(08-10-2021 09:36 PM)LostInSpace Wrote:  

(08-10-2021 08:51 PM)BKTopper Wrote:  

(08-10-2021 07:45 PM)LostInSpace Wrote:  

(08-10-2021 07:02 PM)BKTopper Wrote:  

(08-10-2021 06:27 PM)LostInSpace Wrote:  All of the schools have basketball budgets below Bona’s. Half are at or below La Salle. That’s a one bid conference with more travel expenses and no better institutional fit than the MAC for Buffalo. UB has the same problem as the other Northeastern G5s, there is no viable path to a Northeastern oriented G5 conference.

Liberty will never get invited to an FBS conference. No public university president is signing off on that invitation.

You are correct, CUSA schools do more with less when it comes to basketball. Imagine if they had access to greater cash flow.

I’m correct that CUSA schools don’t have the financial resources to fund FBS football and simultaneously fund basketball at the level of multi-bid conferences. I compared the CUSA schools to two of the four lowest spending schools in the A10 for a reason. Those schools all spend less on basketball than St. Bonaventure which has less than 2k undergrads.

Budgets are not why CUSA is a one bid league lol.

RPI at the top half of the 2 leagues is practically indistinguishable (with the exception of VCU and the Bonnies).

A10 teams pay more to play in A10, it would appear —lots of schools would.

Money buys better facilities, higher pay for coaches, charter flights, etc. The A10 schools that get most of the conference’s at-large bids spend in the mid-$6 million to low-$8 million range. Dayton’s basketball budget is almost as large as WKU’s football budget. It’s not that the A10 members are willing to spend more than the CUSA schools, it’s that they can. Fordham’s non-FBS AD budget is more than 40% larger than WKU’s AD budget.

It has more to do with the A10 being the top mid major in the east coast talent hotbed.

Compared to CUSA in the south were the mid majors don't typically recruit well, WKU is one of the exceptions. There is a regional thing to it. This is why MVC/MAC is better than CUSA/SBC and the A10 even better yet stretching from Boston to NC, plus having Dayton/SLU helps.