ODU AD wants to blow up CUSA

[BTK2000]

You want regional...It's very simple...

Conference ________

North Division

Western Kentucky
Marshall
ODU
Charlotte
Appalachian State
Middle Tennessee State

South Division

Georgia Southern
Georgia State
Coastal Carolina
Troy
FIU
FAU

D.G. would have to push for us to play Georgia Southern every year similar to Bama and Tennessee who play every year.

Leaving JMU out. I feel they're aiming for UConn's spot in the AAC. Wouldn't mind adding them to the
out of conference schedule occasionally.

The AAC will never add JMU.

The AAC will either add us, some variation of UAB/Charlotte/ODU/Ga State, or look west and take Boise, BYU and Air Force to go to 14 and give them travel partners.

JMU gives them nothing they want. They want prestige and the appearance of a Power conference. Adding an FCS team doesn’t do that. Adding those western teams bolsters their image and cripples their only G5 conference competitor.

JMU also adds nothing for AAC basketball. They are worse than we are on the hard court.

AAC might not want them, but JMU feels that's where they belong. I agree, it will likely never happen, but they have some pompous "people that matter" in Harrisonburg (Met a few a couple years back when App played JMU in Harrisonburg for basketball). The campus itself is growing like crazy and I know at one point a couple years ago they were close to Top 50 for all Division 1 when it came to athletic revenue. They're on a high horse and if AAC doesn't come calling they might go the Independent route.

For the record I hate everything about JMU other than the memories I have from partying there back in the day. That school knew how to throw a good party, and had one hell of a ratio.

I read recently that JMU athletics is 78% subsidized by student fees. They are spending a ton of money, but where is it coming from? I believe App is somewhere in the 50%-55% range and that is still too much.


I read their board a little the other day. They not only believe they will be included in any realignment, but that they will be engineering which teams they are in a league with. There's an awful lot of hubris over there for an FCS team in need of a home.

App isn’t bad at all when it comes to a student fee subsidy. In 2018 they had revenues of $36,940,867 with $12,518,144 or 33.9% of the revenue from student fees. I would say that’s healthy. But on the other hand app has the 27ish highest revenue in g5 or 89th out of all NCAA schools. To compare here are some close to home student fees, subsidies and total revenue from 2018

I would say we are safely in the middle. We do more with less, arnt overly reliant on student fees, but lacking in booster contributions and relying on student fees more than the top tier AAC teams. Id say that athletics falls under the same category as the school, the best bang for your buck but IDK if that's a good selling point when it comes to moving to a new conference.

[citroknight]

We need a bigger donor base, more donor money, and Boone needs some updates to infrastructure to accommodate the needs of more. So you speculate that the AAC May lose some teams that we could get an invite. So I will ask you this. If they were to lose, say, Houston, Memphis, UCF and Cincinnati, is it still the Holy Grail of the G5’s? I contend that it would not.

Ask Marshall. They left the MAC for a CUSA in 2005. The same year CUSA watched Cincinnati, Louisville, Army, USF and TCU jump ship. Houston and ECU stuck around a bit longer.

Go read the Marshall board, they want out of CUSA so badly that half of them want to rejoin the MAC and slowly fade into irrelevance.

The AAC without the 4 above would be a lot less exciting. ECU, SMU, Navy and USF would be fun I suppose.

We are kind of in a weird place right now.

Fair points all around. The same thing happened to a few of us that got Big East invites, only for a few more teams to jump ship, the Catholic 7 leave and buy out the Big East name with them, and then we basically moved "up" with most of our existing conference mates.

But there can be some benefit to what essentially is treading water, otherwise you're sinking. Hear me out.

UCF and Marshall both joined CUSA at the same time in 2005. This is usually known as CUSA 2.0, with CUSA 1.0 being the era with Louisville, Cincy, TCU, USF, and Army. And the current era of CUSA is CUSA 3.0.

Think of it from the POV of the 7 CUSA 2.0 teams that moved to the AAC. (UCF, ECU, Memphis, Houston, SMU, Tulsa, Tulane). We left behind Marshall, Southern Miss, Rice, UAB, and UTEP. In exchange, we got Cincy, USF, UConn (before they left of course), Temple, Navy, and later Wichita State. I'd say an overall market and competitive upgrade. Rice is great academically and in Houston, but if you're going to try the uphill battle of trying to win over the city of Houston with a G5 it might as well be the larger public school rather than a small private one. Marshall and Southern Miss have great history of success but are in economically limited areas and as such have small budgets. Southern Miss did put up a fight in the CUSA days though, they were the only CUSA 2.0 team with a football championship in that era that DIDN'T make it to the AAC. Marshall was basically a non factor in CUSA 2.0, never even won a division title until the first year of CUSA 3.0 when the usual suspects all left.

All of this to say that while UCF and pals went from CUSA 2.0 to CUSA 2.1 with the move to the AAC, we upgraded by adding depth and dumping some of the bottom teams rather than being left behind. Even if we didn't end up in the power conference we originally thought we were joining.

So if the top 4 AAC teams leave, there's a good chance that it'll be to the Big 12. And there's a good chance that version of the Big 12 will also be a little depleted, but we'd still go because we'd be in a slightly upgraded best of the rest conference, aka what the AAC is now. Then the depleted AAC would give the right CUSA and SunBelt members the opportunity to join with the likes of ECU, USF, Temple, SMU, Tulane, Tulsa, Navy, and Wichita State while dumping some of their current SBC and CUSA dead weights. That of course is based on the AAC making the right adds and not empty market adds like CUSA 3.0 did. The AAC did market adds too but it was market adds with a pulse.

[APPdiesel]

I’ve read enough AAC and CUSA message board threads to know they (AAC fans) don’t give a damn about App and the notion that half of Marshall fans want back into the MAC is patently false. A lot of Marshall fans want to be associated with App but don’t necessarily want to join the Sunbelt to do it. AAC fans want either a home run with BYU or Boise or want to stay put in football and add one Olympic sports member.

Marshall has an 8 page thread going on herdfans right now debating the merits of going back to the MAC

1 of those 8 pages is about moving to the ACC and 70 year olds dunking basketballs . Different crowd on CSNbbs though. Nobody over there wants to entertain that possibility.

[Saint3333]

If my choices are combine CUSA east (including the FXUs) and SBC East or remain in the SBC, I'd prefer to stay in the SBC as is. The trips to Florida for the family would be nice, but the point of combining would be cutting travel costs, I'm not sure we'd accomplish that.

[EastHallApp]

If my choices are combine CUSA east (including the FXUs) and SBC East or remain in the SBC, I'd prefer to stay in the SBC as is. The trips to Florida for the family would be nice, but the point of combining would be cutting travel costs, I'm not sure we'd accomplish that.

I haven't done a spreadsheet or anything, but I have to think it would reduce travel costs. I don't think that's the whole point though. I think you'd also have greater fan interest playing teams like Marshall and Charlotte than the western Sun Belt teams. Or, to put it more generally, I think most schools would have greater fan interest in playing more regional opponents.

[Yosef10]

You want regional...It's very simple...

Conference ________

North Division

Western Kentucky
Marshall
ODU
Charlotte
Appalachian State
Middle Tennessee State

South Division

Georgia Southern
Georgia State
Coastal Carolina
Troy
FIU
FAU

D.G. would have to push for us to play Georgia Southern every year similar to Bama and Tennessee who play every year.

Leaving JMU out. I feel they're aiming for UConn's spot in the AAC. Wouldn't mind adding them to the
out of conference schedule occasionally.

The AAC will never add JMU.

The AAC will either add us, some variation of UAB/Charlotte/ODU/Ga State, or look west and take Boise, BYU and Air Force to go to 14 and give them travel partners.

JMU gives them nothing they want. They want prestige and the appearance of a Power conference. Adding an FCS team doesn’t do that. Adding those western teams bolsters their image and cripples their only G5 conference competitor.

JMU also adds nothing for AAC basketball. They are worse than we are on the hard court.

JMU has potential, spends money, and is geographically somewhere that makes sense.

That being said, if they truly wanted to make their case for the AAC, they should have joined either the SBC or CUSA when they had a chance. That would give an audition for how they would build on their FCS success and translate it to FBS. Aka, what App has done.

But no way is the AAC taking the risk or image hit of adding an FCS team.

Citro,

Serious question but if the other G5’s were to consolidate into regional conferences, could the AAC exist in the vacuum without joining in? They have differentiated themselves from the othes with budgets but would that change if the well runs considerably slower?

Great question.

I think if the money remains more or less in tact after UConn's departure, the AAC will probably exist in a vacuum. Same with the Mountain West. Although for the MW it's a mixture of making more than the other non-AAC G5s (though not quite AAC level money) but also because geographically the MW teams already are in the best regional fit. Probably the only teams that could benefit joining would be NMST and UTEP but I don't think the MW wants or needs either of those.

The AAC has a pretty similar footprint to CUSA, from Texas to Florida to the Mid-Atlantic. But with the money being world's apart, it's tough to see any reason for leaving this in place of regional G5s since I can't imagine the cost savings outweighing what the AAC brings in. It would probably be a no brainier if the top of the AAC were all in the same region, but it seems like the best teams and markets are pretty evenly spread out in the conference.

So the AAC, at this current moment, seems to be the most stable G5 conference in terms of dollars affecting the conference make up. My question though is how secure are the schools in the AAC if there is no season? How would schools 1-11 be able to get by with no ticket revenue (have a pretty strong feeling this will be the case even if there are games) and especially without the TV money from ESPN? I can’t imagine they would continue to pay out conferences if they are playing no games. The only AAC schools financials i know about are ECU’s and i know they are not pretty currently. Wondering if you have any further insight? Would all AAC schools be able to take this hit? Would ESPN let them? I just think there are so many unknowns it’s hard to know what college football will look like in just a year from now, if not less.

[BTK2000]

I'm going to be real. I see the landscape changing drastically in the next decade and not because conferences will realign to save travel costs, but because schools simply won't be able to afford to keep spending what they are on athletics. First off, Cable/ Satellite subscriptions are down 10% from 2 years ago and only about 66% of homes have cable TV. The cable market will/ currently is going bust, and ESPN/Foxsports won't be paying a dime to anyone that's not the Big10, SEC, ACC. If they do it will be for a small contract for streaming services. We saw the same thing happen with Spotify and other music services. Artists make pennies off streamed songs because the streaming market favors consumers and 3rd party facilitators (apps/websites), not content creators. The cable companies will survive as a media/ internet service provider and still continue to make money off you streaming Netflix. Go look at what is currently the largest part of your cable bill, it's probably the internet. Luckily for App TV isn't a huge part of the income.

http://cafidatabase.knightcommission.or ... university


Everyone here is focused on 11% of the athletics budget for travel and games. 11% or $3.9 out of $36Million. There is a cost threshold where it doesn't add that much more to travel a long distance vs a short distance if you already have to feed a team/ coaches, house everyone, and pay for support staff to travel all for 2-3 days. The overspending is all across the budget and not just in travel. Why does a college FBS roster need 32 more scholarshiped players on its roster than an NFL team has in total? Fun fact, an FBS roster can have up to 125 active players on it. The larget Item on the app state Athletics budget is facilities and equipment. That's $12.52million, or 34% of the budget, or more than 3x the cost of travel for all sports. I know we all are excited about the new endzone and it's hard to currently quantify the possible increase in donations to buy tickets there, but it's an expensive building and there still isn't a tenant to help retire the revenue bond. $10.47million, or 29% of the budget, or more than double the cost of travel and games go to coaches and administration salaries. I like College Football, but I know people who coach/ have coached other sports at an Olympic and National level for 20+ years. They don't make near 6 Figures. Mid Major college athletics will be crushed under its overall massive operating overhead. I said it above and I still believe that app is overall fiscally responsible but the millions in liabilities they currently have can easily come home to roost. Many Colleges will probably have to look in the mirror and realized they cant save a multi-million dollar budget deficit by nitpicking 11% of the budget and changing a trip of 1,300 miles to only 800miles.

[moonshine]

Everyone here is focused on 11% of the athletics budget for travel and games. 11% or $3.9 out of $36Million. There is a cost threshold where it doesn't add that much more to travel a long distance vs a short distance if you already have to feed a team/ coaches, house everyone, and pay for support staff to travel all for 2-3 days...Many Colleges will probably have to look in the mirror and realized they cant save a multi-million dollar budget deficit by nitpicking 11% of the budget and changing a trip of 1,300 miles to only 800miles.

Here is an interesting article analyzing geographic impact:
https://medium.com/the-red-towel/analyz ... 40985b1fef

"Appalachian State’s average distance between current conference opponents is 650.55 miles. If the conferences realigned the average distance between its conference opponents would be reduced to 417.08 miles."

How much would actually be saved with trips averaging ~230 miles less?

[BayouApp]

I agree with the earlier post that the airport issue is overstated. I lived outside ATL for ten years and flew 2-4 times a month, but my 23-mile drive to the airport often took over an hour with traffic. In real time, getting to Boone from an airport is probably not much longer than from many other colleges with "local" airports. Charters have the options of TRI, HKY, or CLT (all reasonably short drives in terms of time); and small-team sports can fly scheduled nonstop flights to CLT from over 150 cities. In total travel time, that makes up for connecting flight options only to other college towns that may have a closer airport.

[Saint3333]

Everyone here is focused on 11% of the athletics budget for travel and games. 11% or $3.9 out of $36Million. There is a cost threshold where it doesn't add that much more to travel a long distance vs a short distance if you already have to feed a team/ coaches, house everyone, and pay for support staff to travel all for 2-3 days...Many Colleges will probably have to look in the mirror and realized they cant save a multi-million dollar budget deficit by nitpicking 11% of the budget and changing a trip of 1,300 miles to only 800miles.

Here is an interesting article analyzing geographic impact:
https://medium.com/the-red-towel/analyz ... 40985b1fef

"Appalachian State’s average distance between current conference opponents is 650.55 miles. If the conferences realigned the average distance between its conference opponents would be reduced to 417.08 miles."

How much would actually be saved with trips averaging ~230 miles less?

Great data, thanks for posting. Combining the east divisions result in only three locations that require flights, ok let's do it.

[ah59396]

I’ve read enough AAC and CUSA message board threads to know they (AAC fans) don’t give a damn about App and the notion that half of Marshall fans want back into the MAC is patently false. A lot of Marshall fans want to be associated with App but don’t necessarily want to join the Sunbelt to do it. AAC fans want either a home run with BYU or Boise or want to stay put in football and add one Olympic sports member.

Marshall has an 8 page thread going on herdfans right now debating the merits of going back to the MAC

1 of those 8 pages is about moving to the ACC and 70 year olds dunking basketballs . Different crowd on CSNbbs though. Nobody over there wants to entertain that possibility.

For sure. I was probably using “half of Marshall fans” a little liberally there too. I just couldn’t believe they’ve got fans that would consider it. Half their threads are concerns about depleting interest in their program, less fans, etc.

What do they think will happen when they’ve got 3 home games on Tuesday night versus Bowling Green, Eastern Michigan and Akron??

The SunBelt isn’t some world beater and I have some minor complaints with the schedule but I’ll take SunBelt over MAC all day in current format.

[ah59396]

We need a bigger donor base, more donor money, and Boone needs some updates to infrastructure to accommodate the needs of more. So you speculate that the AAC May lose some teams that we could get an invite. So I will ask you this. If they were to lose, say, Houston, Memphis, UCF and Cincinnati, is it still the Holy Grail of the G5’s? I contend that it would not.

Ask Marshall. They left the MAC for a CUSA in 2005. The same year CUSA watched Cincinnati, Louisville, Army, USF and TCU jump ship. Houston and ECU stuck around a bit longer.

Go read the Marshall board, they want out of CUSA so badly that half of them want to rejoin the MAC and slowly fade into irrelevance.

The AAC without the 4 above would be a lot less exciting. ECU, SMU, Navy and USF would be fun I suppose.

We are kind of in a weird place right now.

Fair points all around. The same thing happened to a few of us that got Big East invites, only for a few more teams to jump ship, the Catholic 7 leave and buy out the Big East name with them, and then we basically moved "up" with most of our existing conference mates.

But there can be some benefit to what essentially is treading water, otherwise you're sinking. Hear me out.

UCF and Marshall both joined CUSA at the same time in 2005. This is usually known as CUSA 2.0, with CUSA 1.0 being the era with Louisville, Cincy, TCU, USF, and Army. And the current era of CUSA is CUSA 3.0.

Think of it from the POV of the 7 CUSA 2.0 teams that moved to the AAC. (UCF, ECU, Memphis, Houston, SMU, Tulsa, Tulane). We left behind Marshall, Southern Miss, Rice, UAB, and UTEP. In exchange, we got Cincy, USF, UConn (before they left of course), Temple, Navy, and later Wichita State. I'd say an overall market and competitive upgrade. Rice is great academically and in Houston, but if you're going to try the uphill battle of trying to win over the city of Houston with a G5 it might as well be the larger public school rather than a small private one. Marshall and Southern Miss have great history of success but are in economically limited areas and as such have small budgets. Southern Miss did put up a fight in the CUSA days though, they were the only CUSA 2.0 team with a football championship in that era that DIDN'T make it to the AAC. Marshall was basically a non factor in CUSA 2.0, never even won a division title until the first year of CUSA 3.0 when the usual suspects all left.

All of this to say that while UCF and pals went from CUSA 2.0 to CUSA 2.1 with the move to the AAC, we upgraded by adding depth and dumping some of the bottom teams rather than being left behind. Even if we didn't end up in the power conference we originally thought we were joining.

So if the top 4 AAC teams leave, there's a good chance that it'll be to the Big 12. And there's a good chance that version of the Big 12 will also be a little depleted, but we'd still go because we'd be in a slightly upgraded best of the rest conference, aka what the AAC is now. Then the depleted AAC would give the right CUSA and SunBelt members the opportunity to join with the likes of ECU, USF, Temple, SMU, Tulane, Tulsa, Navy, and Wichita State while dumping some of their current SBC and CUSA dead weights. That of course is based on the AAC making the right adds and not empty market adds like CUSA 3.0 did. The AAC did market adds too but it was market adds with a pulse.

The BIG12 going to 16 seems like an inevitability to me.

I see a number of candidates, mostly in the AAC but also 2 out west.

That said I agree with your larger point. I think even a depleted AAC is stronger and more recognizable than any current form of CUSA/SunBelt/MAC.

For the sake of the conversation, imagine UCF, Memphis, Cincy and Houston all did go BIG12.

If the AAC backfilled with say App State, UAB, Ga State and lets say Marshall (or whoever, 3 teams + us. Or even 4 to go to 12).

The new AAC:

App State
UAB
Marshall
Ga State
Navy
SMU
Tulane
Tulsa
USF
ECU
Temple
+ maybe another of
Charlotte? JMU? ODU? La Tech? UL? Southern Miss?

That’s still a damn good football conference.

[AppStFan1]

We need a bigger donor base, more donor money, and Boone needs some updates to infrastructure to accommodate the needs of more. So you speculate that the AAC May lose some teams that we could get an invite. So I will ask you this. If they were to lose, say, Houston, Memphis, UCF and Cincinnati, is it still the Holy Grail of the G5’s? I contend that it would not.

Ask Marshall. They left the MAC for a CUSA in 2005. The same year CUSA watched Cincinnati, Louisville, Army, USF and TCU jump ship. Houston and ECU stuck around a bit longer.

Go read the Marshall board, they want out of CUSA so badly that half of them want to rejoin the MAC and slowly fade into irrelevance.

The AAC without the 4 above would be a lot less exciting. ECU, SMU, Navy and USF would be fun I suppose.

We are kind of in a weird place right now.

Fair points all around. The same thing happened to a few of us that got Big East invites, only for a few more teams to jump ship, the Catholic 7 leave and buy out the Big East name with them, and then we basically moved "up" with most of our existing conference mates.

But there can be some benefit to what essentially is treading water, otherwise you're sinking. Hear me out.

UCF and Marshall both joined CUSA at the same time in 2005. This is usually known as CUSA 2.0, with CUSA 1.0 being the era with Louisville, Cincy, TCU, USF, and Army. And the current era of CUSA is CUSA 3.0.

Think of it from the POV of the 7 CUSA 2.0 teams that moved to the AAC. (UCF, ECU, Memphis, Houston, SMU, Tulsa, Tulane). We left behind Marshall, Southern Miss, Rice, UAB, and UTEP. In exchange, we got Cincy, USF, UConn (before they left of course), Temple, Navy, and later Wichita State. I'd say an overall market and competitive upgrade. Rice is great academically and in Houston, but if you're going to try the uphill battle of trying to win over the city of Houston with a G5 it might as well be the larger public school rather than a small private one. Marshall and Southern Miss have great history of success but are in economically limited areas and as such have small budgets. Southern Miss did put up a fight in the CUSA days though, they were the only CUSA 2.0 team with a football championship in that era that DIDN'T make it to the AAC. Marshall was basically a non factor in CUSA 2.0, never even won a division title until the first year of CUSA 3.0 when the usual suspects all left.

All of this to say that while UCF and pals went from CUSA 2.0 to CUSA 2.1 with the move to the AAC, we upgraded by adding depth and dumping some of the bottom teams rather than being left behind. Even if we didn't end up in the power conference we originally thought we were joining.

So if the top 4 AAC teams leave, there's a good chance that it'll be to the Big 12. And there's a good chance that version of the Big 12 will also be a little depleted, but we'd still go because we'd be in a slightly upgraded best of the rest conference, aka what the AAC is now. Then the depleted AAC would give the right CUSA and SunBelt members the opportunity to join with the likes of ECU, USF, Temple, SMU, Tulane, Tulsa, Navy, and Wichita State while dumping some of their current SBC and CUSA dead weights. That of course is based on the AAC making the right adds and not empty market adds like CUSA 3.0 did. The AAC did market adds too but it was market adds with a pulse.

The BIG12 going to 16 seems like an inevitability to me.

I see a number of candidates, mostly in the AAC but also 2 out west.

That said I agree with your larger point. I think even a depleted AAC is stronger and more recognizable than any current form of CUSA/SunBelt/MAC.

For the sake of the conversation, imagine UCF, Memphis, Cincy and Houston all did go BIG12.

If the AAC backfilled with say App State, UAB, Ga State and lets say Marshall (or whoever, 3 teams + us. Or even 4 to go to 12).

The new AAC:

App State
UAB
Marshall
Ga State
Navy
SMU
Tulane
Tulsa
USF
ECU
Temple
+ maybe another of
Charlotte? JMU? ODU? La Tech? UL? Southern Miss?

That’s still a damn good football conference.

If we could somehow get that as our conference instead of just the combo of CUSA and SBC then I would be all in. I would probably take Southern Miss, La Tech, JMU, and ODU over Ga State but as far as the rest I would jump on it.

It will be interesting to see what the Big 12 does with Houston and SMU because those two schools fit better than UCF and Cincy but I'm sure Texas, A&M, and Baylor don't want 2 more Texas schools added because it makes recruiting a little harder and I am pretty sure WVU would love Cincy because of location so they have a closer conference rival.

My dream 12-team AAC would be App State, UCF, Cincy, Georgia Southern (or UGS as their recent commit said LOL), East Carolina, Tulane, Marshall, Memphis, Navy, USF, ODU, and either JMU, MTSU, or I would take Charlotte.

I think it is just a matter of time until the Big 12 adds schools. It will be interesting to see out of Houston, SMU, Memphis, UCF, and Cincy which ones they take. Those are all good options for them.

[T-Dog]

"Appalachian State’s average distance between current conference opponents is 650.55 miles. If the conferences realigned the average distance between its conference opponents would be reduced to 417.08 miles."

How much would actually be saved with trips averaging ~230 miles less?

It would mean the difference between a plane trips and bus trips for many Olympics sports, which would be a lot of money.

[APPdiesel]

For sure. I was probably using “half of Marshall fans” a little liberally there too. I just couldn’t believe they’ve got fans that would consider it. Half their threads are concerns about depleting interest in their program, less fans, etc.

What do they think will happen when they’ve got 3 home games on Tuesday night versus Bowling Green, Eastern Michigan and Akron??

The SunBelt isn’t some world beater and I have some minor complaints with the schedule but I’ll take SunBelt over MAC all day in current format.

I read through the first two and last two pages of that thread and was shocked at how little objection there was to the idea. Lol, who the f*** WANTS to be in the MAC?

The Sunbelt is coming up though and is now the 3rd best G5 conference. App and Louisiana are the class of the league. Georgia Southern and Arkansas State are contenders. Georgia State is on the come up and Troy took a step back but should get things straightened back out. IF App in particular (but the league as a whole) can keep things on track and keep winning at high level for the next 3-5 the Sunbelt can overtake the Mountain West.

I used to be all for an east-west realignment with CUSA but I'm not sure blowing up the league, starting over, and throwing that momentum away is the right thing to do. It would take a minimum of 5-10 years to get a management structure and and tv package together. By then people would want to tinker and blow it all up again.

[AppStFan1]

For sure. I was probably using “half of Marshall fans” a little liberally there too. I just couldn’t believe they’ve got fans that would consider it. Half their threads are concerns about depleting interest in their program, less fans, etc.

What do they think will happen when they’ve got 3 home games on Tuesday night versus Bowling Green, Eastern Michigan and Akron??

The SunBelt isn’t some world beater and I have some minor complaints with the schedule but I’ll take SunBelt over MAC all day in current format.

I read through the first two and last two pages of that thread and was shocked at how little objection there was to the idea. Lol, who the f*** WANTS to be in the MAC?

The Sunbelt is coming up though and is now the 3rd best G5 conference. App and Louisiana are the class of the league. Georgia Southern and Arkansas State are contenders. Georgia State is on the come up and Troy took a step back but should get things straightened back out. IF App in particular (but the league as a whole) can keep things on track and keep winning at high level for the next 3-5 the Sunbelt can overtake the Mountain West.

I used to be all for an east-west realignment with CUSA but I'm not sure blowing up the league, starting over, and throwing that momentum away is the right thing to do. It would take a minimum of 5-10 years to get a management structure and and tv package together. By then people would want to tinker and blow it all up again.

SBC is now 3rd best until one of those powers like us or Louisiana leave. If any two of App, Louisiana, and GSU were to leave then the league would fall big time. Honestly you could just say App and Louisiana are holding it up. Nobody else in our league is carrying the banner strong in OOC play.

[AppSt94]

We need a bigger donor base, more donor money, and Boone needs some updates to infrastructure to accommodate the needs of more. So you speculate that the AAC May lose some teams that we could get an invite. So I will ask you this. If they were to lose, say, Houston, Memphis, UCF and Cincinnati, is it still the Holy Grail of the G5’s? I contend that it would not.

Ask Marshall. They left the MAC for a CUSA in 2005. The same year CUSA watched Cincinnati, Louisville, Army, USF and TCU jump ship. Houston and ECU stuck around a bit longer.

Go read the Marshall board, they want out of CUSA so badly that half of them want to rejoin the MAC and slowly fade into irrelevance.

The AAC without the 4 above would be a lot less exciting. ECU, SMU, Navy and USF would be fun I suppose.

We are kind of in a weird place right now.

Fair points all around. The same thing happened to a few of us that got Big East invites, only for a few more teams to jump ship, the Catholic 7 leave and buy out the Big East name with them, and then we basically moved "up" with most of our existing conference mates.

But there can be some benefit to what essentially is treading water, otherwise you're sinking. Hear me out.

UCF and Marshall both joined CUSA at the same time in 2005. This is usually known as CUSA 2.0, with CUSA 1.0 being the era with Louisville, Cincy, TCU, USF, and Army. And the current era of CUSA is CUSA 3.0.

Think of it from the POV of the 7 CUSA 2.0 teams that moved to the AAC. (UCF, ECU, Memphis, Houston, SMU, Tulsa, Tulane). We left behind Marshall, Southern Miss, Rice, UAB, and UTEP. In exchange, we got Cincy, USF, UConn (before they left of course), Temple, Navy, and later Wichita State. I'd say an overall market and competitive upgrade. Rice is great academically and in Houston, but if you're going to try the uphill battle of trying to win over the city of Houston with a G5 it might as well be the larger public school rather than a small private one. Marshall and Southern Miss have great history of success but are in economically limited areas and as such have small budgets. Southern Miss did put up a fight in the CUSA days though, they were the only CUSA 2.0 team with a football championship in that era that DIDN'T make it to the AAC. Marshall was basically a non factor in CUSA 2.0, never even won a division title until the first year of CUSA 3.0 when the usual suspects all left.

All of this to say that while UCF and pals went from CUSA 2.0 to CUSA 2.1 with the move to the AAC, we upgraded by adding depth and dumping some of the bottom teams rather than being left behind. Even if we didn't end up in the power conference we originally thought we were joining.

So if the top 4 AAC teams leave, there's a good chance that it'll be to the Big 12. And there's a good chance that version of the Big 12 will also be a little depleted, but we'd still go because we'd be in a slightly upgraded best of the rest conference, aka what the AAC is now. Then the depleted AAC would give the right CUSA and SunBelt members the opportunity to join with the likes of ECU, USF, Temple, SMU, Tulane, Tulsa, Navy, and Wichita State while dumping some of their current SBC and CUSA dead weights. That of course is based on the AAC making the right adds and not empty market adds like CUSA 3.0 did. The AAC did market adds too but it was market adds with a pulse.

The BIG12 going to 16 seems like an inevitability to me.

I see a number of candidates, mostly in the AAC but also 2 out west.

That said I agree with your larger point. I think even a depleted AAC is stronger and more recognizable than any current form of CUSA/SunBelt/MAC.

For the sake of the conversation, imagine UCF, Memphis, Cincy and Houston all did go BIG12.

If the AAC backfilled with say App State, UAB, Ga State and lets say Marshall (or whoever, 3 teams + us. Or even 4 to go to 12).

The new AAC:

App State
UAB
Marshall
Ga State
Navy
SMU
Tulane
Tulsa
USF
ECU
Temple
+ maybe another of
Charlotte? JMU? ODU? La Tech? UL? Southern Miss?

That’s still a damn good football conference.

Agree that it is a good conference but does it bring in the same revenue stream? I'm not sure that replacing Houston, Memphis, Cincy, and Orlando with Charlotte/WS/Triad, Huntington, Birmingham results in the same money. I am also afraid that the AAC would take both App and Charlotte for they share the same market sort of.

[APPdiesel]

SBC is now 3rd best until one of those powers like us or Louisiana leave. If any two of App, Louisiana, and GSU were to leave then the league would fall big time. Honestly you could just say App and Louisiana are holding it up. Nobody else in our league is carrying the banner strong in OOC play.

That's every league though. Rutgers ain't doing a damn thing for the Big10's out of conference record. The ACC without Clemson is trash. The Big12 without Oklahoma is trash. You judge a league on it's top half not its bottom half.

[AppSt94]

SBC is now 3rd best until one of those powers like us or Louisiana leave. If any two of App, Louisiana, and GSU were to leave then the league would fall big time. Honestly you could just say App and Louisiana are holding it up. Nobody else in our league is carrying the banner strong in OOC play.

That's every league though. Rutgers ain't doing a damn thing for the Big10's out of conference record. The ACC without Clemson is trash. The Big12 without Oklahoma is trash. You judge a league on it's top half not its bottom half.

Rutgers is fulfilling their purpose to the league. It gets them into the New York market. Nobody cares if they even show up to play.

[EastHallApp]

SBC is now 3rd best until one of those powers like us or Louisiana leave. If any two of App, Louisiana, and GSU were to leave then the league would fall big time. Honestly you could just say App and Louisiana are holding it up. Nobody else in our league is carrying the banner strong in OOC play.

That's every league though. Rutgers ain't doing a damn thing for the Big10's out of conference record. The ACC without Clemson is trash. The Big12 without Oklahoma is trash. You judge a league on it's top half not its bottom half.

The AAC is much deeper than the Sun Belt, which is the reason their champion gets the benefit of the doubt come NY6 time.