(10-20-2021 08:17 AM)CarlSmithCenter Wrote:  I’d scrap divisions all together to create annual permanent rivalries between Navy and those three and then rotate through five of the other ten each year for an eight game schedule. ...

Under the current rules, they have to have divisions if they want to have a CCG. With 14 schools, it seems like they'll be wanting to have a CCG.

(10-20-2021 11:13 AM)VolCajun Wrote:  I'm not familiar with where all the major naval bases are - but it seems like a military academy would want to play in front of the regular enlisted members of the service branch as much as possible. They play home games (at Annapolis) and against Army on the Atlantic - and I assume in front of Navy personnel in Texas for the same reason.

But this is why the AAC will give Navy whatever alignment they want:
The importance of naval bases make a strong MWC a potential threat to the AAC holding on to Navy:
1) The MWC has SDSU - and San Diego is home to a major naval base
2) Hawaii (another MWC school in FB) has another major naval base

And the MWC has one major advantage over the AAC for Navy - it has Air Force. If the annual Air Force game is suddenly an in-conference game, then Navy has an extra non-conference game (which they could use to visit Texas - by the way). This is why the AAC would love to have Army too - it offers Navy an extra destination game.

That in a nutshell is why the AAC is going to give Navy whatever alignment it wants.

I answered this in some depth in another thread a couple weeks ago.

(10-05-2021 12:25 AM)slhNavy91 Wrote:  

(10-04-2021 07:05 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(10-04-2021 06:51 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  

(10-04-2021 06:30 PM)slhNavy91 Wrote:  

(10-04-2021 05:07 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  AFA doesn’t have to look in a mirror, because AAC was willing to take them even if they wouldn’t pair well with the top of that conference. Heck, the Big XII even came to them those years back. That’s why I don’t envy Thompson, because he has these four malcontents who have the leverage of turning down other conferences to hold him somehow accountable while not helping their cause in any way.

I mean, Navy has been trying to lure them over east. Why not try to pull Navy west?

Navy is not going to the mwc.
There's a lot of ridiculous stuff here on the realignment board, but that's near the top of the list.
The mwc is a regional conference - even if they add CUSA Texas school(s) for CTZ and Texas. Navy wants a national program and national exposure. The coast to coast Big East we signed up for in Jan 2012 offered that. AAC West with cross-divisional games in FL, NC, PA, and OH offers that. mwc does not offer that. That's why AF was "enamored" (McMurphy's word) with the AAC moreso than the better money and ESPN exposure that USAFA AD said out loud.
Ultimately that regional aspect tipped the scales for AF and CSU, and is a stability factor (as is the MAC's nice regional footprint) in some regards, and maybe is some appeal for Big12 poaching....but it makes the mwc a non-starter for Navy.

So the entire western US is irrelevant?

I didn't realize that Navy and AFA needed to get on ESPN in order to attract Cadets. What type of exposure are the Academies looking for? Wouldn't Navy being independent be more fitting for that?

Something like 70-75% of Americans live in the Eastern and Central Timezones. There’s definitely an exposure advantage in the Eastern US compared to the Western US.

Okay, I'll go into more detail than y'all probably want...

When we talk about the service academy football programs and national exposure and recruiting, let's start at the top -- that is about football recruiting first, recruiting midshipmen and cadets for the academies, and then waaaaay distant third, recruiting enlisted soldiers, airmen, Sailors, and Marines.

Starting with the last - you ask the 3-star in any service about how he/she is recruiting 40,000 young Americans to enlist in the service, and academy sports is way down on his or her list. Sure, you do a "Military Appreciation Day" when Army West Point, or the Air Force Falcons, or Navy play a football game at your school, and the local strip mall recruiting station E-6 might have his high school Delayed Entry Program kids swear their oath in between the first and second quarters, but that doesn't even register in the national, service-wide recruiting numbers.

So now let's go back to the top -- football recruiting. Navy's football roster includes student-athletes from 30 states plus the District of Columbia. That sounds pretty good to me, but let me turn it over to the P5 chauvinists here -- JRSec, how many states are represented on the Auburn roster? Stugray, how many state flags can Ohio State fly? bullet, how many states does Texas or UGA got? Wedge how about Cal, how many states? YNot has posted in this thread, and BYU has some kind of national appeal - how many states does that equal?
Maybe one of y'all will surprise me.

But if you're recruiting football players nationally, here are the states where Navy and AF play their conference games:
Navy / AAC: MD, LA, TN, TX, OK, FL, NC, PA, OH
AF / mwc: CO, NV, CA, ID, WY, NM, UT, HI
Which would you rather have?
I like California - I would love for Navy-SDSU to be an annual game...but Navy kind of already has brand awareness in San Diego - better with a game there, but we're good there already, just like we don't need ODU for exposure in the 757. Ditto Hawaii, with the Niumatalolo factor. Heck, Niumat may give us inroads into Utah, Idaho, and Nevada as well. I like Colorado, and we can already tell Mom we'll be in her state two times in her son's four-year football career.
For FOOTBALL recruiting, clear advantage to being in the AAC. Like, by a million miles.

So then you get to recruiting Cadets/Midshipmen. Just like any other school, nationally televised sports are a "front porch" for the institution. Maybe moreso - 85% of Midshipmen were high school varsity letter winners (full disclaimer - I'm one of the 15% who somehow ended up there with grades, test scores, and leadership positions). So ESPN exposure in that athletics "front porch" might be more important for the academies than any other schools. Better to be on ESPN than on FS1, in that case. Advantage AAC.
Then there is the factor of the Academy admissions processes - to make a long story short, for most students that requires a nomination from a U.S. Senator or a U.S. Representative - if I'm trying to reach the maximum number of potential cadets/midshipmen, I want to have casual exposure in states with dozens of Congresspersons instead of states with one to three Congresspersons. Advantage AAC.

As Muskie said - exposure to the 70% of Americans in Eastern and Central Time Zones is better for a national institution recruiting a national student body than exposure to the 30% out west.

dbackjon asked about Navy independence -- yes. That's why we stayed independent for so long, despite annual conversations with the Big East long before we joined. Most Navy fans miss the schedule variety aspects of independence - I know I do. With limited flexibility that's why we moved our home games against ND to Jacksonville, FL and San Diego CA recently. And that would have been a benefit had Air Force come over - one more opportunity to schedule a big dog, or identify a home-and-home that gets us exposure in some other corner of the country (Marshall this year and '23 is the last, rescheduled vestige of our independent scheduling. When we kept them, we cancelled H&Hs with, iirc, Minnesota and Iowa State).
But we gave up independence a decade ago because senior leadership saw the coming changes in the college football landscape - we NEED to keep playing at the highest level, and joining the Big East was the path to that. That BCS auto-qual rug got pulled out, but going all-in on the American "P6" campaign was the fallback. In the current state of play, and the next unknown shifts, independence wouldn't advance those strategic goals anymore than riding things out with the AAC...but should absolute disaster befall the AAC, for Navy independence would probably still be preferable to the little, visionless, regional mwc for achieving Navy's strategic goals.

But UC, UH, and UCF leaving didn't get to that absolute disaster level. The AAC is our current best path to our strategic goals. IF it absolutely blows up, going back to independence is an option. mwc is....naaaah.

Again, the goal is "national" not "western" or "Texas"
The mwc is not national. SD is cool, but we can do Notre Dame there, or a California bowl if things fall right, or even a home-and-home with SDSU. Hawaii travel beat us up in 2018 - wouldn't want that on the regular, and Hawaii Bowl is on the AAC list every other year (and Navy is the only AAC team capable of selling tickets to that on two weeks' notice)

(10-20-2021 09:21 AM)slhNavy91 Wrote:  there are multiple ways to skin this cat - this is football, and only four away conference games, and we're all chartering. I would say find the best balance that promotes rivalries (geographically focused AND like-minded institutions), gives everyone good exposure in both Texas and Florida, and considers competitive balance (the most fluid aspect)

This.

We don’t need to have divisions. Play 3 opponents annually — I assume Navy (for example) would pick SMU, Rice, and Tulane, but whatever — and then play the other 10 every-other-year. Total of 8.

(10-20-2021 09:08 AM)thrill_house Wrote:  

(10-20-2021 08:36 AM)RUScarlets Wrote:  What about Charlotte and Fla? No recruits there I presume? Philly?

If this is as about recruiting territories they wouldn't have passed on FIU and Georgia State.

They did take FAU.

(10-20-2021 07:36 PM)Native Georgian Wrote:  

(10-20-2021 09:21 AM)slhNavy91 Wrote:  there are multiple ways to skin this cat - this is football, and only four away conference games, and we're all chartering. I would say find the best balance that promotes rivalries (geographically focused AND like-minded institutions), gives everyone good exposure in both Texas and Florida, and considers competitive balance (the most fluid aspect)

This.

We don’t need to have divisions. Play 3 opponents annually — I assume Navy (for example) would pick SMU, Rice, and Tulane, but whatever — and then play the other 10 every-other-year. Total of 8.

Well, with the current rules, we do have to have divisions to play a CCG (which is kind of important to our media deal).
The rules say divisions, with round robin play within division, and matchup the two division champs in CCG
OR
no divisions, play a full conference round robin, and matchup the top two teams in CCG.

We're under a waiver to be divisionless but not play full conference round robin.

Obviously a thirteen conference game full conference round robin isn't possible.

So divisions, but you don't need to draw a geographic line -- look at the ACC's Atlantic and Coastal divisions, or "Leaders and Legends". You could just call them Blue and Gold, and hand pick for whatever factors you prefer. Heck, you could draw from a hat.
For non-revenue sports you obviously want geographically designed divisions or scheduling or whatever. But for football (again, charters and fewer conference contests), the biggest thing a geographic distribution gets you is rivalries, which are largely starting from scratch in this new configuration anyway.

(10-20-2021 10:13 AM)RUScarlets Wrote:  

(10-20-2021 10:02 AM)Crayton Wrote:  American: Rice, Tulsa, SMU, Tulane, Navy, Temple, FAU*
Athletic: Memphis, UTSA, UNT, USF*, ECU, Charlotte, UAB

Two locked games makes for an easier rotation (6 years, not 14 years). Teams are selected to help outliers:
Temple-ECU, USF-FAU

I mean, I think East-West is fine with the only question being whether Navy flips with Memphis. But, let us not think the conference make-up won't change within 6 years... which loops back to the OP's decent idea of keeping the Midshipmen in the (more geographically diverse) East.

This setup could work with one protected rival (UTSA-Rice, UNT-SMU, Memphis-Tulsa, UAB-Tulane, USF-FAU, Temple-Charlotte, Navy-ECU). Not sure there is a base out there close to Greenville but perhaps it could be an event type of game for Navy.

You don’t need locked games. Fewer such games allows for a quicker rotation. I locked 2 as that would create the quickest rotation. It also gave outlier Temple 1 fewer game out west every other year.