech no longer shared the vision of the Southland they formed the American South with UL, UNO, and UTPA.
Texas A&M had real problems with what the Big XII was doing but when the chance came to go to the Pac-12, they started talking to the SEC. When the peace deal fell apart, they returned to talking to the SEC.
If you've been to games in Austin and Baton Rouge and didn't know the history or the state borders, once you go to College Station, you'd say TAMU is more like LSU than UT. TAMU and Arkansas had contracted a long-term non-conference series. TAMU shares a culture of athletics that is different from that of UT or Baylor and is more like LSU or Auburn.
That core of agreement is what makes TAMU in the SEC make sense, it is what gave the Pac-12, SEC, Big 10 and the make stability, stability that existed before TV money made them too big to fail.
Fans thinking in terms of gaining and losing and climbing the ladder. Presidents are looking for that elusive best fit.
If you track conference history and see the old MVC, or the old Metro, or the old Sun Belt, or CUSA, or fBE, you see the same schools together over and over and over. Cincinnati and Memphis have been in the Valley together, the Metro, CUSA, and now former Big East. Arkansas State and Louisiana have been in the Southland, American South, Big West, and Sun Belt together.
They are finding 3 or 4 or 8 schools they share vision with that hopefully make some sense on a map. They never find nirvana because there is always some fly in the ointment. The need to appease an outlier. Jostling to maximize revenue and more recently positioning for an AQ and now positioning for the CFP at-large.
Those discordant factors lead to less than ideal alignments and sooner or later it all boils up.
Since 1963 Arkansas State has never been in a conference that didn't include at least one Texas school and since 1971 at least one Louisiana school and it's not just at a school level it goes regionally as well. 1992-2011 was the only time Arkansas wasn't affiliated with a Texas school.
Culture matters. Virginia Tech and Virginia are in the same state and the same conference but their athletic cultures are vastly different
Fans and the media can go on and on about moving up ladders and such but unless you are aligned with like-minded schools and have some regionality a league is always doomed to either fail or be greatly reshaped.
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