untgeorge

"Best fit", like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. UTEPs football attendance is higher. UTEPs men's basketball attendance is higher. UTEP has strong community support. UTEP can make a strong resume.

UTEP.

UTEP compiled those envious attendance records while they were in the WAC and they were in the WAC before Boise became big. They weren't playing Rice, SMU, Tulsa, etc. or any other Texas schools. They drew well because their fans come out no matter who the opposition is. They did better in winning years of course but they did substantially better than 20,000 in losing years. Their fans came out to support their team. They did have one thing we don't have, traditional rivals in UNM and NMSU. Boise cranked it up in the '90s playing Big West teams. They cranked it up with alum and community support, much as TCU has done. They had more donors in the '90s than we do now. Saying we will do better in a better conference may not be a big selling point though it is clearly true. People complain about the conference we are in, well, we are in the conference we are in because we earned it.

As to item 2 - partly true; New Mexico State and UtahSt were never 1AA and Nevada beat us out of 1AA by five years. But the basketball schools were not new to D1. As to item 3 - we play sports other than football. It is not like we had no experience to draw on; our Big West experience showed most conference games did not make the 10:00 new or the papers the next day. As to item 4 - travel in the BW was horrendous for sports other than fb. Those sports go commerical, and you don't fly to Boise or Idaho or Nevada, etc, you fly elsewhere and catch another flight on another airline. Cost and travel time was out of sight. and a Thursday/Saturday road trip meant more difficulties. Trips to WKy, MTSU, ULL, ULM, ASU and UALR are much easier.

UTEP

Somewhere here I read that the Mean Green Club has about 460 members. Looking at the Bronco Athletic Association site on Facebook, they claim 4,000 members. We have a ways to go.

It wasn't just football. Texas has 39 ncaa championships. Baseball, women's basketball and several non-revenue sports, such as swimming and diving, have historically been strong. For instance, texas has been to the final games of the college baseball world series 10 times and has won it 5 times. Dodds is a marketing and fund raising genius. And under his watch men's basketball has reached a level it had not enjoyed before. But overall he is hardly responsible for making UT a national power. Still, except for what i read as Dodds patting himself on the back, the article could hold lessons for us. To get ahead we have to have more alumni involvement, meaning tickets and fund raising. Which gets me to my original point: what would be more interesting for us and meaningful for us is, how did Boise do it?

Texas was a national power long before Deloss Dodds, no matter how much Dodds thinks of himself. What would be more interesting is an article on how Boise raised itself to a national power.

Thanks but I gave those up years ago.

Apparently you have not seen Idaho's facilities. They play football in a building designed for rodeos.

Hmmm, I didn't know that.

Boise, maybe?

No and yes.

The PAC10 champ and the Big10 champ have consistently made it to title games without a conference playoff.

Yes but education is the last thing that should be cut. Cutting education is bad in the long haul. Given that one can spend education dollars wisely. Consolidating along the lines mentioned above (Ruston, Lafayette areas) could maintain opportunities and better manage costs. But politics is politics, maybe more so in Louisiana. If anyone is making book, I would bet against.

this topic has come up in past years and change has always been defeated by local politics. While from a cost standpoint Monroe, Grambling and LaTech could be combined (and maybe others), each is economically important to the cities in which they are located and when considering closing the campuses, opposition from state represetatives from those areas has been vigorous. Combining the administrations and leaving the campuses intact would save something but not much. Maybe this time the economic problems at the state level or too great to ignore, who knows. Kinda like the idea of combining UNT and TWU. Could make some sense from a cost standpoint, but no one wants to do it.

If the SEC does come to Texas, and they may well try to do that, it will be by inviting UT and/or A&M.

It is not a question of whether they should or should not have control, the question is do they. And they do.

The Dallas and Houston TV markets are dominated by UT and TxA&M.

Thinly veiled?

I had not thought of it, but they could do worse than hire the NO coach.

Taking asst coaching job at South Carolina "to be closer to his family".

That is SOOOOO good.

The problem was not their system, which rewards good big people, but the fact that he showed up so out of shape he could not run the court. Oh, I forgot. You don't care about that.

why limit ourselves to regional? MAC, Missouri Valley, Southern regularly have such programs.