The unofficial online home for fans of the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

I always have to chuckle at these "expansion" target threads...especially on the "main" conference board. I think a lot of the ex-CUSA teams and their fans MISS playing in CUSA and so, when the topic of "expansion" comes up, they keep trying to recreate CUSA. I don't miss CUSA; it's bad enough that we're basically back in with 2/3 of the original CUSA football teams, and I certainly don't want any more teams from CUSA v.2.0.

As for the Western teams: I don't think many of you realize what adding a third or, God forbid, a fourth time zone would do to scheduling and our games. Football would be bad enough, with 9:00pm kickoff times, but it would be truly disastrous in basketball season. I see it with WVU and it really hurts when you have a 10:00pm tip for a big basketball game on a Monday or Thursday night. Not only that, but its terrible for travel for the fans. WVU happens to work for the B12 because Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas have a fair amount of alumni in and around the Ohio Valley who can travel down to Morgantown for games, but do any of the AAC really have alumni bases out near Denver or Boise or the West Coast? Not to mention that Morgantown is within a 4 hour radius of several LARGE cities in the Ohio Valley (Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cleveland, Detroit, and even Philadelphia and Baltimore (I make the trip to Baltimore in 4 hours easily) and all points in between) where various schools alumni bases can collect from.

That just won't happen with the western candidates most commonly suggested.

There are just no candidates right now that move the needle for expansion. If the MW or the B12 break apart, then maybe someone becomes available. Or, more likely, a new conference forms.