(06-23-2019 03:58 PM)cruzan_flame13 Wrote:  

(06-23-2019 03:38 PM)WesternSkillet Wrote:  Some thought on the AAC situation...

Popular names for AAC names include Southern Miss, Marshall, UAB, and ODU. BYU and Army as football army only or VCU as a non-football member. No action is another option. Some don't want teams from CUSA, Sun Belt, or MAC. This limits options. Liberty has been mentioned a little bit.

The case for LU is that LU has money. LU is able to produce an athletic budget at the AAC level. The large enrollment and endowment look good. It seems that LU might need a few more years of developing football and basketball.

I was looking at UCF’s records (for an example) for the past 15 years and they’ve been having up and down seasons until the past two seasons. I also see that they’re Independent before moving to Conference USA then American. We may have to go that route but maybe not. The next realignment may be different since college enrollment is decreasing and money is becoming an issue for colleges. Conferences and institutions will now be analyzing how to use their endowments/assets for academia and athletics. If American is trying to consider themselves more of a power conference than the others (G5) they might want to consider. Clearly LU is growing inn an upward trajectory with athletics and even academia. So I wouldn’t be shocked if McCaw and associates points this out if they can point this out with a presentation. No offense with schools like ODU, Marshall and some others, but how many of those schools have an endowment in the billions? Will you take the risk of getting a decent name from a school from Conference USA, MAC who are just getting by or a school that put money for facilities upgrades, academic schools and for more and more exposure. Logically getting money to sustain growth and expose should be logical, but that doesn’t really applies all the time with college sports /conferences.

If money talks louder than politics to these schools, then absolutely.

I do like the idea of Big East as well, as Independence is creating good things for us, so if politics are too much for the AAC, I'm down for the Big East.