The Sun Belt Conference has enough internal support to add a 12th member and has focused its search on current Football Championship Subdivision members Coastal Carolina and Eastern Kentucky, a person with knowledge of the conversations told USA TODAY Sports. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is supposed to be private.

A decision on which school to add and formal vote should come within the next few weeks, if not days.

"They have enough votes," the person said. "They have already visited the campuses."

Commissioner Karl Benson didn't immediately return a call seeking comment


http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nca.../71322494/

Hoping for CCU. Even though their facilities are behind, they have lots of potential and would make for a fun road trip every other year.

personally, I wish they would go with a third choice, and just wait another year or two. I don't think either one will be beneficial to the conference for a long time. If I had to choose, I'd rather take EKU

I hope it's EKU. Downside of having to battle an in-state G5 school for SC recruits outweighs the upside of a better road trip location IMO. Actually I'm not really a big Myrtle Beach fan anyway, but I know many are.

I agree with waiting, but would select CCU over EKU.

CCU over EKU, in my opinion. CCU has more upside and it is a growing university, while I think EKU's glory days are behind them.

I truly don't understand the appeal of EKU. They don't fit the mold of anything FBS conferences have been going for. They're not rural schools with great support like App or Georgia Southern.

They're not an established FBS program like La Tech.

They're not a big market team like Georgia State, Charlotte, or ODU.

They don't really have anything going for them IMO. The city they're located in is even a dump.

CCU isn't without its warts (mainly support), but at least they have some really good programs, they're located in a fast growing state, and should be well positioned to compete almost immediately.

We battled and beat CCU for recruits at the FCS level. No reason to think it would be different with them in the Sun Belt.

AppinVA wrote:We battled and beat CCU for recruits at the FCS level. No reason to think it would be different with them in the Sun Belt.

Even if we beat them more often than not, they'll win more of those battles as an FBS than they would in FCS, where we'll likely beat them for almost any recruit we want. That's just common sense. We are making hay in SC right now and a CCU move up would make that tougher.

Vote is tomorrow in Dallas. All the presidents and leaders are meeting there. We're at Realignment DEFCON-1.

http://www.theadvertiser.com/story/spor ... /71349570/

WAIT!!!! Neither of these schools are a benefit to the conference. The NCAA has no authority over which bowls a team goes to or the conference tie-ins to those respective bowls. Just schedule a conference championship game and play it. What are they going to to do, set up the National Guard and stop it? It's total over reach on their part to set the 12 team rule anyway. Where's the logic in that? It's because of the P5 commissioners telling them to do it (other than the Big 12, ironic).
Don't take either, schedule and play the championship game and move on. They can't keep us out of bowl games. Their 6 win rule would leave bowls without enough teams to play.

My two cents on this is that CCU would be a good fit. We can all agree that Idaho will probably get the boot soon, and there is no guarantee that NMSU stays around. If we grab up either CCU or EKU, given time to upgrade their football team to 85 scholarship players, would they be any worse than NMSU is currently?

If CCU gets in for football, they should be forced to get rid of that awful teal turf before being allowed to host a Sun Belt football game.

Purely from an every other year road trip standpoint, CCU is way more appealing.

ashugh wrote:WAIT!!!! Neither of these schools are a benefit to the conference. The NCAA has no authority over which bowls a team goes to or the conference tie-ins to those respective bowls. Just schedule a conference championship game and play it. What are they going to to do, set up the National Guard and stop it? It's total over reach on their part to set the 12 team rule anyway. Where's the logic in that? It's because of the P5 commissioners telling them to do it (other than the Big 12, ironic).
Don't take either, schedule and play the championship game and move on. They can't keep us out of bowl games. Their 6 win rule would leave bowls without enough teams to play.

They cold levy fines and/or punish other teams at SB schools I would imagine, such as tournament at-large bids. Though 12 is a bit arbitrary in my view. Why not 10 as the limit?

EastHallApp wrote:

AppinVA wrote:We battled and beat CCU for recruits at the FCS level. No reason to think it would be different with them in the Sun Belt.

Even if we beat them more often than not, they'll win more of those battles as an FBS than they would in FCS, where we'll likely beat them for almost any recruit we want. That's just common sense. We are making hay in SC right now and a CCU move up would make that tougher.

It still doesn't change the fact CCU is the better add for the conference. In fact, it confirms it.

I don't particularly care for either institution. The two football and basketball programs cancel each other. CCU baseball and men's soccer give them the edge in the minds of some. Then, location pushes them over the line.

If a vote comes to pass at tomorrow's meeting, either the matter gets tabled or CCU will be the selection.

I vote (not that my vote matters to SBC presidents/chancellors ) to table the matter until the spring SBC meetings. CCU's football and basketball facilities are too small and not very conducive to major seating expansion. In fact, in the case of basketball, I think they'd have to build a new facility from scratch!

So, if we're talking facilities as what will make or break a team, then we need to take a big step back and reevaluate all of this.

I get that we, as Appalachian State fans, want what is best for both App and for the Sun Belt conference, but let's not get too big headed just yet. We're still new to the Sun Belt, meaning we are not the decision-makers and we cannot shove our noses into the air and say, "CCU/EKU, you don't meet our standards as an FCS team, so good luck with life." That's not right and that's not fair.

Remember when CUSA did just the same thing to us? They put their noses in the air and took in Charlotte, instead. That felt like crap to our university and to our fans, which also helps to drive how competitive we are against CUSA now. Somebody (lots of somebodies, actually) have put their nose up in the air to Appalachian before, so why should we do that to schools that are doing their damnedest to be successful and thrive at the next level? Coastal and EKU are both solid schools with solid backgrounds. They are both making strides to reach the next level, but as a relatively new school to the FBS (hell, this is our first year out of transition), we cannot in good faith look down upon another school that wants to do what we just did.

We can definitely support or not support a school being added to the Belt, but we should not act as if we are better than them because we beat them to the punch. We can talk facts, as in "We've beat CCU/EKU on the field/court more than they've beat us", but we cannot shove our noses in the air and suddenly treat them the way the UNCs of the world treat us. Let's not be those fans.

Chuck, I belive CCU has built new basketball arena that has opened within the last couple of years.
Their baseball facilities are very good,also new.

Not really a fan of them being in the conference though.

8993 wrote:We can talk facts, as in "We've beat CCU/EKU on the field/court more than they've beat us", but we cannot shove our noses in the air and suddenly treat them the way the UNCs of the world treat us. Let's not be those fans.

Your comment seems to have been aimed at me. My nose isn't in the air by any means. EKU and CCU are good candidates for SBC membership. Of the two, CCU is probably the better choice. Their men's soccer program would instantly make SBC men's soccer more relevant. Their location, in close proximity to the lower Grand Strand, is a "natural" for a conference known as The Sun Belt. A lot of fans will like this selection.

I've just been a proponent of Missouri State's admission, because I believe they are, at present, a better choice than either EKU or CCU. And I base my assessment on several things--facilities being at or near the top. Since Mo State doesn't seem to be in the mix at the moment, everybody can get ready for it to be CCU. That's not bad--just not my first preference.