RE: MWC/Thompson Roundtable
Ideal AAC Expansion would be to add Army and Air Force and 4 other western schools.
An out-of-the-box concept that could make the schedule and alignment work for a larger conference is to have rotating divisions. Certain schools would be permanent EAST or WEST division members. Other schools would be "flex teams" that rotate between the EAST and WEST divisions. Stack the rotation and schedules to maintain rivalries and must-play games. Only divisional games determine the division winner.
FOOTBALL
EAST: UCF, USF, ECU, Temple, UConn
WEST: Boise St., SDSU, CSU, UNLV, Air Force
FLEX: Houston-SMU, Tulsa, Tulane, Memphis, Cincinnati, Navy-Army
[Perhaps Army-Navy and Houston-SMU always play together in the same division]
Encourage a limited number of intra-conference OOC games, as we have seen scheduled in the ACC.
Even better would be CCG de-regulation, which would allow for 3 divisions. CCG involves the top two division winners:
EAST: UCF, USF, ECU, Temple, UConn, Army
CENTRAL: Houston, SMU, Tulane, Memphis, Cincinnati, Navy
WEST: Boise St., SDSU, CSU, UNLV, Tulsa, Air Force
This setup would allow for more cross-division play, with Army-Navy-Air Force as cross-division locks.
8 or 9 games of weekly football inventory. 1-2 games on each of Thursday and Friday and then 5-7 games from 12pm to 10pm ET on Saturday.
BASKETBALL
For basketball, create 3 regional divisions that make up the vast majority of the basketball inventory. Stack the cross-division schedules to limit out-of-division games such that no teams has more than one 2-game road trip against each of the other divisions. (For Olympic sports, you could likely focus on the regional division entirely - or replace some longer - and common - OOC road trips with cross-division road trips).
To fill in the regional division gaps, invite Gonzaga, VCU, BYU (Olympics only), and UMass (Olympics only) to the expanded conference:
EAST: UCF, USF, ECU, Temple, UConn, VCU, UMass
CENTRAL: Houston, SMU, Tulsa, Tulane, Memphis, Cincinnati, Wichita St.
WEST: Boise St., SDSU, CSU, UNLV, Air Force, Gonzaga, BYU
20-game basketball schedule - 12 games against your division (home-road); 4 games against each of the other divisions (8 total) - this will include just two 2-game out-of-division road trips. Rotate the conference tournament to venues in an EAST-CENTRAL-WEST rotation.
20 games or so of weekly basketball inventory. If desired, that would give you 2-3 games each of Monday through Friday and 4-6 games on Saturday and Sunday, from 12pm to 10pm ET.
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