(05-23-2017 02:27 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  This goes back to something I truly believe. Both the AAC and the G5 tried to create some bowls. The problem with the G5 bowls was they didnt create what was really needed by the G5. The G5 had plenty of bottom tier bowl opportunities---what they REALLY lacked were any high or even mid-tier bowl ties. Thats what they needed to create.

The AAC realized this, but they did little more than pay lip service to the concept of building a high/mid-tier bowl.

It takes cash to do that. The P5 pretty much picks the bowls that pay the best. I cant find many (or any for that matter) real exceptions. The G5 could have diverted some money from their new windfall CFP earnings--but chose instead to pocket the money.

I know this investing in a mid-tier bowl is a pet project of yours, but to me there's a good reason why it hasn't, and won't happen: The AAC is fundamentally viewed by its members as a way-station conference, not a destination, and you don't give up real tangible here/now dollars to invest in something you hope not to be affiliated with for very long. Now that view might be delusional, we all might be stuck in the AAC for decades, such that it would make sense to make school-level sacrifices for the good of the conference. But delusional or not, that's how the schools view the situation.

So that's why neither a USF nor a UConn, or any other AAC school for that matter, was willing to give up say $500,000 a year from Big East legacy payments that could go to their pocket to fund a bowl that might attract a mid-level P5 opponent and thus have marginal positive benefits down the road.

As for the true needs of the G5, I'm not sure I agree. It's probably better for a conference to (a) have its top team play in a lousy bowl but (b) have bowl slots for all teams that qualify, than to (a) have its top team play in a good bowl, but (b) significant chance that a bowl eligible team misses out on a bowl.

Remember, in 2014, even with the newly-created Miami Beach Bowl, the AAC only had 5 slots and Temple missed out despite being bowl eligible. Now you can say that was a special circumstance, but that's the point - you want to be protected even from special circumstances because missing a bowl when you are eligible is just intolerable from a school POV, much worse than being conference champ and playing in the Military Bowl, as the AAC champ more or less does now. So I think the G5 were correct in creating these rinky-dink Bahamas and Miami Beach games. It's just too painful and embarrassing to have bowl eligible teams miss out.