(02-10-2012 01:36 PM)MUsince96 Wrote: Why fly from San Diego or Boise to the East coast if there is no AQ advantage.
Sand Diego / Navy will be a huge rival game...
but why fly four times a year in the BigEast? Because Playing Rutgers and UConn is better than University of New Mexico or Wyoming (which incidentally are games you fly to anyway)..
Look. The main problem for conference-DOA, the MWC, and WAC is that you have a big money footprint *for all sports* when the only sports than can pay for that footprint are football and basketball.
If you're in the Big Ten you can get away with that because you make so much money on football that flying your field hockey team from Minneapolis to Philadelphia (or wherever you land to get to Penn State) is not an issue.
When you're a mid major though it does not pan out.
I think the only conference schools that Buffalo has to fly to, for anything, are NIU and Ball State. Everything else is within an eight hour drive! Now UB is on the east end of the conference. For schools like Bowling Green and Toledo the non football travel is painfully easy. which makes the Toledo fan on the CUSA boards chatting up like he wants in very amusing.
Temple might be stupid enough to go it alone into that mess and give up what they have in the A10/MAC more power to them. Right now they are in a similar situation to Boise/SDSU.
Their non revenue sports have the smallest footprint they can manage and their football has to fly. Four road conference games, that's four flights a year for the one team you have that will make money.
Now if the DOA manages to snag several other nearby teams (UMass, JMU, ...) maybe then its worth it.