(02-12-2021 04:05 PM)EverRespect Wrote:  

(02-12-2021 03:52 PM)Cyniclone Wrote:  

(02-12-2021 03:13 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(02-12-2021 02:47 PM)Cyniclone Wrote:  

(02-12-2021 02:18 PM)EverRespect Wrote:  Overexpansion is not what led to the CAA exodus. You are way overthinking this. The public/private thing is not a thing at all. If Lasalle or Fordham leave we only need 7 votes... if both leave we may only need 6 votes depending on how they break a tie... VCU, UR, GMU, GW, Davidson are 100%. So UMass and URI or St. Joe's would be all we'd need. The UMass guy seems to think UMass and URI are locks. St. Joes is a basketball school with basketball alumni and basketball donors. They think/want to think their peer and archrival is Villanova. They are not going down with Fordham and LaSalle. What would the Catholic's alternative be for replacement? Any NE Catholic school worth a darn is already in the Big East. Lehigh and Lafayette from the Patriot league?

Adding Georgia State and the Northeast schools doubled the size of the CAA footprint without a resultant increase in revenue. VCU and George Mason had been rumored for a while to be exploring their options. ODU elevated its football to FBS way ahead of schedule because they had no confidence in the CAA's viability going forward. You think that all happened in a vacuum?

We don't know that La Salle and Fordham are leaving. Basketball fans want Fordham to leave but they've been in the conference for 20-some years and while La Salle allegedly looked at downgrading a few years ago, nothing came of it. If it looked like the A-10 was fixing to become a more-public, further-South conference, that might nudge them out the door, but for now there's a lot more schools that look like them than there are ones that look like ODU and Charlotte. Why would they support adding two more mouths to feed that have nothing in common with them? That'd be like ODU pushing for CUSA to add New Mexico State and Texas State.

Basketball is important but conferences are more than basketball and football scheduling alliances. Geography, institutional congruity and academics are big factors, because it's the school presidents that make the call.

Nah. You're contradicting yourself. VCU & GMU didn't leave the CAA for the A10 for cultural fit or because it was expanding, they left for better basketball. The A10 likewise didn't bring them, along with Davidson in for cultural fit the did it for basketball. I'm not saying the things you're mentioning aren't important. But keeping the A10 where it is in the basketball hierarchy seems to be the most important thing. ODU left the CAA because VCU & GMU were leaving and we saw an opportunity to upgrade to FBS.

I don't see the A10 expanding to 15 or 16 but it might happen as a replacement scenario.

The CAA was at one point in the ballpark with the A10 as far as basketball quality. They expanded up 95 and down 85, but none of those schools made the NCAAs until after the ODU/VCU/GMU troika had beat feet. The CAA didn't get better, they got bigger. The only thing the new schools added at the time were some Bruiser antics when he was at Drexel.

Per Minium's story in 2013 or 2014, when VCU's AD told ODU's AD that they were about to jump to the A10, ODU moved heaven and earth to get out. Moving football to FBS, which was only discussed in the long term, had to be expedited because there were no non-football or FCS football homes for them (not with the A-10 and Big East telling them thanks but no thanks). CUSA wasn't about to take a non-FBS ODU.

I can't prove this—it's only based on observations as a fan of two of those schools—but I suspect that if the CAA held onto their core and either stood pat or made strategically sounder expansion choices (remember, Hofstra and Northeastern were added in part for their football, which they shuttered not long after). I think those three have a better chance at sticking around and the CAA's prospects are much brighter.

Hofstra, Drexel, and Northeastern all had strong enough teams that helped the CAA get multiple bids at various times. Hofstra and Drexel both had at-large snubs that made Dicky V cry. Towson and Georgia State were pretty useless in the CAA and now we have fans begging to be in a conference with Georgia State. The CAA had maybe two years where it was on par with the A10, but not as a whole and remember Butler was part of the deal. The decision for VCU was a no-brainer. Your memory is failing you.

Aslo, VCU was joining an A10 with Dayton, St Louis, Xavier, Temple, Butler, etc. There's not much arguing that that wasn't a better conference than the CAA. I think we probably could have gotten GMU's spot in the A10 if we wanted to commit to FCS football but we didn't.