ODU AD wants to blow up CUSA

[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.

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.

The Big 10 was just as in the New York market before Rutgers as it is after/with them. New Yorkers didn't suddenly discover Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State football because a school in New Brunswick, NJ joined the league. Sure, the league got some living alumni eyeballs, but I can't imagine that's some enormous boon of TV sets.

[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.

The Big 10 was just as in the New York market before Rutgers as it is after/with them. New Yorkers didn't suddenly discover Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State football because a school in New Brunswick, NJ joined the league. Sure, the league got some living alumni eyeballs, but I can't imagine that's some enormous boon of TV sets.

Fair point, but what other compelling motivation did Rutgers present to justify them joining?

What would Houston bring to the big 12 party?

[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.

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.

It’s unquestionably a weaker conference.

However the alternative in that scenario would mean we don’t go and watch peer institutions around us go to the AAC instead and then the Belt or CUSA are stuck backfilling with JMU, Chattanooga and Jacksonville State.

Staying put in the above scenario would trap us in FBS purgatory. We are sort of there right now in a sense, but FBS still feels novel to me and we are good enough to make noise nationally for now.

What worries me is that we are in a position with no room for error. 1 or 2 bad seasons could send us into the G5 forgotten zone with MTSU, Southern Miss, La Tech, Arkansas State, Troy, and let’s face it...Marshall.

Plenty of history. Devoted fans. But never quite enough money, resources nor momentum to get out of that 9ish win patch. Just remaining as a “pretty good”
G5 team that once a decade sniffs the top 25. Maybe an occasional conference title in the weak G5 CUSA/SunBelt/Mac.

That’s a scary place I don’t want us to get to. Because I’m not entirely sure how you get out.

[AppinVA]

Our teams have to just keep going 3-1 or 4-0 in bon-confidence play. And NO losses to FCS teams. I believe last year was the first the SBC posted an undefeated FCS campaign. Yes, I’m staying the obvious when I say it’s critical that becomes a trend.

[moonshine]

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

I figured bus v plane was implied. I was looking for an actual rough estimate in money saved assuming the aforementioned $4m current travel cost were correct. Does anyone have a clue how much the projected savings would be in an eastern based realignment where App’s average travel would be reduced by roughly 230 miles? How much would this reduce missed class time for student-athletes?

[citroknight]

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.

The Big 10 was just as in the New York market before Rutgers as it is after/with them. New Yorkers didn't suddenly discover Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State football because a school in New Brunswick, NJ joined the league. Sure, the league got some living alumni eyeballs, but I can't imagine that's some enormous boon of TV sets.

I think it may technically not have been in the NYC market. Now, I don't mean interest wise. I'm sure there were lots of Big 10 grads in the area. But specifically how the old cable media deals were calculated, they're weren't in the NYC area. I'm loosely paraphrasing and going off memory but basically, ESPN and/or Fox could slap extra carrier fees into the basic cable packages to carry a conference network if a school of said conference was in that city's media market. That's why the Big 10 added two terrible programs, to get the NYC and DC media markets.

Of course, the times are changing with cord cutting and a la carte streaming subscriptions. People no longer need a bloated cable package where they are forced to pay for things they don't care for.

[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.

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.

The Big 10 was just as in the New York market before Rutgers as it is after/with them. New Yorkers didn't suddenly discover Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State football because a school in New Brunswick, NJ joined the league. Sure, the league got some living alumni eyeballs, but I can't imagine that's some enormous boon of TV sets.

Fair point, but what other compelling motivation did Rutgers present to justify them joining?

What would Houston bring to the big 12 party?

Nothing that they don't already have.

[AppStFan1]

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 reputation by the media for this being the worst G5 league is because of even top teams in the SBC doing bad in OOC play. Outside of a couple years by Troy, the SBC has been considered the worst G5 until App and GSU came to the league. That is my point.

App and Louisiana are the only thing keeping the SBC better than the CUSA right now. Without them the MAC would just be slightly below the SBC.

[AppStFan1]

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.

It’s unquestionably a weaker conference.

However the alternative in that scenario would mean we don’t go and watch peer institutions around us go to the AAC instead and then the Belt or CUSA are stuck backfilling with JMU, Chattanooga and Jacksonville State.

Staying put in the above scenario would trap us in FBS purgatory. We are sort of there right now in a sense, but FBS still feels novel to me and we are good enough to make noise nationally for now.

What worries me is that we are in a position with no room for error. 1 or 2 bad seasons could send us into the G5 forgotten zone with MTSU, Southern Miss, La Tech, Arkansas State, Troy, and let’s face it...Marshall.

Plenty of history. Devoted fans. But never quite enough money, resources nor momentum to get out of that 9ish win patch. Just remaining as a “pretty good”
G5 team that once a decade sniffs the top 25. Maybe an occasional conference title in the weak G5 CUSA/SunBelt/Mac.

That’s a scary place I don’t want us to get to. Because I’m not entirely sure how you get out.

And that fear is exactly why I say we can't afford to put up with 6-8 win seasons. The pressure is on for us to be a top 25 team. If we can't win 10+ games a year for the next few years we could end up in that scary place that is hard to get out of. Marshall is in a tough spot and we could either be in the AAC in 6-7 years from now not having to worry about dropping down or we could be like Marshall. If we keep winning then we are in position to make a move and be fine.

[ah59396]

And that fear is exactly why I say we can't afford to put up with 6-8 win seasons. The pressure is on for us to be a top 25 team. If we can't win 10+ games a year for the next few years we could end up in that scary place that is hard to get out of. Marshall is in a tough spot and we could either be in the AAC in 6-7 years from now not having to worry about dropping down or we could be like Marshall. If we keep winning then we are in position to make a move and be fine.
[/quote]

It’s a very real concern. And part of the risk of our move in to FBS/G5/SunBelt.

These are great football programs we are talking about. Some, like Marshall, have had incredible FBS a success. They finished 10th in the nation in 99. 16th in 02.

Byron Leftwich. Randy Moss. Great history.

But the last 18 years they’ve been largely an afterthought. They’ve had 3, 10 win seasons but 7 seasons under .500.

And now they have no options. Do we? I dunno. I just know I don’t want us to end up on the list of football programs that “used to be pretty good” as we put up 7-5 seasons. Also a great reminder to enjoy the hell out of this run we’ve been on. We gotta keep winning.

[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.

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.

The Big 10 was just as in the New York market before Rutgers as it is after/with them. New Yorkers didn't suddenly discover Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State football because a school in New Brunswick, NJ joined the league. Sure, the league got some living alumni eyeballs, but I can't imagine that's some enormous boon of TV sets.

I think it may technically not have been in the NYC market. Now, I don't mean interest wise. I'm sure there were lots of Big 10 grads in the area. But specifically how the old cable media deals were calculated, they're weren't in the NYC area. I'm loosely paraphrasing and going off memory but basically, ESPN and/or Fox could slap extra carrier fees into the basic cable packages to carry a conference network if a school of said conference was in that city's media market. That's why the Big 10 added two terrible programs, to get the NYC and DC media markets.

Of course, the times are changing with cord cutting and a la carte streaming subscriptions. People no longer need a bloated cable package where they are forced to pay for things they don't care for.

This is correct. B1G added those programs so they could get the B1G Network on cable providers in those markets. That's it.

[AppStFan1]

And that fear is exactly why I say we can't afford to put up with 6-8 win seasons. The pressure is on for us to be a top 25 team. If we can't win 10+ games a year for the next few years we could end up in that scary place that is hard to get out of. Marshall is in a tough spot and we could either be in the AAC in 6-7 years from now not having to worry about dropping down or we could be like Marshall. If we keep winning then we are in position to make a move and be fine.

It’s a very real concern. And part of the risk of our move in to FBS/G5/SunBelt.

These are great football programs we are talking about. Some, like Marshall, have had incredible FBS a success. They finished 10th in the nation in 99. 16th in 02.

Byron Leftwich. Randy Moss. Great history.

But the last 18 years they’ve been largely an afterthought. They’ve had 3, 10 win seasons but 7 seasons under .500.

And now they have no options. Do we? I dunno. I just know I don’t want us to end up on the list of football programs that “used to be pretty good” as we put up 7-5 seasons. Also a great reminder to enjoy the hell out of this run we’ve been on. We gotta keep winning.
[/quote]

You forgot to mention some of the other names they had like Chad Pennington and Kresser as well. We could end up like Marshall but I hope not. This is why Gillin's goal has been the AAC because if we can get there and sustain winning we could be okay. If we have just 2-3 down years in the SBC we could find ourselves in the same boat as others. If Troy has 3 more years in a row like they have recently, even with new facilities, they could fall off like Marshall. Shoot, if Boise State were to drop to a consistent 5-7 win team they could become forgotten.

The ONE thing we have in our corner that would prevent us from being completely forgotten is the Michigan win.

[EMCasu04]

Maybe I misunderstand, but I have nor desire to go back to a SoCon hybrid that would draw in any FCS teams. That's in the rearview mirror. If AcC ever became an option, take it and run...option3.

I saw one conference alignment “example” that was something like this:

Chattanooga
App State
Ga Southern
MTSU
Charlotte
ODU
Liberty
JMU
Ga Southern
Marshall

And all I could think was that it looks like the FCS in 1998.

In the same conference as Liberty? I just threw up in my mouth a little.

[AppStFan1]

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.

The Big 10 was just as in the New York market before Rutgers as it is after/with them. New Yorkers didn't suddenly discover Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State football because a school in New Brunswick, NJ joined the league. Sure, the league got some living alumni eyeballs, but I can't imagine that's some enormous boon of TV sets.

I think it may technically not have been in the NYC market. Now, I don't mean interest wise. I'm sure there were lots of Big 10 grads in the area. But specifically how the old cable media deals were calculated, they're weren't in the NYC area. I'm loosely paraphrasing and going off memory but basically, ESPN and/or Fox could slap extra carrier fees into the basic cable packages to carry a conference network if a school of said conference was in that city's media market. That's why the Big 10 added two terrible programs, to get the NYC and DC media markets.

Of course, the times are changing with cord cutting and a la carte streaming subscriptions. People no longer need a bloated cable package where they are forced to pay for things they don't care for.

This is correct. B1G added those programs so they could get the B1G Network on cable providers in those markets. That's it.

Same reason why Charlotte was taken. Although, getting in the markets was good but you still want them to win more than 1-3 games a year. Rutgers sticks out like a sore thumb as a team who just does not belong with those other programs. They have great facilities but it is hard to sustain success long term there. It is possible but very hard considering they have Penn State, Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, etc to compete with now.

[ah59396]

And that fear is exactly why I say we can't afford to put up with 6-8 win seasons. The pressure is on for us to be a top 25 team. If we can't win 10+ games a year for the next few years we could end up in that scary place that is hard to get out of. Marshall is in a tough spot and we could either be in the AAC in 6-7 years from now not having to worry about dropping down or we could be like Marshall. If we keep winning then we are in position to make a move and be fine.

I dunno about Boise. They have the benefit of being the flagship of their state, in a growing city with no pro sports. And they’ve got the strongest brand in G5, IMO. If anyone could survive a downturn, it’s them.

Marshall did have themselves quite a run. Even now they aren’t “bad”. They win 8-9 games a year.

It’s just that, at the G5 level, especially exclusive of the AAC, and especially in a smaller market, that just won’t cut it. And slowly the challenge becomes...what do you offer as a differentiator to recruits? Or coaches for that matter?

Does some high school senior care that Marshall made some serious noise...before he was born? It won’t be long until we can say the same about our Michigan victory.


Basically this is a really long way of saying we have to keep winning because it we don’t it might not be recoverable.

[AppStFan1]

And that fear is exactly why I say we can't afford to put up with 6-8 win seasons. The pressure is on for us to be a top 25 team. If we can't win 10+ games a year for the next few years we could end up in that scary place that is hard to get out of. Marshall is in a tough spot and we could either be in the AAC in 6-7 years from now not having to worry about dropping down or we could be like Marshall. If we keep winning then we are in position to make a move and be fine.

It’s a very real concern. And part of the risk of our move in to FBS/G5/SunBelt.

These are great football programs we are talking about. Some, like Marshall, have had incredible FBS a success. They finished 10th in the nation in 99. 16th in 02.

Byron Leftwich. Randy Moss. Great history.

But the last 18 years they’ve been largely an afterthought. They’ve had 3, 10 win seasons but 7 seasons under .500.

And now they have no options. Do we? I dunno. I just know I don’t want us to end up on the list of football programs that “used to be pretty good” as we put up 7-5 seasons. Also a great reminder to enjoy the hell out of this run we’ve been on. We gotta keep winning.

[/quote]
You forgot to mention some of the other names they had like Chad Pennington and Kresser as well. We could end up like Marshall but I hope not. This is why Gillin's goal has been the AAC because if we can get there and sustain winning we could be okay. If we have just 2-3 down years in the SBC we could find ourselves in the same boat as others. If Troy has 3 more years in a row like they have recently, even with new facilities, they could fall off like Marshall. Shoot, if Boise State were to drop to a consistent 5-7 win team they could become forgotten.

The ONE thing we have in our corner that would prevent us from being completely forgotten is the Michigan win.
[/quote]

I dunno about Boise. They have the benefit of being the flagship of their state, in a growing city with no pro sports. And they’ve got the strongest brand in G5, IMO. If anyone could survive a downturn, it’s them.

Marshall did have themselves quite a run. Even now they aren’t “bad”. They win 8-9 games a year.

It’s just that, at the G5 level, especially exclusive of the AAC, and especially in a smaller market, that just won’t cut it. And slowly the challenge becomes...what do you offer as a differentiator to recruits? Or coaches for that matter?

Does some high school senior care that Marshall made some serious noise...before he was born? It won’t be long until we can say the same about our Michigan victory.


Basically this is a really long way of saying we have to keep winning because it we don’t it might not be recoverable.
[/quote]

I have felt that is why things are easier for Boise State but Idaho is not a big market in general and they have to recruit outside of the state. If they aren't relevant they could have trouble going to WA, OR, CA, UT, etc to get the players to make them a big program. They would still be FBS for sure and be okay but if they don't win I could see recruiting talent become harder. Right now they have been able to win over some kids that 20 years ago they could not touch. If they don't win they could fall back as a mid tier team in recruiting that isn't even the top G5 out there. Right now they are by far the best G5 option on the west coast and seriously better than some P5 teams.

I was about to say that in 5 years or so the Michigan victory won't even be relevant. People may not realize but the 2023 class were about 2 when the 2007 class signed. The 2020 class is probably the last group who likely can remember seeing it on the news when it happened. I personally don't care about what a team did prior to 2015 now myself. It is all about what you have done lately.

I'm with you 100% that we have to keep winning because putting up with 3-4 years of 7 wins or less would be tough to recover from. We don't have the money from super wealthy alums to weather that storm. UNC has the money and base that they can lose a lot and still recover at this level but I'm not sure we could.

[citroknight]

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.

The Big 10 was just as in the New York market before Rutgers as it is after/with them. New Yorkers didn't suddenly discover Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State football because a school in New Brunswick, NJ joined the league. Sure, the league got some living alumni eyeballs, but I can't imagine that's some enormous boon of TV sets.

I think it may technically not have been in the NYC market. Now, I don't mean interest wise. I'm sure there were lots of Big 10 grads in the area. But specifically how the old cable media deals were calculated, they're weren't in the NYC area. I'm loosely paraphrasing and going off memory but basically, ESPN and/or Fox could slap extra carrier fees into the basic cable packages to carry a conference network if a school of said conference was in that city's media market. That's why the Big 10 added two terrible programs, to get the NYC and DC media markets.

Of course, the times are changing with cord cutting and a la carte streaming subscriptions. People no longer need a bloated cable package where they are forced to pay for things they don't care for.

This is correct. B1G added those programs so they could get the B1G Network on cable providers in those markets. That's it.

Same reason why Charlotte was taken. Although, getting in the markets was good but you still want them to win more than 1-3 games a year. Rutgers sticks out like a sore thumb as a team who just does not belong with those other programs. They have great facilities but it is hard to sustain success long term there. It is possible but very hard considering they have Penn State, Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, etc to compete with now.

Kind of. The AAC and CUSA market adds were for the potential and high ceiling.

The B1G adds of Maryland and Rutgers were for a concrete increase in money to the conference. They already had a conference network that they knew could add X dollars per person in carrier fees, you just multiply it by the Y number of people who are in the media market for each school. Given that they knew what X and Y were, they knew the actual amount of financial benefit of adding them.

Adding teams like Charlotte was purely hoping for them to be good one day and attract a large following.

[AppStFan1]

The Big 10 was just as in the New York market before Rutgers as it is after/with them. New Yorkers didn't suddenly discover Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State football because a school in New Brunswick, NJ joined the league. Sure, the league got some living alumni eyeballs, but I can't imagine that's some enormous boon of TV sets.

I think it may technically not have been in the NYC market. Now, I don't mean interest wise. I'm sure there were lots of Big 10 grads in the area. But specifically how the old cable media deals were calculated, they're weren't in the NYC area. I'm loosely paraphrasing and going off memory but basically, ESPN and/or Fox could slap extra carrier fees into the basic cable packages to carry a conference network if a school of said conference was in that city's media market. That's why the Big 10 added two terrible programs, to get the NYC and DC media markets.

Of course, the times are changing with cord cutting and a la carte streaming subscriptions. People no longer need a bloated cable package where they are forced to pay for things they don't care for.

This is correct. B1G added those programs so they could get the B1G Network on cable providers in those markets. That's it.

Same reason why Charlotte was taken. Although, getting in the markets was good but you still want them to win more than 1-3 games a year. Rutgers sticks out like a sore thumb as a team who just does not belong with those other programs. They have great facilities but it is hard to sustain success long term there. It is possible but very hard considering they have Penn State, Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, etc to compete with now.

Kind of. The AAC and CUSA market adds were for the potential and high ceiling.

The B1G adds of Maryland and Rutgers were for a concrete increase in money to the conference. They already had a conference network that they knew could add X dollars per person in carrier fees, you just multiply it by the Y number of people who are in the media market for each school. Given that they knew what X and Y were, they knew the actual amount of financial benefit of adding them.

Adding teams like Charlotte was purely hoping for them to be good one day and attract a large following.

From a money standpoint they made sense for sure. Like you said, they knew what they were getting. If you know you can add a certain amount of revenue it is big. If you don't already have that market and the team has their own TV network it makes complete financial sense.

Those teams aren't any good in those leagues in football but you have to have someone finish at the bottom. Why not have your bottom teams come from a very good market. lol

Charlotte was definitely just a hope and dream. Being new they did not have anything built up and you have to think they have a shot. App State and Coastal Carolina moving up has to hurt them in recruiting. Our tradition and facilities along with CCU being at the beach are tough for Charlotte to recruit against. Maybe they will get a little relief with CCU moving back down one day. Coastal really never had any business moving up to begin with and that is okay. Nothing wrong with being FCS or D2.

[Saint3333]

Why do you think CCU leaves the FBS?

[AppinVA]

I think it may technically not have been in the NYC market. Now, I don't mean interest wise. I'm sure there were lots of Big 10 grads in the area. But specifically how the old cable media deals were calculated, they're weren't in the NYC area. I'm loosely paraphrasing and going off memory but basically, ESPN and/or Fox could slap extra carrier fees into the basic cable packages to carry a conference network if a school of said conference was in that city's media market. That's why the Big 10 added two terrible programs, to get the NYC and DC media markets.

Of course, the times are changing with cord cutting and a la carte streaming subscriptions. People no longer need a bloated cable package where they are forced to pay for things they don't care for.

This is correct. B1G added those programs so they could get the B1G Network on cable providers in those markets. That's it.

Same reason why Charlotte was taken. Although, getting in the markets was good but you still want them to win more than 1-3 games a year. Rutgers sticks out like a sore thumb as a team who just does not belong with those other programs. They have great facilities but it is hard to sustain success long term there. It is possible but very hard considering they have Penn State, Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, etc to compete with now.

Kind of. The AAC and CUSA market adds were for the potential and high ceiling.

The B1G adds of Maryland and Rutgers were for a concrete increase in money to the conference. They already had a conference network that they knew could add X dollars per person in carrier fees, you just multiply it by the Y number of people who are in the media market for each school. Given that they knew what X and Y were, they knew the actual amount of financial benefit of adding them.

Adding teams like Charlotte was purely hoping for them to be good one day and attract a large following.

From a money standpoint they made sense for sure. Like you said, they knew what they were getting. If you know you can add a certain amount of revenue it is big. If you don't already have that market and the team has their own TV network it makes complete financial sense.

Those teams aren't any good in those leagues in football but you have to have someone finish at the bottom. Why not have your bottom teams come from a very good market. lol

Charlotte was definitely just a hope and dream. Being new they did not have anything built up and you have to think they have a shot. App State and Coastal Carolina moving up has to hurt them in recruiting. Our tradition and facilities along with CCU being at the beach are tough for Charlotte to recruit against. Maybe they will get a little relief with CCU moving back down one day. Coastal really never had any business moving up to begin with and that is okay. Nothing wrong with being FCS or D2.

I don’t see Coastal moving down. Too much going for them.