UNT has a good case (good budget, football committed, recent success in football/basketball, in DFW, good facilities, etc.) but I am going to be honest and tell you UNT’s 3 biggest things hurting our chances of getting the promotion right now:
1) Proximity to SMU. SMU doesn’t like us (especially after last year) so they would likely lobby against us. Also, SMU is also in DFW so there’s a question of how many eyes could be gained by adding another DFW member.
2) UNT doesn’t have baseball right now. Yeah it’s in the master plan sure, but lots of schools have lots of stuff in their master plan. Baseball is about 5 years away for us at this point.
3) How sustainable is UNT’s current success? The last 3-4 years have been some of the best in UNT athletic’s history with an AD who loves sports, a president who loves sports, and a BoR who love sports. This hasn’t happened before at UNT. So is this the new norm or is this a blip in time where athletics is just getting very well funded and won’t in the future?
I would say those are probably the 3 biggest marks against UNT, if you disagree or think of something else, I’m always open to feedback, but I think that’s my best unbiased opinion. I do think UNT would be a good overall addition for the AAC, but can definitely understand why they would be apprehensive and say no.