(05-09-2022 11:28 PM)TroyFootball05 Wrote:  

(05-09-2022 11:08 PM)TroyTBoy Wrote:  

(05-09-2022 10:57 PM)TroyFootball05 Wrote:  

(05-09-2022 10:31 PM)inutech Wrote:  

(05-09-2022 10:27 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  SBC was teetering until Karl Benson the realignment king realized astutely the SBC had longer term prospects than the WAC and moved to build the SBC into the super conference it is today.

Come on now.

Your realignment king has the world record for teams being stolen away.

Come on now.

That world record holder just stole your #1 football program.

Actually the AAC got the most desirable expansion properties. Marshall was on their cut list.

There's no actually about it. Marshall was the #1 football program in CUSA, by a wide margin. The SBC actually cares about winning football games.

Conference Records, Football
Marshall 68-34 (66.67%)
Louisiana Tech 61-41 (59.8%)
Western Kentucky 54-37 (59.34%)
UAB 42-32 (56.76%)
MTSU (51-48 (51.52%)
FAU 47-50 (48.45%)
North Texas 45-54 (45.45%)
Southern Miss 44-54 (44.9%)
ODU 31-42 (42.47%)
UTSA 40-56 (41.67%)
FIU 37-55 (40.22%)
Rice 34-59 (36.56%)
Charlotte 21-46 (31.34%)
UTEP 23-70 (24.73%)

https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/more.../99119936/

My favorite quotes from that Tigerdroppings thread concerning Tech being in the top 3 for Football, Basketball and Baseball:

"LaTech gets more bang for the buck than almost any other athletic program in the country."

"So LA Tech proved winning games actually doesn’t matter"

Both show the truth.

As for the topic in this thread in general. I'll reiterate that Tech should have gotten in instead of UTEP in 2005. It wouldn't have saved CUSA but I do think that UTEP being deadweight starting when they entered really started the cracks in the foundation with the "distance" and "Texas-centric" complaints. If UTEP kept their 40,000 plus attendance and elite MBB, things would have been different.

Now when the 2012/13 realignment saga happened, I think things would have ended up similarly. Thinking the Big East/AAC stills adds the same teams, I still think we would have ended up with this:

EAST
ODU
Charlotte
FAU
FIU
WKU
MTSU
Marshall

WEST
UAB
USM
LaTech
Rice
UNT
UTSA
TXST. / stAte

Chasing markets and excluding FCS adds, the East is still the same. In the west, TXST or stAte taking UTEP's spot is the only difference. I think Tech and the Texas schools would have favored TXST, but Arkansas State would get support from some eastern schools and possibly (arguably) bring the Memphis market, which was all the rage at the time.

The conference would still have the distance problem, though considerably less as the F_U twins would be the only outliers. There would still be at least 3 Texas schools so that would still be a complaint, though the schools would be closer to each other and lend to travel pairs so there would be less of an inconvenience.

It's all moot though. The conference's big Achille's heel was the conference's media deal. Having scorned ESPN and then having games relegated to various streaming platforms was always going to cause discontent. A tighter geographical footprint wasn't going to overcome that when other conferences were getting better deals.

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A big question though would be, what would have happened to the Sun Belt in this UTEP/LaTech 2005 swap scenario. They had to survive in 2012 by calling up FCS teams and saving the teams out west from football independence. By CUSA taking TXST or stAte, the Sun Belt would have had to have found another full conference member. EKU or Chattanooga? It would have made their geography tighter but also have limited JMU coming up later most likely. JMU would have to accept a CUSA callup in 2021 as their only option to get into FBS.