outoftown

I don't think it is a coincidence at all, that these fights always errupt at the beginning of CFB season. Disney is trying to leverage that to get higher prizes because people call in pissed off. Meanwhile what is "fair" is very much in the eye of the beholder. Its not like Spectrum is a nice company either, as anyone who has ever had to try to cancel a service with them through their "customer service" knows (should be called customer incarceration). But I would assume with cord cutting being a very real thing, these cable providers are less and less willing to allow ESPN/Disney to bump up the prizes of their subscription, for fear of losing more folks to the non-cable services. That said, if you look similar stuff also has happened end of august with the streaming providers at times. So -sadly - this kind of stuff will not disapear with the cable providers.

I hope SMU stays in the conference. But I am not gonna wear black and be miserable if they do leave. Either way i think UNT is set up to eventually overtake them in the long run.

My biggest point from this article: ACC commissioner Phillips was smart enough to use idalia to not have to go to the meeting where people (both journalists and colleagues) would have certainly asked him questions he does not want to answer right now. And when colleagues ask, non-answers are often answers too.

Wheeth. Honestly I don't see how they pull any AAC schools unless the ACC thing falls apart for SMU (and maybe also Calford). They could merge with the AAC, but I just don't see them able to raid it. If those three do indeed get into the ACC, then the Pac2 can only get MWC schools. And even about that I would be somewhat skeptical, given that anybody coming in has to pay exit fees in order to join those two schools by themselves with no bigger brands to carry the load.

Yea I saw that. looks like i was misinformed. Still, not a smart move for the conference to go into CFP meetings without having ascertained what their membership outlook actually is.

Ok, I think the ACC presidents postponed their meeting to today (couldn't do it yesterday because of the active shooter situation at UNC). With the CFP committee meeting on Wednesday to discuss potential changes, one would think the ACC either decides to add today or otherwise not at all.

6-6. Hope it will be better, but that seems most realistic to me.

Have i missed it? has anything happened? Any Official word since the folks started saying this was a "done deal" 6 days ago? Time kills deals. I am starting to think this is more likely to fall apart than to come together.

No. Without those flagship sports, there is no point for the AAC to add all that travel for the other sports. And vice versa.

People here know about Arresco. He's a good commissioner. After years with bad commissioners folks are happy to have that, but some are overestimating what he can do. The MWC made a good hire. Nevarez appears to be pretty good too. This will not be Yormark vs Kliafkoff, this will be a tough fight with the winner not obvious from the start.

Ok, that one is funny, i give you that

Hmmm... and those spam topics all wanted folks to book flights....hmmm

I am all for listing actual weights and heights. Keeps the poachers doubting come transfer portal time. Folks will go: he looks like he can play... but at 5-11 can he really translate to the SEC/Big12? They might still pull the trigger on the really great ones. But it might work every once in a while. Heck, I might even consider taking off an inch and 5 pounds on everyone. Also: much funnier to beat a team when they are supposedly 5 inches taller on average. Once they reach their senior year, you adjust the heights and weights, to an inch above reality, so potential NFLers don't get shafted.

The worst part of all of this is this: while fans of the Big12 and B1G teams and of those 8 PAC teams that found a spot may have had a miserable summer, they can now happily focus on actual football. Meanwhile fans of the forgotten four, ACC AAC and MWC are all gonna have a hard time tuning this out completely during what ought to be the happiest time of the year.

I know there are numerous people out the claiming "its a done deal". But I am not sure it is. I give it 50/50 at this point in time. I assume actually that negotiations and arm pulling going on in the background are very hard. Every day that goes by and they do not announce they got the deal done, the chance of it actually happening is going down. Time kills deals as the PAC members already had to experience once this year. It is one thing for SMU to be willing to buy its way into the ACC, but it would be another level of funny to get rejected twice when trying to do so. For the PAC schools time is really of the essence though. If the ACC turns out to be as incapable at taking timely decisions as the PAC10 was, then they might have to move on in a week or two.

I truely do wonder: will SMU boosters spend not only to keep their athletics afloat, but actually top that with enough money to thrive. I know everybody believes SMU is rich like that. But I keep having this hunch that the money is not going to be infinite, and that it is quite possible we will see 4-8 SMU teams for a while. And one has to wonder what that will do to engagment. SMU doing this might actually be the way it is most easily to imagine how UNT overtakes them in the medium run.

Not really. I don't know how teachers see it, and that may be fairly different from how researcher see it. But as a researcher myself, SMU belongs nowhere near Stanford in any research related conversation. At least not in the fields I have been in. Frankly UNT is ahead of SMU in that regard, as indicated by Tier 1 status. And yet, UNT is also nowhere near Stanfords impact into research. In the maybe 30 international scientific conferences I have been to - spanning a broad variety of life science research (from basic to applied) and different medical and psychology fields - I have yet to see a single presentation (or poster) by anyone from SMU. Stanford you cannot miss if you go to an international conference. UNT you can miss often enough... but at least it hasn't been completely inexistent.

I get that, but sadly you got to think longer term. The moment when they will dip back into the portal will come in a not too distant future; hopefully not for QB, but certainly for a number of other positions. Players talk to each other. You don't want to become the staff with the reputation of making promises they do not keep. It will make life difficult down the road. Managing emotions of the second string to keep them engaged is more necessary now than it was 5 years ago. p.s. by that I don't mean they should give equal time, just that it is important to manage emotions.

a leprechaun wearing a clown suit playing QB1....I'd watch that for sure!

While I am absolutely worried about the opportunity cost of letting the MWC have them... do you really want a coast to coast conference? Clearly it is the hot fad right now. however, I am not so sure it really adds all that much in terms of tv value in the future and it definitely adds cost in terms of travel and in terms of student-athlete time. AND I am worried it will reduce the already tenuous identity finding of the AAC completely. Cohesive identity vs lack of identity is pretty much why the sun belt managed to catch up to (and now overtake) C-USA and why so many schools left, not just for the AAC. I think many of those that now came to the AAC could have developed much faster and way beyond what they have become now, had they been in a more cohesive conference. i hope the AAC will become that for UNT. But I am not sure adding the west coast really facilitates it. Also, just because the B1G and B12 now are trying to do the 16+ conference memebrs thing, i am not sure they will fare so much better at it in the end than the WAC, where strife eventually left half the programs behind, and I think this could easily also happen to a 16+ member AAC. But...as I said, i am worried about the opportunity cost of letting the MWC have them (even though I can see bobs point above on them really being good G5s that had lucked out too).

People or degrees?

If those two get into the ACC the upside for the AAC s that it will be stable and can probably develop. The downside is that this would make it very likely that WSu and OSU join the MWC over the AAC. The risk with that is that the MWC could reasonably close the gap to the AAC financially and otherwise, which if the CFP reduces to 5 conference bids is a real negative (and i fear that is likely to happen after 2026). In that case the AAC really has to develop to take that spot on the regular. Otherwise it risks not losing it only rarely to a Belt/MWC/Liberty as would be the case with the current setup.

If you go by these "experts", then UNT has caught a pretty maximally tough AAC schedule this year (which itself is not that unreasonable to suggest). It misses the bottom two teams and 3 of the 5 teams generally considered worst (USF, Charlotte, Rice, only playing Tulsa/Temple), plus ECU which is considered in the middle, while playing all 3 teams generally considered at the top (SMU, Tulane, UTSA). The closest thing to a break appears to be missing FAU (which folks have ranked as high as 2nd and as low as 11th) Also, for some reason only Tulane has lower variability in how it is assessed, which is fairly surprising given that UNT is generally thought to be in the middle (betwenn 6 and 9) and has a new coach (although that is true for a lot of temas this year). I gues it means people look at Morris and see someone in a similar mold to SL and think things will continue on a similar track as before, while they have very differing opinions on how folks like Dilfer or Herman a FAU wil do.

Not sure that would be a smart move. Feels to me like overplaying his hand. If Stanford does not want to come, the AAC should still take the remaining teams. Otherwise it runs the risk of getting overtaken by the MWC. Since he should be worried that the CFP will reduce to 5 conference winner bids, getting overtaken by the MWC would be very serious problem.

Mods, please move to the appropriate forum. Also in that forum said tweeter (Xer?) already has his own thread(s)