(03-18-2021 02:02 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-18-2021 11:17 AM)LostInSpace Wrote:  

(03-18-2021 10:51 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-18-2021 09:52 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(03-18-2021 08:16 AM)LostInSpace Wrote:  Temple’s problem was/is Dunphy’s weakness as a recruiter not their conference affiliation. Dunphy is the common thread in Temple’s decline. Hopefully McKie can turn things around though I’m skeptical that he can.

Try getting recruits when all of their road trips are long flights far away and vs. opponents no one in the Philadelphia area cares about. Are Tulsa, Tulane, East Carolina, and South Florida really better than Dayton and VCU or is it the fact that Temple just doesn't give a crap about beating them?

Thats just it---Hardly anyone cares about any of those schools in the A-10. VCU, George Mason, and UMass are the only A-10 schools that even break 30K in enrollment. Six schools (thats 40% of the A-10) have an enrollment of under 10K. Ive long been an advocate of taking VCU---but if the western expansion is not to be---I think an interesting AAC move would be to grab VCU, Dayton, and UMass as non-football AAC members. That would add a nice layer of solid basketball to the top half of the existing core of the AAC making it a premier college basketball conference covering the eastern half of the USA.

VCU and Dayton make sense though I don’t think either would be interested in joining. UMass has one NCAA appearance with a non-Calipari recruited team in the 64/68 team era. There is no good reason to consider UMass for membership.

I agree on it given the performance metric. But, it is a state flagship with a 30K+ enrollment---so it would likely still be a "plus" for the league's media value. That said---I'd also be fine if we just take VCU and Dayton.

Boston is one of the weakest college sports media markets and if I said that UMass is an afterthought in it I’d be exaggerating how much attention the Minutemen get. To the extent that there is any interest it’s BC and it wouldn’t shock me if UCONN is a better draw in basketball. It took Calipari’s incredible run to get people interested in UMass basketball and interest died shortly after he left. No one in eastern Mass has ever given a crap about UMass football. There is no plus to UMass. It’s all minus unfortunately.