(04-19-2017 12:44 PM)Monarchblue Wrote:  

(04-09-2017 08:52 AM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  I'd really like to know which ADs are pushing this merger idea. From the article it appears like ODU and MT are at the very least mulling the idea. I didn't realize they were having financial struggles. ODU has the largest budget in C-USA. Why are they struggling?

Because we aspire to actually be good. Easy to not have budget issues when your programs are at the bottom of the league.

...and I think you are confusing budget problems, with budget constraints. We have no problems funding our AD. We have the best basketball arena in the league and are building a new football stadium. We also just built a football training center and a basketball training center. The constraint is that we want to do better, not that we can't afford to just show up for games in CUSA like some schools.

As I look for the motivations behind this stupid push for realignment, I'm beginning to think poor attendance numbers could be behind all of this. I know few programs in C-USA pull respectable attendance number, but we have quite a few well south of the 20K mark. Here is C-USA's attendance numbers from last season, along with the teams that went bowling. I put the western division teams and attendance in bold. It seems most of the calls for restructuring the conference are coming out of the east, and when you look at the attendance numbers, I think we can see why. Last season many of the eastern programs struggled to put butts in seats. Two of the three best eastern teams (WKU and MT) had issues with attendance. I have to wonder if these low numbers are the biggest influence fueling this ridiculous merger narrative.

2016
(W) Southern Miss 28,588 (Bowl)
(E) Marshall 24,760
(W) UTSA 23,038 (Bowl)
(W) UTEP 23,001
(W) Rice 21,425
(W) LA Tech 20,412 (Bowl)
(E) ODU 20,118 (Bowl)
(W) North Texas 19,878 (Bowl)
(E) WKU 17,705 (Bowl)
(E) Middle Tenn 17,243 (Bowl)
(E) FIU 16,789
(E) Charlotte 14,192
(E) FAU 10,073