(12-30-2020 02:15 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(12-30-2020 01:00 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(12-30-2020 01:41 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  Well then hatch a plan to go to 16 and bring in BYU, Col St, AFA, Boise, SDSU.

They can play in a new western division with SMU, Houston and Tulsa.

I think you could do 16 but I’d make some tweaks;

Fresno St instead of Colorado St

Wich St/Navy in the West instead of Houston

West schools would be on CA every season and TX every other; East schools would be in FL every season and TX every other.

Navy will like being in a division with SDSU, AFA, and SMU.

The AAC apparently isn’t still keen on a Coast-to-Coast conference anymore or else we would be talking about Boise St as a potential full member.

Is ESPN irritated enough with the MWC to bankroll a gutting of that conference to make way for a de facto P6?

Its interesting. Most conferences have some sort of geographic identity. The Southeast Conference. The Atlantic Coast Coference. The Mid-American Conference. Even those that dont have it spelled out in the name have a geographic identity---The Big-12 is largely Texas and a middle swath of the nation. CUSA is largely a southeastern quadrant conference. The AAC is just a few clumps of schools all over the eastern side of the nation with no real common identity.

Strangely, if the AAC actually went MORE extreme in their lack of cohesive geography by adding Boise, SDSU, and BYU (for instance)---that "coast to coast" or "national" mantra would become a truly unique identifying characteristic for the AAC. They would be the only "national" or "coast to coast" conference in college football.

Right. A coast to coast American Athletic Conference would encompass teams from all over the country that are as good if not better than the bottom half of the P5.

Think back to the foundation of C-USA. For the time, they had an unprecedentedly large geographic footprint but this was because its membership drew from both Midwest and Southeast schools who were left out of the older, more established conferences (not to mention Army, who has appeal in all parts of the country even if they were in a putrid stretch during those years).