Cyniclone
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I Root For: ODU
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RE: Is BW A Scapegoat?
(12-18-2019 03:03 PM)odu09 Wrote: (12-18-2019 02:54 PM)Cyniclone Wrote: (12-18-2019 02:38 PM)odu09 Wrote: (12-18-2019 02:32 PM)Cyniclone Wrote: (12-18-2019 01:57 PM)Monarchblue Wrote: CUSA is a tough pill to swallow for me, and I honestly would probably enjoy basketball and football more RIGHT NOW if we were still in the CAA, but the rub is that you have to move up to FBS to make the next move, which is where I ultimately want the athletic dept to go. So, while I hate everything about CUSA, especially for basketball which is my preferred sport by a lot, I grit my teeth and accept it because it is a necessary step on the journey to where I want to go.
I understand people wishing that the CAA roster from, say, the early 2000s was intact in 2019, and so long as there was a viable way forward for ODU football, I'd agree. But what is appealing about today's CAA? An additional game with JMU and W&M, at least one game against Charleston, which is usually good, and then ... then what? Do you really miss Drexel, Hofstra, Towson? Do you wish Elon came aboard when ODU was in the CAA? Did the Northeastern game strike a twinge of nostalga?
I know I'm coming off as sarcastic, and well, yeah, I am sarcastic, but I'm also genuinely curious: What makes today's CAA more attractive than CUSA? Why would playing in today's CAA be more enjoyable? If it's "well, because we always were good in the CAA," you can't extrapolate two football seasons into a permanent floor, and basketball probably would be about where it is in CUSA -- good enough to hang around the top of the standings but any hope of NCAAs would come down to the tournament. The CAA tournament back in the day was special but the Richmond Coliseum has been closed for a year and there's no bringing that magic back.
Is there something about the CAA, circa 2019, that I'm missing? I see posters like you, reasonable posters with whom I disagree but nevertheless respect, make points like this, and I feel like there's a piece of the puzzle that's out of my reach, because all I see is an anonymous mid-major conference with a lot of schools I couldn't give a whit about, only with no Virginia and Virginia Tech football coming to town.
I think I can at least provide my own answer to your question by asking you a question, who in CUSA excites you? MT because we've never beaten them before? They would be an unknown quanity to us had we stayed CAA. Who else is there? UAB because of the history from long ago, maybe LT and WKU for the same reason. Nobody else moves the needle at all.
Two points in response:
1. None of that explains why you think the CAA is better or more enjoyable.
2. For my money, I'd rather match up with like-minded institutions like Western Kentucky, UAB and Charlotte than ones where the only thing linking us was conference affiliation, like Elon and Drexel and Northeastern. The only two schools I care about in the CAA are JMU and W&M and we already play them in most sports. Plus you have to think forward: CUSA programs have more growth potential than CAA ones; a fully realized Marshall or Southern Miss is going to be way more interesting than a fully realized Hofstra or UNCW.
1. Old rivalries and history of 20+ years against familiar opponents
2. Then you and I are simply cut from a different cloth. I would have no clue about WKU or UAB or Charlotte if we weren't in CUSA. And you keep making the assumption that we have growth potential, and if that potential is realized then it certainly is worth it, but the original response was about here and now.
1. Again, two rivalries, both of which we're still maintaining. We play other CAA teams frequently (Towson and Northeastern most recently) and those games generate as much interest here as ones against Fairfield and UMES. The only CAA school I wish we'd play is Charleston, and we've never been in a conference with them.
2. So your stance is, everything else being equal, conference games against CAA teams are more interesting than ones against CUSA teams? That's fine if you think that, but objectively, ODU has much more in common with Charlotte/UAB/WKU/MT than anyone in the CAA not named JMU or W&M, and that makes them more interesting to me. Plus they're generally better programs. UAB, MT and Marshall have won NCAA games in the past five seasons; the last current CAA team to do so while a CAA member is UNC Wilmington in 2002.
I miss some of my co-workers from my last job, but I'm not trying to go back there; I can meet them for coffee if I want to catch up.
(This post was last modified: 12-18-2019 03:32 PM by Cyniclone.)
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