C-USA/Sun Belt merger?

[asu66]

Britton Banowsky has bailed out of the C-USA commissioner's seat, effective immediately. C-USA COO Judy McCloud has been named interim commissioner. It's almost a certainty that no action will be taken until Banowsky's successor is named. Then, just about anything could happen. This appointment, whenever it takes place, should be very interesting. It could well signal things to come for the entire Group of Five.

http://www.si.com/college-football/2015 ... steps-down

http://www.conferenceusa.com/genrel/081415aaa.html

[APPdiesel]

I agree, for now, TV is the driving force in how conferences are formed, but, like stated before, tv revenue is finite, cost of running a collage program isn't, every year the gap widens between revenue vs cost, and if the new CUSA contract isn't as profitable as the old one, I think that will be a moment when the SBC and CUSA officials atleast start informal talks about the future of both conferences. Regardless, I don't think anything is going to happen atleast in the next 3 years.

I think you hit the nail on the head here Moehler. Conference commissioners won't do anything until the money starts to go away. They can't cut other sports because of Title 9, so either they'll be forced to find new revenue streams OR take a serious look at reducing their budget - which one way of doing that is restructuring into regional conferences. We're already seeing it with OOC games; many teams are scheduling regional games against teams they wouldn't usually play. You can call it "brand building" or you could say "playing somebody less than 300 away means we can lure another 1,000 of their fans to make the trip - CHA CHING". So I think they're already doing this with baby steps.