(05-15-2014 08:39 AM)TStatebobcat Wrote: Personally I want NMSU as an all-sports member. With that said bringing them in now doesn't make sense since Idaho and Umass would be temporary members. If, in a few years, we were to bring in two other all-sports members then we would have 13 all sports members. Not sure if that would be an ideal number or not.
14 ... if you had 10 all-sports members and 2 Olympic sports members and added 2 all-sports members replacing two FB-only members, you'd be 12/14 FB/Olympic.
Not all sports, of course, since other than BBall, different schools can meet their FBS sports requirements with different sports. And individual meet-based sports have a lot of flexibility, so M&W Golf, Cross Country, Indoor & Outdoor Track and Field and Tennis aren't an issue.
Sunbelt team sports before hypothetical new members, assuming NMSU has been upgraded to all-sports:
12: M&W BBall, Baseball, W Volleyball
11: W Soccer
10: W Softball
6: M Soccer(+3)
Adding two to M&W BBall and either one or two to the others seems like it would be entirely reasonable. 14 in BBall offers several ways to schedule either sixteen or eighteen conference games (and of course the SEC and Big Ten play with 14). Given the footprint it would likely be 14 in baseball, so that would require some thinking whether to split into divisions. Similar with W Volleyball (a common Title IX balance sport).
Women's soccer & softball would seem fine with one or two more members and men's soccer, with one three Sunbelt schools sponsoring the sport and three affiliates to reach AQ, would actually be more secure with one more Sunbelt school sponsoring the sport.