(03-28-2012 09:26 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Sun Belt pays zero in production costs to ESPN. The league shares production costs with Cox/Comcast. CUSA shares production costs with CBSC and reportedly with Fox as well but I don't have the Fox component confirmed well enough to stay it as absolute fact. MWC shares production cost with Comcast/NBC.

The idea that the Alliance is doing everything to remain competitive is laughable. The concept behind it is to reduce post-season opportunities in multiple sports. It creates two far-flung divisions escalating travel costs and reducing the chances of developing ticket selling rivalries.

The Alliance is the cool crowd in high school vowing to stick together as college freshmen so they can retain their cool crowd status and be just as important as they once felt despite the fact the idea just isn't going to work.

This is where this argument always falls flat. If just being close and being associated with schools for a long time meant you'd have ticket selling rivalries the MAC wouldn't consistently be the lowest attended non-AQ league. Nearly every game for them is a bus trip game, and they have all kinds of history and rivalries, and yet the conference attendance average is 16k. Who of you are ever bringing any meaningful number of fans to Greenville? How many visiting fans do you guys currently bring to each others stadiums? You guys have always been relatively compact and I don't see a lot of impressive attendance numbers coming out of the Sun-Belt. This comes down to do you have people in your area who care about your school or not. If you do they'll show up no matter who your playing, and if you don't they won't.

(03-28-2012 05:46 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 12:44 AM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  

(03-27-2012 11:46 PM)LFTCajun Wrote:  

(03-27-2012 11:06 PM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  but I can't imagine any of you are bringing 5k fans to Greenville.

So, ECU regularly brings 5k to away games? Not saying they don't, just asking.

I would like to know what conference USA teams surely even do this. I know UAB, Tulane, Rice, UTEP, Tulsa don't brng 5k peoople

None do, which is why we play OOC games against schools that will. Marshall comes the closest, they have a very large alumni base in NC and will usually bring a couple of thousand or close to it. USM brought a half decent crowd last year, but there aren't easy driving distance games for ECU. Marshall is the closest at like 7 hours or so, and everything else is 10+. That's why we have been playing OOC games against teams our fans can travel to easy, and that will travel to us. That's also the reason we probably won't ever schedule a Sun-Belt team OOC. It's not reasonable to expect Troy, USA, MTSU, etc to be able to bring a bunch of fans. That's also why we don't fit in the regional C-USA/Sun-Belt merger idea. All of the positives you guys talk about with increased rivalries and fan interest wouldn't materialize here, just due to a huge distance barrier.

At this point I'm not even arguing with you I'm just saying. Does this make ECU any different from Troy in that philosophy? Our home games include teams like UAB and Miss St in non conference but I'm surprised to see the UAB even bring 1000 people to anything that's not basketball. I'm to lazy to look up the statistics but I'm not sure if Troy has sent 5000 people to UAB before we have come close to it if we have not.

USM would probably sent more people to a Troy game than a ECU game because it's probably a 3 hour drive on highways? I think the guy who quoted you was just saying not many teams fit the bill of what you said.

(03-28-2012 10:06 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 09:26 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Sun Belt pays zero in production costs to ESPN. The league shares production costs with Cox/Comcast. CUSA shares production costs with CBSC and reportedly with Fox as well but I don't have the Fox component confirmed well enough to stay it as absolute fact. MWC shares production cost with Comcast/NBC.

The idea that the Alliance is doing everything to remain competitive is laughable. The concept behind it is to reduce post-season opportunities in multiple sports. It creates two far-flung divisions escalating travel costs and reducing the chances of developing ticket selling rivalries.

The Alliance is the cool crowd in high school vowing to stick together as college freshmen so they can retain their cool crowd status and be just as important as they once felt despite the fact the idea just isn't going to work.

This is where this argument always falls flat. If just being close and being associated with schools for a long time meant you'd have ticket selling rivalries the MAC wouldn't consistently be the lowest attended non-AQ league. Nearly every game for them is a bus trip game, and they have all kinds of history and rivalries, and yet the conference attendance average is 16k. Who of you are ever bringing any meaningful number of fans to Greenville? How many visiting fans do you guys currently bring to each others stadiums? You guys have always been relatively compact and I don't see a lot of impressive attendance numbers coming out of the Sun-Belt. This comes down to do you have people in your area who care about your school or not. If you do they'll show up no matter who your playing, and if you don't they won't.

The Cajuns had one of the highest Non-AQ attendance numbers this past season with over 29,000 a game, and brought like 40,000 to New Orleans for our bowl game, so I'd like to think that we had attendance numbers that were a little above average.

(03-28-2012 12:50 AM)ark30inf Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 12:32 AM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  If conference USA is so great why are you even on our board. Your nervousness is transparent.

And Tampa you think UNT, and FIU are doing the most in the Sun Belt? If they leave I'm happy for them but what exactly have they been doing again that no one else is? I have no ill feelings of ULL because those guys have been getting it done.

UNT has been a good partner and they have paid their dues. They had a good run back when the conference needed someone to have a good run. They have been down lately but have not always been down.

I think the Sun Belt is in a pretty good position. We either stay intact or we lose a few and pull up some pretty decent markets/programs to replace them.

Either way we would be competing with a diminished CUSA.

And I give them credit where it is due but that's like saying La Tech should be in the SEC because they won a bunch of games when they didn't have much competition.

But I'm not losing sleep over this realignment talk. As long as we don't lose ULL, Troy, WKU, South, MTSU, and ASU we will come out this stronger if we land La Tech, the Texas twins who both have great facilities, and a basketball add like UNCC or ODU.

(03-28-2012 10:06 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 09:26 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Sun Belt pays zero in production costs to ESPN. The league shares production costs with Cox/Comcast. CUSA shares production costs with CBSC and reportedly with Fox as well but I don't have the Fox component confirmed well enough to stay it as absolute fact. MWC shares production cost with Comcast/NBC.

The idea that the Alliance is doing everything to remain competitive is laughable. The concept behind it is to reduce post-season opportunities in multiple sports. It creates two far-flung divisions escalating travel costs and reducing the chances of developing ticket selling rivalries.

The Alliance is the cool crowd in high school vowing to stick together as college freshmen so they can retain their cool crowd status and be just as important as they once felt despite the fact the idea just isn't going to work.

This is where this argument always falls flat. If just being close and being associated with schools for a long time meant you'd have ticket selling rivalries the MAC wouldn't consistently be the lowest attended non-AQ league. Nearly every game for them is a bus trip game, and they have all kinds of history and rivalries, and yet the conference attendance average is 16k. Who of you are ever bringing any meaningful number of fans to Greenville? How many visiting fans do you guys currently bring to each others stadiums? You guys have always been relatively compact and I don't see a lot of impressive attendance numbers coming out of the Sun-Belt. This comes down to do you have people in your area who care about your school or not. If you do they'll show up no matter who your playing, and if you don't they won't.

Ill bite on this.

Fans are not entitled to watch losing teams. And it's no secrete that until recently a lot of the Sun Belt teams were doing nothing but playing top 25 teams and then until recently having three teams dominate the conference (Troy/UNT/MTSU). Even your precious pirates are subject to this, if your team ever went on a losing streak people are not going to go to games.

You haven't seen huge jumps in attendance because teams have been losing but when teams are winning the 9 game conference schedule is going to help and not playing body bag games. Fans will start going to the games.

(03-28-2012 10:18 AM)Tuffguy21 Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 10:06 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 09:26 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Sun Belt pays zero in production costs to ESPN. The league shares production costs with Cox/Comcast. CUSA shares production costs with CBSC and reportedly with Fox as well but I don't have the Fox component confirmed well enough to stay it as absolute fact. MWC shares production cost with Comcast/NBC.

The idea that the Alliance is doing everything to remain competitive is laughable. The concept behind it is to reduce post-season opportunities in multiple sports. It creates two far-flung divisions escalating travel costs and reducing the chances of developing ticket selling rivalries.

The Alliance is the cool crowd in high school vowing to stick together as college freshmen so they can retain their cool crowd status and be just as important as they once felt despite the fact the idea just isn't going to work.

This is where this argument always falls flat. If just being close and being associated with schools for a long time meant you'd have ticket selling rivalries the MAC wouldn't consistently be the lowest attended non-AQ league. Nearly every game for them is a bus trip game, and they have all kinds of history and rivalries, and yet the conference attendance average is 16k. Who of you are ever bringing any meaningful number of fans to Greenville? How many visiting fans do you guys currently bring to each others stadiums? You guys have always been relatively compact and I don't see a lot of impressive attendance numbers coming out of the Sun-Belt. This comes down to do you have people in your area who care about your school or not. If you do they'll show up no matter who your playing, and if you don't they won't.

The Cajuns had one of the highest Non-AQ attendance numbers this past season with over 29,000 a game, and brought like 40,000 to New Orleans for our bowl game, so I'd like to think that we had attendance numbers that were a little above average.

One season doesn't make great support though. Where was it at prior to this year? I've heard many of you guys crow about your support this season, and that's a very solid number for a non-AQ school, but where had it been at in the years prior?

(03-28-2012 10:27 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 10:18 AM)Tuffguy21 Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 10:06 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 09:26 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Sun Belt pays zero in production costs to ESPN. The league shares production costs with Cox/Comcast. CUSA shares production costs with CBSC and reportedly with Fox as well but I don't have the Fox component confirmed well enough to stay it as absolute fact. MWC shares production cost with Comcast/NBC.

The idea that the Alliance is doing everything to remain competitive is laughable. The concept behind it is to reduce post-season opportunities in multiple sports. It creates two far-flung divisions escalating travel costs and reducing the chances of developing ticket selling rivalries.

The Alliance is the cool crowd in high school vowing to stick together as college freshmen so they can retain their cool crowd status and be just as important as they once felt despite the fact the idea just isn't going to work.

This is where this argument always falls flat. If just being close and being associated with schools for a long time meant you'd have ticket selling rivalries the MAC wouldn't consistently be the lowest attended non-AQ league. Nearly every game for them is a bus trip game, and they have all kinds of history and rivalries, and yet the conference attendance average is 16k. Who of you are ever bringing any meaningful number of fans to Greenville? How many visiting fans do you guys currently bring to each others stadiums? You guys have always been relatively compact and I don't see a lot of impressive attendance numbers coming out of the Sun-Belt. This comes down to do you have people in your area who care about your school or not. If you do they'll show up no matter who your playing, and if you don't they won't.

The Cajuns had one of the highest Non-AQ attendance numbers this past season with over 29,000 a game, and brought like 40,000 to New Orleans for our bowl game, so I'd like to think that we had attendance numbers that were a little above average.

One season doesn't make great support though. Where was it at prior to this year? I've heard many of you guys crow about your support this season, and that's a very solid number for a non-AQ school, but where had it been at in the years prior?

Like any other team, when your losing they do other things. When your winning the show up. I kind of hope ECU has another losing season just so you can experience this.

Heck look at Memphis a lot of you guys who didn't get Big East invites love to hate them but remember when Memphis was making bowl games? Didn't they have like 30-40k people per game?

(03-27-2012 06:23 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  

(03-27-2012 05:56 PM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  It wont happen because the leftover conference USA members still think they are worth more than they are and ECU and Marshall are the main ones pushing for the merger and trying to control.

That's true.

Sooner or later some of the other programs are going to have to decide whether they are going to get led around by the nose by a program that really doesn't want to be with them in the first place and is ready to bolt at the first phone call after Louisville goes to the Longhorn Harem.

USM is one of them....they have a lot to lose. The western CUSA also have to ponder whether going through life trying to please ECU and Marshall is any way to go through life.

Just to be clear nobody has every tried to appease Marshall and ECU. Both schools have been asking since the 2003 Big East raid of CUSA to get a couple of schools added to CUSA to make things more geographically sensible for us. Marshall came in in 2005 but like us also wanted some East teams. What did CUSA do? They added UTEP, Rice, SMU and Tulsa and booted all non-FB members which included Charlotte.

We don't call it CTEX for nothing. There was NO good reason to add that many far west schools. We wanted LaTech (who didn't really help geography), MTSU, Ohio or Toledo.

Wow, some of you SBC posters need to hop on your unicorn and fly over to the end of the rainbow to try and coax the Leprechaun to give you a few gold schillings in exchange for you setting him up on a date with Mrs. Bigfoot. You guys are so high off of hash that it is crazy.

(03-28-2012 10:26 AM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 10:06 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 09:26 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Sun Belt pays zero in production costs to ESPN. The league shares production costs with Cox/Comcast. CUSA shares production costs with CBSC and reportedly with Fox as well but I don't have the Fox component confirmed well enough to stay it as absolute fact. MWC shares production cost with Comcast/NBC.

The idea that the Alliance is doing everything to remain competitive is laughable. The concept behind it is to reduce post-season opportunities in multiple sports. It creates two far-flung divisions escalating travel costs and reducing the chances of developing ticket selling rivalries.

The Alliance is the cool crowd in high school vowing to stick together as college freshmen so they can retain their cool crowd status and be just as important as they once felt despite the fact the idea just isn't going to work.

This is where this argument always falls flat. If just being close and being associated with schools for a long time meant you'd have ticket selling rivalries the MAC wouldn't consistently be the lowest attended non-AQ league. Nearly every game for them is a bus trip game, and they have all kinds of history and rivalries, and yet the conference attendance average is 16k. Who of you are ever bringing any meaningful number of fans to Greenville? How many visiting fans do you guys currently bring to each others stadiums? You guys have always been relatively compact and I don't see a lot of impressive attendance numbers coming out of the Sun-Belt. This comes down to do you have people in your area who care about your school or not. If you do they'll show up no matter who your playing, and if you don't they won't.

Ill bite on this.

Fans are not entitled to watch losing teams. And it's no secrete that until recently a lot of the Sun Belt teams were doing nothing but playing top 25 teams and then until recently having three teams dominate the conference (Troy/UNT/MTSU). Even your precious pirates are subject to this, if your team ever went on a losing streak people are not going to go to games.

You haven't seen huge jumps in attendance because teams have been losing but when teams are winning the 9 game conference schedule is going to help and not playing body bag games. Fans will start going to the games.

In our horrible run during the last Steve Logan year and the 2 debacles under Thompson we averaged 30k. That was with a 3 year run of 7-28. It's hard to get much worse than that, so I'd say that's about the worst case scenario, and my guess is the core base has grown to probably the 35-40k range now who will show up no matter what. That's how you judge how strong a fan base really is, how many will show up to watch when you suck. The best I have ever seen at this is South Carolina. I can remember them going 0-11 in 1999 and selling out 80k every game anyway. It's quite easy to show up and support a team that's winning. If you are a real fan losing isn't going to chase you away, it just strengthens your resolve and makes you appreciate the good times more. I'm not impressed by anyone saying "hey we just had a great year look at our attendance" show me what it was in a bad year and that's your core group.

(03-28-2012 11:40 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 10:26 AM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 10:06 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 09:26 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Sun Belt pays zero in production costs to ESPN. The league shares production costs with Cox/Comcast. CUSA shares production costs with CBSC and reportedly with Fox as well but I don't have the Fox component confirmed well enough to stay it as absolute fact. MWC shares production cost with Comcast/NBC.

The idea that the Alliance is doing everything to remain competitive is laughable. The concept behind it is to reduce post-season opportunities in multiple sports. It creates two far-flung divisions escalating travel costs and reducing the chances of developing ticket selling rivalries.

The Alliance is the cool crowd in high school vowing to stick together as college freshmen so they can retain their cool crowd status and be just as important as they once felt despite the fact the idea just isn't going to work.

This is where this argument always falls flat. If just being close and being associated with schools for a long time meant you'd have ticket selling rivalries the MAC wouldn't consistently be the lowest attended non-AQ league. Nearly every game for them is a bus trip game, and they have all kinds of history and rivalries, and yet the conference attendance average is 16k. Who of you are ever bringing any meaningful number of fans to Greenville? How many visiting fans do you guys currently bring to each others stadiums? You guys have always been relatively compact and I don't see a lot of impressive attendance numbers coming out of the Sun-Belt. This comes down to do you have people in your area who care about your school or not. If you do they'll show up no matter who your playing, and if you don't they won't.

Ill bite on this.

Fans are not entitled to watch losing teams. And it's no secrete that until recently a lot of the Sun Belt teams were doing nothing but playing top 25 teams and then until recently having three teams dominate the conference (Troy/UNT/MTSU). Even your precious pirates are subject to this, if your team ever went on a losing streak people are not going to go to games.

You haven't seen huge jumps in attendance because teams have been losing but when teams are winning the 9 game conference schedule is going to help and not playing body bag games. Fans will start going to the games.

In our horrible run during the last Steve Logan year and the 2 debacles under Thompson we averaged 30k. That was with a 3 year run of 7-28. It's hard to get much worse than that, so I'd say that's about the worst case scenario, and my guess is the core base has grown to probably the 35-40k range now who will show up no matter what. That's how you judge how strong a fan base really is, how many will show up to watch when you suck. The best I have ever seen at this is South Carolina. I can remember them going 0-11 in 1999 and selling out 80k every game anyway. It's quite easy to show up and support a team that's winning. If you are a real fan losing isn't going to chase you away, it just strengthens your resolve and makes you appreciate the good times more. I'm not impressed by anyone saying "hey we just had a great year look at our attendance" show me what it was in a bad year and that's your core group.

Without question, win or lose, ECU has always had good fan support.

(03-28-2012 11:04 AM)bluephi1914 Wrote:  Wow, some of you SBC posters need to hop on your unicorn and fly over to the end of the rainbow to try and coax the Leprechaun to give you a few gold schillings in exchange for you setting him up on a date with Mrs. Bigfoot. You guys are so high off of hash that it is crazy.

A lot of schools and fan bases are currently pondering what their future progress might look like in a dynamic environment.

I can understand how that can seem rather fantastic to those not really involved in future pondering.

(03-27-2012 10:58 PM)stAtecamera13 Wrote:  

(03-27-2012 10:35 PM)HerdZoned Wrote:  Im begining to think the Psych ward is missing a few patients tonight.

1. Unless one of Marshall, ECU, S. Miss, UAB gets an in an AQ they will be in the same confrece.

2. That conference is not going to be the Sun Belt.

3. There are only a few schools in the SB that have a chance at moving, the F_Us, North Texas, Middle Tenn. and later down the road South Alabama. You may not like it but thats the truth.

4. No one in the SB will turn an invite down if one is extended to them.

north texas turned down the WAC several times. of which the sunbelt is now ahead of. also the sunbelt is ahead of the MAC. if not ahead at least on par. and if I'm not mistaken the sunbelt has a winning record over C-USA the last couple years. outside of USM, Arkansas state could have beat every other team in the current conference in football. like it or not C-USA has 2 things going for it. USM's on field production, and ECU's attendance. this is not a lot of separation between the belt and c-usa. if we put things in a vacuum say the sunbelt adds 2 teams from USA. USM, and 1 of either tulsa or ECU and the belt becomes #1 non AQ conference over night. to put any separation between the Belt and USA they would have to add stAte, UL,WKU( rebuilds some basketball rep),MTSU(see WKU), and both florida schools. but this scenario gives you a competitor for tv contracts. and what kind of dumb business decision would it be to slightly improve your self but allow a competitor to survive when you had a chance to eliminate. why not just add the sunbelt (NOT ULM) to C-USA. great rivralrys, great travel, great TV contracts... now someone point out a down side?


next.

Noth Texas didn't join the WAC because the 2nd closest school to them was 10 hours away in NMSU, the closest was 4 hours 40 mins away in LA Tech. I still think it would have been a good move for them to jump in 04. But thats here nor there. They jump now they have Tulsa, Rice, Tulane, UAB, USM and UTEP which is still 10 hours away but higher profile than NMSU.

I hate what you are making me do and thats defend the MAC. When a MAC school is having a good year they will be ranked. And schools have been ranked high (Marshall in 99 was ranked 10th in both polls), (Miami in 04 was ranked 10th in the coaches and 13th in AP). No Sun Belt school has ever cracked the top 25, and I don't see it in the near future. Most Sun Belt schools enter conference play at 1-3 and best usually at 2-2.

OOO WoW you are going to toot your horn about beating Memphis and UAB. Memphis won a total of 3 games in the last 2 years (Middle Tenn., Austin Peay and Tulane), UAB 7 in the last 2 years (Troy, UTEP, USM (2), Memphis (2), UCF).

What would you call a good TV contract, Im guessing 3 million a year. Right now the Sun Belts TV contract is 885K per year or 98K per school.

My guess is we take 2 of the 3, FIU, North Texas, Middle Tenn. . And possibly all 3.

(03-28-2012 12:29 PM)HerdZoned Wrote:  My guess is we take 2 of the 3, FIU, North Texas, Middle Tenn. . And possibly all 3.

If so then we add some combo of LaTech, UTSA, Texas State, Georgia State and Charlotte which are not bad choices at all.

You will be getting three relatively known quantities. We will be getting one relatively known quantity and three or four that have real potential to actually outdo the known quantities in a few years.

I think it will be actually quite interesting.

(03-28-2012 10:27 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 10:18 AM)Tuffguy21 Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 10:06 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-28-2012 09:26 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Sun Belt pays zero in production costs to ESPN. The league shares production costs with Cox/Comcast. CUSA shares production costs with CBSC and reportedly with Fox as well but I don't have the Fox component confirmed well enough to stay it as absolute fact. MWC shares production cost with Comcast/NBC.

The idea that the Alliance is doing everything to remain competitive is laughable. The concept behind it is to reduce post-season opportunities in multiple sports. It creates two far-flung divisions escalating travel costs and reducing the chances of developing ticket selling rivalries.

The Alliance is the cool crowd in high school vowing to stick together as college freshmen so they can retain their cool crowd status and be just as important as they once felt despite the fact the idea just isn't going to work.

This is where this argument always falls flat. If just being close and being associated with schools for a long time meant you'd have ticket selling rivalries the MAC wouldn't consistently be the lowest attended non-AQ league. Nearly every game for them is a bus trip game, and they have all kinds of history and rivalries, and yet the conference attendance average is 16k. Who of you are ever bringing any meaningful number of fans to Greenville? How many visiting fans do you guys currently bring to each others stadiums? You guys have always been relatively compact and I don't see a lot of impressive attendance numbers coming out of the Sun-Belt. This comes down to do you have people in your area who care about your school or not. If you do they'll show up no matter who your playing, and if you don't they won't.

The Cajuns had one of the highest Non-AQ attendance numbers this past season with over 29,000 a game, and brought like 40,000 to New Orleans for our bowl game, so I'd like to think that we had attendance numbers that were a little above average.

One season doesn't make great support though. Where was it at prior to this year? I've heard many of you guys crow about your support this season, and that's a very solid number for a non-AQ school, but where had it been at in the years prior?

The Cajuns traditionally have one of the higher attendances in the league, aside from our terrible 3-9 year where people stopped going to protest the coach at the time. Aside from us, MT in good years can and has gotten over 20,000, and stAte just was over 20,000 as well, and Troy has been around the 20k mark. That is far better than teams your already associated with in UAB, Tulane, and Rice. With that said, over 29,000 for a Non-bcs team who hadn't been to a bowl game in 40 years says something about what the potential is for that school. I'm not saying don't be proud of your attendance, but don't act like no one cares about our schools in the SBC.

Oh and one other quick thing, WKU always draws well for basketball, mens and womens, and MT drew great crowds this past season in basketball, and the Cajuns have a top 15 baseball and Softball attendance while Troy is sneaking up into the top 25 in attendance in baseball. People care, people know their universities in the belt, and when given a quality product, they show up.

(03-27-2012 08:24 PM)cajunhawk Wrote:  ECU and their fan base likes to tout how much separation they have over us lowly Sun Belt programs. Let's be real here, the Big East turned down ECU. They don't want what they have. They would rather swallow their pride and bring in a terrible Memphis football team, then bring in ECU. This is not separation...this is reality. What your alumni and boosters think of themselves is not in line with what reality is. A little pragmatism would do the entire CUSA some good. We are all also-rans. We are all the gum stuck at the bottom of the BCS' shoe. Until we realize this and work together...we...will...never...prosper.

Frankly, and I don't mean this as a slam to ECU but as a casual college football fan (that is, until USA built a team), I'd never even heard of them until they came to Mobile to play in the bowl game here years ago. In fact, up until recently I thought they were "Eastern Carolina"; that is, when I would rarely see anything "ECU" related.

I'm sure this is true of most casual fans - "WHO?". I don't see how the ECU fans believe they have any brand recognition at all, at least outside of their region -- and I would throw my own school -- USA into that same mix. I didn't even know how rabidly the ECU fans supported their team (who I must admit I don't even know what their mascot is... Pirates maybe?) -- it's quite impressive.

That said, I hope for the sake of ECU they get that Big East invite sooner than later. It seems to me it would be a "win win" for both entities.

(03-27-2012 08:24 PM)cajunhawk Wrote:  ECU and their fan base likes to tout how much separation they have over us lowly Sun Belt programs. Let's be real here, the Big East turned down ECU. They don't want what they have. They would rather swallow their pride and bring in a terrible Memphis football team, then bring in ECU. This is not separation...this is reality. What your alumni and boosters think of themselves is not in line with what reality is. A little pragmatism would do the entire CUSA some good. We are all also-rans. We are all the gum stuck at the bottom of the BCS' shoe. Until we realize this and work together...we...will...never...prosper.

All of that could be true, but what has gotten us to this point is when someone has tried to slap us down and tell us we can't do something, aren't good enough, etc we didn't just accept that. You can't keep our fan base in line with pragmatism. Our administration can't continue to ask for the things they are asking out of us in terms of ticket prices, donations, facilities projects, etc unless they continue to sell us that we are none of those things you say we are. Everything we have built is on the dream of playing football at the highest level, and until that door is completely slammed we have to do whatever it takes to keep that hope alive. If that door is eventually slammed shut permanently we'll just form some sort of mid-atlantic version of the MAC and probably see attendance drop back to 1970's levels.

If USM goes to the Sun Belt, there will be a riot in Hattiesburg, I guarantee you.

(03-28-2012 05:09 PM)Beagleagle23 Wrote:  If USM goes to the Sun Belt, there will be a riot in Hattiesburg, I guarantee you.

There are some flat out bad programs in both conferences. If both reconfigured and took the cream of the collective crops it could make for a nice conference.