(01-08-2020 08:21 PM)jedclampett Wrote:  

(01-08-2020 12:17 PM)geosnooker2000 Wrote:  

(01-08-2020 12:12 PM)The Grape King Wrote:  UConn's departure has a negative impact on the basketball side and a positive impact on football. Basketball is the side that needs a patch to make up for that value, not football.

Add VCU and get it over with.

jed clampett's reply:

Yes, add VCU, and do it quickly. But to stay with 11 FB schools would be irresponsible, because the only way to ensure the conference's well-being beyond 2026 is to replace UConn FB with a better FB school. Otherwise, the AAC could face the prospects of having only 9 FB programs, given the very real possibility that two AAC schools could be stolen by the Big-12 by 2026.


geosnooker's reply:

Because then we start to creep closer and closer to what the old BigEast was. A laughing stock amongst the power conferences. A Frankenstein conference of basketball-onlys over here, and football-onlys over there. Voting imbalances. Jealousies not easily reconciled. A mess.

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The alarming suggestion that adding 1 FB and 1 BB/olympic school would cause the AAC to follow the path that the old Big East took, or "a Frankenstein conference of basketball-onlys and football-onlys," seems overly hyperbolic, to put it mildly.

The old Big East was entirely different. The fundamental reason why the old BE broke up - - after 12 extremely successful seasons - - was that the interests and objectives of their FB/BB schools (mostly large State-affiliated universities) were vastly different from those of the private non-FB schools (a.k.a. the "catholic 7").

Navy (FB only) and Wichita State (non-FB) both consider it to be, by far, in their best interests to play in the AAC. The arrangement has worked out spectacularly well for both schools, and for the AAC as a whole.

The conversation here has focused on following the Navy/Wichita approach to replace UConn with a FB and BB/olympic school, or possibly, another all-sports school (e.g., Colorado State).

There haven't been any indications that the AAC intends to replicate the old Big East's model.

So there wasn't a "Navy/Wichita approach"

Navy and the Big East signed membership paperwork in January of 2012. Navy vocally staying the course when the C7 schools left and Boise reneged made Navy one of the most valuable brands and members years before the midshipmen played a game in conference.

The move to add Wichita State came five years later and was based on the inherent value of adding Wichita State sans football, not on any need to match twelve football playing schools with a twelfth all sports school.