Arkstfan

If that gives you validation, sure. Memphis is the sum total of our AAC interest.

To be fair the only way you'd be considered is if we added a team to the east and needed someone to balance that and giving TXST a closer opponent was considered important. Otherwise far more likely Sun Belt needing a team in the west would be looking at someone like Missouri State or Western Kentucky. Sun Belt has added one pro market team (Georgia State) and that was because they were ready to roll during a numbers crisis. Last vacancy was less urgent and the Sun Belt pursued Coastal Carolina who hadn't applied over a number of schools that had applied. UNT doesn't fit the type of situation the league presidents want. You shouldn't want to be in a conference where you don't fit in. You never know when the carousel will stop spinning and membership becomes home for a half century.

Two FBS and one FCS that close together in a pretty economically weak area doesn't help.

MTSU rebound surprised me.

The App comparison reminds me. Sun Belt tends to not pay coaches so much they can't pull the trigger after two years.

Let's see. what happens with the NCAA Transformation Committee. The gossip is a HUGE overhaul of the Division I standards. Instead of 14 sports awarding 50% of the allowed aid in those sports the new standards are rumored to be sponsoring in the range of 18 to 21 sports with required minimum ratios of coaches to athletes, trainers to athletes, and academic support staff to athletes. You could easily see most non-FBS leagues swept away with the likely exceptions being Big East, A10, WCC, and some FCS leagues. From what I hear out of ULM, there is thought that if Bowden can right the ship, it isn't fixable and higher spending requirements would do them in if he can't bring back some of the fans.

Jonesboro is the third largest city, in the fourth largest metro area in the Sun Belt. Only Georgia State shares a city with a big 4 pro league. TXST is 50 miles from NBA. AState 70 miles from NBA, after that everyone is 100 or more miles from a big pro team. Mostly small tv markets where the guys and gals trying to build a highlight reel have the local Sun Belt team and high school sports to cover, otherwise they are just showing video from someone else covering the bigger college and pro teams. Outside of ULM, there's been a lot of spending on facilities. Once Freeze left AState for Ole Miss there has been a flurry of coaches going on to big jobs. Auburn, Florida, Louisville, West Virginia, Missouri, so coaches want the jobs seeing a path up. Outside of Anderson getting to stick around as his wife was dying there have been some quickly pulled triggers for hot seat situations. The demographics of the communities make them an incubator for college football.

If (big if) reports of B1G going to 20 pan out we may end up in a 9 team FBS. B1G taking Oregon, Washington and two of Cal, Stanford, and Notre Dame would almost certainly mean Arizona, Arizona, State, Utah and Colorado to Big 12. At that point you are left with Oregon State and Washington State and maybe one of Cal and Stanford in Pac-12. Most likely they join MWC except it's branded as joining Pac-12 or a merger so the MWC can have the Pac-12 name.

Under this format AAC and Sun Belt would have both made the playoff in 2000

These are always fun threads whether on my board or Harry's. A scattering of thoughts. One. UTEP attendance yo-yo's always has. There have been times people are excited and they drew good crowds and there have been times Al Quadea could have thrown a down grenades into the stands and no one would have gotten hurt. Two. I do not think AD's think much deeper about ticket prices than "we usually draw this much and I need this much per ticket to make budget and keep the VP for Finance from crawling up my rear". Reality is I suspect most schools with any sort of support underprice their most desired tickets and overprice their least desirable tickets. The days of cramming a bunch on people on bleachers and everyone paying the same price are long gone. I pay a little over $175 per seat per game for tickets in loge. There is a waiting list. AState's club seats go for $335 a game there is a waiting list. I don't know what suites go for. There is a waiting list. Upper deck bleachers looking into the sun I think are $20, late season when the weather starts sucking on sale sometimes for as little as $5. I do not have an MBA but I believe either the premium seating is underpriced, or we need to undertake constructing more premium seats at current price to meet demand. The empty seats are either over-priced or the just isn't demand for them and maybe the smarter thing is to remove those seats so the supply of seats is more in line with demand. I also suspect there are any number of Excel spreadsheet wizards who can calculate a pricing curve that recognizes you drop prices too much the added sales leaves you with less revenue and higher pricing can go so high demand falls resulting in lower revenue. Three. Football is a zero sum game. Every game produces a winner or loser. If winning is only path to attendance and atmosphere you've got a problem because half of FBS schools are going to lose when facing another FBS. Four. Schedule is a cop out. The market forces result in like schools generally grouping together in conferences so four home games are going to be something much like yourself and if that won't get the boys and girls to come watch, the problem isn't the opponent, it's the home team isn't what the market wants. Non-conference there is so much voodoo in what ADs are thinking that it can be a mess. You've got schools who need 7 or even 8 home games to maximize revenue. Hard to get them to come a visiting. Generally those who want to play home-home are pretty much like looking in the mirror. Same issue as above. Everyone thinks gimmick when they need to think culture. Oh School X has inflatables for the kids and they draw well. Sorry but NO ONE is shelling out $20 a ticket and fight game day traffic for Junior to bop around on inflatables for 30 minutes. Where that work is places where it is just another amenity in the greater game day experience. Hell I'd look at the local society pages, identify anyone not involved in the program and persuade them to come tailgate and hook them up to a tailgate experience and make sure the area society page rag photographers are on hand to take their photo. Alumni Office ought to be doing similar for alumni newsletter/email. On my site one year I shot video of tailgates and interviewed people tailgating. What are you cooking, what's your rig set up, how'd you get started. Crap like that matters to people. Find me a damn school social media expert who ever touches that. You get six home games and the guys on the home benches are the constant for all six. Selling people on watching the guys in the home uniforms where the whole the thing succeeds or fails.

Why would the pre-Texas departure Big XII schools want to be in a Big XII that adds PAC schools AND the four expansion schools when they can go west and align with those PAC schools and none or not all of the expansion schools?

Cal doesn’t have the national recognition of the others and historically admin has shackled athletics

Toddling off to bed and at this moment my outcome rankings from most to least likely. 1. B1G adds two more, some mix of Stanford, Oregon, Washington, the Arizona schools or Colorado. I think most likely is Oregon and either Stanford or Washington. PAC-8 makes a hard play to get 8 of the Big XII to defect. If unsuccessful congratulations SDSU, Boise, UNLV and if BYU says no, probably Hawaii. 2. B1G holds at 16, PAC-10 probably isn’t looking to join Big XII and vice versa unless someone gets panicky. If no panic, SDSU and Boise probably get the nod. 3. B1G adds four more. PAC-6 is reeling and Big XII probably just absorbs them unless there’s a big measure of regret in Big XII over expansion.

Anything can freaking happen but I think that’s unlikely. We are at a point where schools have to bring HUGE numbers to be viable to SEC and B1G. We can safely say Washington State and Oregon State are boned in this deal. With the division stuff no longer required, leagues have a lot of flexibility as long as it makes sense for them. My off-hand handicapping. Stanford I expect is headed to B1G. Every university president outside the Ivy League wants to be seen as an academic peer to Stanford. They are serious about academics for athletes and they are in the sixth largest TV market and have a big following. Not a USC following, more akin to UCLA football. Cal I don’t feel so confident about. They’ve tended to be a mess and brand wise more Indiana or Purdue than Michigan State. Washington in the 12th largest TV market, solid following. Like their chances. Oregon 21st market, Nike love, weird national following. Arizona State 11th largest TV market, epicenter of displaced B1G grads. More Nebraska academics than Northwestern academics. Play hockey so that doesn’t hurt. Arizona an AAU member but not a well known brand but less than 2 hours from Phoenix. Utah AAU in the 30th TV market. I think they are out. Colorado just another Mizzou in mind. Seem like they are poised to do something big then don’t. But AAU and 16th largest TV market and frankly Nebraska probably would like to have them. My feeling is B1G would be hard pressed to say no to Stanford, Washington, and Oregon. I don’t know what the true tale is on Notre Dame. I’ve read claims Notre Dame is free to join any conference in football it’s the other sports they are hung up and other claims that they are on the hook for mega damages if they join another football league prior to 2036. With division format being unneeded any number is possible including odd numbers. I expect B1G will take two more at least maybe four, can’t see six having the ROI to make it work. So what happens? If PAC-12 becomes PAC-6 they all trudge off to Big XII most likely and it’s all wrapped up. Question is if you are Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, and Baylor do you want an 18 team league that includes UCF, Cincinnati, etc. or 12 or 14 teams aligned with the PAC-12 wreckage? You can cast off West Virginia, UCF, Cincinnati, BYU, and maybe Houston and TCU or take the latter two with you. Or maybe BYU slips in the mix to bolster Utah’s interest. Then things are getting messy on this side of the Rockies. If Big XII is WVU, UCF, Cincinnati, Houston, TCU, and maybe BYU, then stuff is going to happen and it could impact every G5 league except maybe MAC. ON THE OTHER HAND. Entirely likely B1G has crunched the numbers and each non-Notre Dame addition after USC and UCLA provides diminishing ROI. Maybe they do stick at 16 or add only two more. A PAC-10 or PAC-8 might not be so willing to traipse off the Big XII. Maybe they try to raid Big XII and who knows what that math looks like. Simply adding San Diego State and maybe Boise State, UNLV or BYU works for them. That gives you a MWC that maybe could add NMSU and UTEP, or maybe others from CUSA but might need to turn to FCS to round out. It can certainly play out in utter chaos, or be tied up with a bow and create no G5 ripples.

Funny thing about football is no sport has such constantly evolving rules. Way back when Shula was on the rules committee for the NFL they came within one vote of having every quarter start with a kickoff and have a 2 minute warning every quarter to get the drama of last minute drives every quarter. About 30 years ago NCAA rules committee debated adding a single. Any kickoff, field goal attempt or punt touched in the end zone or field of play or hitting in the end zone and not advanced out would be one point for the kicking team and the receiving team would get the ball at the 35. Ball that went out without being touched or hitting in the end zone would be a touchback and ball goes to 20, unless it was a missed FG which would go back to the line of scrimmage. I like it but it encourages returns so won’t ever see that brought up again. As to the old names and cities in USFL. Marketing and brand recognition. I went to quite a few Showboats games and loved that team. Easier to get people into a familiar brand (ruined that Breakers helmet) The plan as I understand it is to take the advice given Ebersol before he started the AAF. He met with GMs, coaches, owners, and TV professionals from NFL along with failed leagues and the constant theme was spring football can be profitable and popular but if you can’t fund it for three years don’t waste your money because you need three years to build the team brands and the league and to get viewers in the habit of watching. He obviously didn’t follow that because he wanted to beat XFL 2 to the punch. USFL all in on keeping costs down, working out the kinks and building a following. The hope is next year they will line up franchise holders for up to four cities. They aren’t super into the idea of playing in NFL stadiums. So they’d like to find an owner in Houston who can work a deal to play at the Cougars stadium or the Dynamo stadium, New Orleans likely to Tulane, etc. They want to have all teams except the Stallions moved out of Birmingham for the 2024 season. The unknown is what they do if a team can’t find a franchisee in a market. That might mean that the Michigan Panthers take a different USFL brand and become the Oakland Invaders or another city with no USFL history gets them so you get St Louis Panthers or St Louis something else. Rumor (or likely rank speculation) is the target is to grow to 16 in 5-10 years. Of course who knows what happens when XFL 2.1 comes along. We know Fox has an ownership stake in USFL and we know ESPN/ABC is all in on XFL 2.1 so could get interesting. Fight to the death? Mutually Assured Destruction takes both out? Merger? As it stands NFL can’t assign players to minor league teams, it’s prohibited in the CBA. But as is done in soccer and used to be done in baseball there could be some potential in signing a guy to a multi-year contract and selling the contract to the NFL. With the USFL saying they will consider any player entering the transfer portal eligible to be signed things could be radically different in football in a few years.

I can’t completely agree about CFL talent. The 44 player game day roster has to have one player who isn’t from the US or Canada. Not less than 20 Canadians must be Canadian and when you name your starting roster at least 7 have to be Canadian. If your starting roster has 4 Canadians on defense then every defensive series you must have four Canadians on the field. No more than 20 US players (22 counting QBs) Also the CFL has that weird protected player rule that allows them to own the rights to US players they don’t necessarily want. I know AState had a QB who was protected but the team with his rights was loaded at QB and the team that wanted him wouldn’t pay what the club wanted to release his rights. He didn’t even know he was protected until his agent started talking to some teams interested. I’d say a CFL team’s 22 US players are better right now than the first 22 on a USFL team but there are plenty of national and global players who wouldn’t make a USFL roster.

I watch a bit of CFL but the three down business leads to a lot of punts, like watching late 90’s AState football. I’ve enjoyed most of the USFL games I’ve watched. They obviously haven’t had a lot of time together and it shows at times.

Looks like the inside of a furniture store someone put in an old Walmart. Same lighting, same furniture. I see they copied the barbershop from AState, that was our weird novelty. But they spent some money and that is a good thing.

That was a stunner. By all accounts it was supposedly a straight money decision. Their travel would have gone down, their TV exposure would have gone up. New CUSA 4.0 or whatever it needs to be labeled isn’t going to be a bad hoops league which is something that ought to help keep WKU and MTSU somewhat happy but MAC would have been a better fit there too.

Yet no one ever managed 7 votes to block an extension or 8 to go to terminating her.

One thing Karl Marx nailed correctly is that in unfettered capitalism wealth continues to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands. He was wrong about the fix because he didn’t understand human nature. Right now we are seeing it play out in Division I. We went from the NCAA TV contract to the CFA V contract, to every conference for themselves. The everyone for themselves gave us the BCS and the wealthy being ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, PAC-10 and SEC, the Big East was an AQ league but the gap between Big East and rest of AQ financially was as big as the gap between Big East and CUSA and MWC was. Now we are moving into an era where the Big Ten and SEC have FU money, ACC and PAC-12 have crazy money. Then we have Big 12 and then on down the ladder MWC and AAC, then Sun Belt, then MAC, then CUSA. Oh and back up there between Big 12 and MWC/AAC you have Big East (as long as new deal comes in as good). The top of the pack is pulling far away and the spread between the lower rungs of the ladder is getting smaller. ACC and PAC-12 can enjoy pulling away from Big 12 but they are cut off from the wealth SEC and Big Ten are going to have. PAC-12 has no viable expansion options that don’t disrupt the stability of the league. In region you’ve got Boise which academically is no place close to PAC-12 members and not as broad a program. Nevada would fit(ish) academically but they are lacking the fan attention, UNLV is a great market but not especially good in what matters and not a fit academically. San Diego State won’t be on radar the UC schools don’t want to add a Cal-State and Stanford and USC certainly don’t consider them peers. Then you’ve got New Mexico who nudges under the wire to fit in academically but tiny market and not great in anything that matters. Like UNLV their hoops peak is in the past. After that you are going into the Central time zone and ridiculous travel and discontent over game start times. The ACC is second banana to SEC and B1G in too many places and too many low interest schools to match the big two. Throw on top of that we have the demographic gap coming in 2025 when the number of 18 year olds drops and dependence on student fees is going to be a hole in the boat for many schools. The demographic gap is going to force wages up and make skipping college appear to be a good choice driving enrollment down even more. Lot of misery ahead for colleges. Makes aligning with the right group more important. Wouldn’t be shocked if travel isn’t a factor in Big 12 decision making. USF to ease some of the non-revenue sports going to UCF. Memphis is in a great geographic location. A DFW team won’t appeal to TCU but might make the others happy. Tulsa if they quit tripping over their own feet could make sense. Taking a flier on Air Force or Colorado State to ease the trip to BYU could work. Boise would have to excite TV to get them to bite off that travel.

The Week 0 solution could be a nice plum for CUSA. I’m sure CBSSN would be more than happy to clear a spot or two. If it were me running CUSA, I’d have something like UTEP-NMSU, WKU-Tech (everybody roots for a meteor strike classic), and MTSU-FIU on week 0 screw the guys who are leaving and try to get some focus on the league it’s going to be. The player safety ploy is smart thinking. No surprise at it got ironed out. I’m sure some wire transfers were made and everyone said good luck to ya with no one meaning it.

If I’m not an overly cheerful and weirdly happy BYU fan (hey such might exist) I’d be very pleased with the Big XII deal. They get a genuine, bona fide blue blood in basketball and you get a conference that is a step up from the peak WAC that had Arizona and Arizona State but lacked the depth of new Big 12 and it’s a step up from peak MWC that had some really outstanding Utah and TCU teams but still lacked the depth the new Big XII likely has. It’s a home run for them but not a grand slam or even two run shot in my opinion. Now my BYU story. Wife and I were poor post-college, post-law school but had saved up and had a beach vacation for just after Christmas lined up, my parents were going to watch the kids. Wife gets an ear infection and doctor rules out flying. So we drive to Memphis to spend a few days. Inexplicably hotels are pretty booked up any place we’d want to be but finally get a room at the Marriott near the Pyramid except for the first night so stay at a Days Inn in a room roughly the size of a VW Beetle. The bed was so close to the dresser and TV had to climb across the bed. We go downtown to Beale Street and landed at Silky’s which I discover is owned by a Tulane alum and it finally hits me. Liberty Bowl. I’d be so busy scrambling for alternate plans had not thought about it. So we are in Silky’s and it’s almost all Tulane fans and a handful of just here to have fun people. In walk five members of the BYU band (jackets were a give away) The five BYU kids order a Sprite. Not a Sprite each. A Sprite and split it. It was then I remembered Coach Edwards explanation of why bowls hated BYU fans. “Our fans go to bowl games with a copy of the 10 Commandments in one hand and twenty dollar bill in the other and they don’t break either of them.”

The “harm” for the SB3 is if they stay they don’t get the CUSA payment for 2022-2023 while playing in Sun Belt they get a distribution that equals or exceeds what they would get had they not defected and certainty exceeds what they would get having given notice and that amount will certainly cover any damages they owe CUSA and leave them with more revenue than if they had stayed. That’s what I’d be explaining to the court.

Meant to add I remember meeting for a game when I was in Dallas for Sun Belt basketball officials conference. I was doing a presentation on tax issues for them as independent contractors and since I was in town caught up with Harry to go to the game. But I’d not be able to pick ya out of a line up but then again I’m horrid at matching names and faces. Once ran into a woman at a store talked to her for a bit and soon as she left asked me wife who the hell was that. Girl I had gone to high school with at a school of 350 students K12. Yall were playing the Cajuns and it was one awful football game. Remember Cajuns scored on one play where QB heaved it as hard as he could. WR had blasted past UNT secondary, he saw the ball was short. Came back and still had five yards on the nearest defender. Cajun defense wasn’t any better. If Preds, Cubs, Broncos or Sporting KC are in the area some time when y’all are home and I don’t have a home football game I’m going to check out the new stadium.