Conference Realignment Conceptualized
Conference realignment has gotten a ton of buzz in light of the economic impacts of the viral pandemic. The writing is on the wall, these far-flung, low revenue conferences are not sustainable. Even if they were, they could be improved upon and aren't business savvy. I'm actually feeling as optimistic on this topic as I have in a while, and I think improvement is inevitable. The only question is how significant will the improvement be?
Here are the four most important considerations for ODU's conference future. I've broken them down into 4 sections.
1. The priority should be to get in the current AAC. I am of the belief that this is not a very likely outcome; but it is absolutely the best case scenario and would raise our athletic profile. If the administration is doing their job, they are making a hard and persistent sales pitch to the AAC brass.
The AAC will add a new team in the immediate future. NCAA rules state that you must have 12 teams (AAC has 11) to play a conference championship game. You can play a conference championship game with less than 12 (Big XII has 10) if you play a full round-robin schedule. This is very difficult to do with 11 teams, and I know the AAC wants to have available OOC games to schedule P5 schools. The AAC has been given a waiver on this requirement through 2021. A domino will fall soon.
2. In the likely event we don't get into the AAC, we need to make the most of our immediate situation. We absolutely must form a more condensed regional conference. I believe the only two conferences that will be a part of this game are CUSA and the SunBelt. The MAC already has what we want, regionality and natural rivals, so I don't think we could get any defectors from there.
There seem to be 2 options with creating a more regional conference. Option A, certain schools defect and cherry pick to create a new conference. Option B, CUSA and SunBelt come together, and split the schools on regional lines.
Option A: Under this option relevant bylaws state that in order to receive an auto-bid as a conference, defections must include 7 schools who have existed together in the same conference for 8 years. So likely CUSA-East would break off, although I'd love to have UAB as well. That would give us 8 schools, and from there we could add any combination of App State, Georgia State, UMass, and Ohio and find a bunch of value. This would probably be the preferable option because we wouldn't have to take as much chop liver from the SunBelt.
Option B: This is probably the easier route logistically, and we might be able to avoid the bylaws considered in option A with this option. If two conferences come together and distribute all teams into two new regional conferences, its conceivable that the NCAA would waive the relevant bylaws and both conferences could retain an auto-bid. Ideally, I'd like to see App State, Charlotte, Marshall, MTSU, Georgia State, Old Dominion, UAB, WKU. I think it would be wise to lobby to stay in a smaller conference with higher value schools that are superior in basketball. This would also set us up better for upcoming consideration 3. Although realistically with option B we'd probably have to take on Coastal Carolina, Georgia Southern, and F_U, as much as we don't like them.
3. This is the wildcard, this is speculation, but it's also where a lot of the fun comes in. Around 2023-2024 a lot of the P5 TV contracts expire. When negotiating for new contracts, a few of these P5s may see it in their interest to poach the relatively precarious Big XII. Under a few possibilities , Texas and Oklahoma would defect. From there, Kansas would not see the value in the Big XII and would be welcomed elsewhere as a hoops blue blood. Oklahoma St could potentially be an attractive option for a lot of conferences too. That would leave the Big XII with 6 teams that still have a big enough brand to attract AAC schools. Cincinnati, Houston, Memphis, and UCF are the highest profile AAC teams and they would gladly defect to join the new Big XII.
The remaining misfits in the AAC would not have the same pull that the previous misfits of the Big XII had. The remaining AAC brands in this scenario would not provide enough media revenue their own merits to break up the newly formed CUSA/Sunbelt (East/West) conferences. Likely, these 7 misfits would in turn join with the most logical conference based on regionality. So for the Eastern conference we are in, that would mean Temple, ECU, and Navy definitely align with us. USF would have a choice to make, but both CUSA and SunBelt would offer them.
4. The final step in realignment would be to poach non-football members. Perhaps after all is said and done, we'd have enough clout as a conference to poach VCU, Dayton, Wichita State, Richmond, and George Mason.
All in all, this is probably what we're looking at if we go with Option B from section 2:
New Eastern Conference:
App State
Charlotte
Coastal Carolina (begrudgingly)
Florida Atlantic (begrudgingly)
Florida International (begrudgingly)
Marshall
MTSU
Georgia Southern
Georgia State
Old Dominion
UAB
WKU
ECU (if option 3 works out!)
Navy (if option 3 works out!)
Temple (if option 3 works out!)
USF (if option 3 works out!)
Ideally, we could replace Coastal Carolina, F_Us, and Georgia Southern with schools like Ohio, UMass, or Buffalo. Regardless, this is a clear upgrade from where we are at now. Whatever we end up with will be better than what we currently have, but not perfect.
New Western Conference:
Arkansas State
Louisiana
Louisiana Tech
North Texas
Rice
South Alabama
Southern Miss
Texas State
Troy
UL Monroe
UTEP
UTSA
SMU (if option 3 works out!)
Tulane (if option 3 works out!)
Tulsa (if option 3 works out!)
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