(11-17-2020 09:10 AM)BKTopper Wrote:  

(11-15-2020 03:51 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  

(11-14-2020 10:24 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(11-14-2020 09:48 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I think you if you asked the ADs at every Sunbelt school if they’d rather be in SBC or in a conference with the 7 respective C-USA division schools, they’d pick the C-USA division. What holds C-USA back is the presence of the other division.

Lesson here: a big footprint isn’t a good thing for the G5.

CUSA is just a weird conference. Texas cluster and schools with nothing to do with Texas.

The schools that joined CUSA in the 2010-2014 time period thought they were buying into a conference that was going to be more like MWC 2.0.

1-2 million per school TV deal. 2-3 NCAA bids per year ect.

They ended up in something with MAC level FB and SBC level BB.

Hard disagree. Both leagues are one-bid, but for totally different reasons. SBC doesn't care about basketball, so all they have is UALR (which does a lot with a little).

CUSA has the product, but over half the conference has the football-first SBC mentality. Then you're left with 6 or 7 schools that do care about basketball duking it out for one friggin autobid.

Some of the marketz adds were supposed to help basketball, but hasn't panned out (Charlotte, Old Dominion).

It's basically an unwritten rule at this point that no matter the seeding the CUSA school will "upset" their first round NCAA tourney opponent (Marshall, MTSU, etc.) SBC can't say that.

That said, the underperformance of CUSA whatever-dot-whatever has been astounding on the basketball side of things.

Little Rock, UTA, and Georgia State have had good teams in basketball recently for the Sun Belt. South Alabama has been down, but looked more like South Alabama of years’ past under Coach Riley last year down the stretch. The Jags entered the 2020 SBC Tourney as the #2 seed with a bye to the semifinals on an 8-game win streak. At least the Sun Belt has 2 less teams they have to compete with for the one NCAA bid.