(04-11-2017 12:14 PM)Dawgxas Wrote:  

(04-11-2017 11:47 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  Still think the easiest solution is to add a team or two to each division and just play a largely divisional schedule in all sports. Basically, you'd meet the teams from the other division only in championship games. Travel would be largely limited to one side of the conference footprint. That's kind of the best of both worlds. Large footprint and penetration into many markets---but low travel costs. You'd split media revenue more ways, but that's not really going to make much of a difference to anyone's budget at this point. Greater concentration inside of the existing footprint might be something that makes the conference attractive to Fox for use on their regional stations. For instance, a CUSA West with ArkySt, and ULL would perfectly fit the footprint of Fox-SW. They would be a good match for one another. Fox-SW would see much greater viewership and CUSA would receive excellent exposure in the area where those CUSA West teams recruit.

Yeah Ark State and ULL would pull in the TV numbers, Why in the world would any conference add a team to split the pie even more without adding any value?

Take the AAC conference for instance, Aresco knows that the AAC contract will not increase much if any so he goes looking for NCAA credits and adds basketball only Wichita State. Thats a smart move not add a team with no value

CUSA schools are getting $200,000 a team per year. Your share drops to $150,000K with 18. You more than make up for that loss of revenue by never traveling to the other side of the conference. Plus, ULL and Arky St will both likely buy far more tickets for games in Ruston than Marshall or ODU ever will.

By filling the footprint, you become more attractive to a regional network like Fox SW. They wont pay much, but the at least the games would be more visible than ASN. More importantly, you're on TV where your recruits live.

All Im saying is money not spent on travel is money available for other areas of the athletics program. Revenue from additional tickets sold is just as good as TV money. There are ways to enhance the balance sheet if TV money is low. If CUSA picked off the top two Sunbelt programs in east and the top two from the west, CUSA could cut travel, improve football performance, and sell more tickets to traveling fans. For CUSA, adding two to each side makes way more sense than a merger/total reorganization. In fact, if you read the actual comments from the AD's---I think that might be more what they have in mind. I think what Harry is talking about is far less likely.