Blue Horse

You guys are looking at this all wrong. The question isn't if you're going to add value to the aac with smu in it (no tv network is going for that). The question is when the aac expands for football only with Boise, unlv, and sdsu, will north texas stay in cusa or join two others in going to the mwc.

Beats me, I just hate Tulsa. There would have to be some sort of scenario where they just had to get to 12 or even 14 (14 is better). Twelve used to be the magic number for conferences, but some are moving beyond that now to 14. In this scenario, for whatever reason (TV, pressure from NCAA, scheduling, conference mates wanting a bigger presence in Texas, security against a future raid by preemptively adding members), the AAC decides that's their magic number. It's an odd time for the American as it seems to be on the verge of losing members to budget cuts. I think it's fair to say that such sports casualties will happen across college football. Just for arguments sake, let's look at the budgets of CUSA schools. Note: I recognize these might not be 100% accurate. ODU- $44,271,033North Texas- $38,002,376Charlotte- $37,919,619FIU- $35,631,959MT- $35,353,956FAU- $35,275,379UAB- $34,736,287UEP- $32,855,303Marshall- $30,612,153WKU- $30,595,026UTSA- $30,368,193Southern Miss- $24,248,720LA Tech- $23,672,886 The issue starts to be that SMU-North Texas isn't the only overlap. If the conference needs five schools, and they can't take the MWC schools (which they really, really want), who do they take? First, please don't let it be UTEP. Second, LA Tech and Southern Miss., even if they don't drop football, don't have the budgets to compete. You guys know the problem with these schools better than I do. North Texas appears potentially more capable of weathering the coming storm than your conference mates. SMU may not like it, but at some point they may have to admit that North Texas is the most attractive girl at the dance because there's just no one else left and their grandfather had one of those wacky wills where they have to get married to inherit a million dollars. And yes, I did some real mental gymnastics to make this work. It's a lot easier for you to move up if SMU isn't there.

I will bet you infinity billion dollars that Tulsa drops football. Don't worry, I went to SMU, I'm good for it. Seriously though, I don't think it's a matter of dropping to CUSA, but dropping football down to D2 or whatever it's called now. Now I did a little research into the AAC budgets. As a private school, Tulsa does not have to release the same sort of financial records to the public that they would if they were a state school. I've seen figures in the $40 million range for the entire athletic department, though, and I have reason to believe that's about right. Now, football is technically a revenue sport, and sure the $7 million ever year from the conference is great, but it's just not enough. It's true, most schools lose money playing football and just roll with it. It's something of a luxury as well as a means of keeping your brand relevant. To keep things running, Tulsa provides its athletic department with a $9 million annual subsidy. The university's total deficit in 2016 was $26 million. And all of this was pre-coronavirus. Things will be worse in that regard. And given the history of Tulsa as a town, I would wager that oil taking a hit will really take its toll on their boosters and school.

I don't think you'll have to wait long there. Tulsa has many, many problems. Or, perhaps, you'd like to attend its Institute of Trauma, Adversity, and Injustice. You know, where they survey students regularly looking for "exclusionary, intimidating, offensive, and/or hostile conduct" at the university. Anyway, so you need Tulsa to fail. That'll happen, but you need a few more things. You need the MWC to hold together. If enough schools can't keep it together, the big ones in that conference will bolt to become football-only members in the American. In a strange twist, your moving conferences may be tied to Fresno State and New Mexico keeping it together. Then, of course, you have to get past your own competition in CUSA to move up.

I would disagree with you on this point. People get asked what they love about the tournament and say "the upsets." Do you know what the P5 schools hate about the tournament? The upsets. It exposes the flaws in their superiority argument. If I were the P5, I'd add the Big East for basketball and have a smaller tournament. Big names but with fewer schools to split the money. Yeah, it's a little more predictable, but if I'm the P5, that's okay by me.

A good joke is grounded in reality, or at least a perceived reality. UNT being blocked by SMU fits this. This is just you using TCU to take a shot at SMU, and not in a way that's clever or true. So, first off I'm going to assume that you're completely throwing out how the schools were in the same conference for decades, which already makes the relationship between TCU-SMU vastly different from that of UNT-SMU. I'm guessing you just chose to ignore that and concentrate on more recent years. In that area, as recently as the Big East, TCU was actually advocating having SMU in the same conference as them. In fact, the vote was done and SMU was going to be in the same conference as TCU. Did this actually come to pass? No. Now, you might say TCU secretly had one foot out the door anyway so it didn't matter anyway, but nothing is a done deal until you sign on the dotted line. TCU was not yet in the Big 12. They could have voted against SMU just to be on the safe side if they really wanted to keep them down, but they didn't. That brings us to the Big 12. TCU happens to be in the Big 12 these days, and SMU isn't. Why? Well, you say TCU is blocking us. This is really strange. I mean, I know TCU is ahead of SMU, but come on, you guys hate SMU, and you're trying to tell me that the only reason SMU isn't in the Big 12 is TCU is blocking us? Yes, clearly Texas and Oklahoma wanted us, but TCU voted against us so the whole conference got in line and told us no. TCU runs the Big 12, you know. What you're saying is so unnecessarily conspiratorial. Lastly, only you are advocating this relationship between the two programs. Both SMU and TCU fans can admit that TCU's program is ahead of SMU's without having to resort to this idea that TCU is responsible for SMU's conference woes.

Nah, we've blocked you from enough conferences. You guys can have this one.

Okay, you have my interest. Who all is in this conference?

Thanks for being reasonable with me. I'm not very adept at the website so please bear with me as I respond to you point by point. To your first point, I see attendance as a symptom of a larger problem. I think SMU's worst problem is leadership. It's president was quoted last year about how it was okay to win one game a season but not to go winless. As though he were clever. That's why the stands are empty. I meant the cross-country AAC to only exist if things remain relatively stable. We're in agreement, these are very uncertain times. If things fall apart and we lose a season then there can be no predicting what comes. P5 for SMU is an interesting topic and to call it a longshot would be an understatement. That said, I only brought it up because I see it as the best path for North Texas to move up to the AAC. It's funny you should mention regional conferences. An SMU friend and I regularly discuss this sort of thing and he insists on their coming. For whatever reason I have a harder time seeing them come to pass, and not simply in an SMU-North Texas way. Maybe that's stubbornness on my part. I imagine part of why I have a hard time with it is I think a lot of the potential regional members in such a conference wouldn't be able to last. Texas State, UTSA, and UTEP would all be easy selections for such a conference but they're more likely to face financial ruin than anything. La Tech and Rice are the next best I suppose, but Rice hasn't cared since the '50's and I don't know about La Tech's finances Long story short, if regional conferences come to pass, at least for the AAC schools, it'll be because too many of their conference mates couldn't survive (I'm looking right at ECU and Tulsa).

I don't normally look at this board, but I was curious if you were possibly talking about the upcoming SMU game. Sadly, I could not find such a thread, but I did find this one interesting and decided to post. Doubtless someone will call me a troll because they don't like what I'm posting. Facts are facts, though. 1. LEOPOLD IS A TROLL!! Or perhaps not very knowledgeable. An SMU fan who comes onto your board and proceeds to tell you that you're the next Boise State and also the key to a $25 million contract for the AAC ? All of that is incredibly unlikely. 2. It is in the best interest of SMU to not have North Texas as a conference mate. Imagine you were SMU. Would you be okay with taking a local competitor that could possibly surpass you? Look at how SMU has consistently mismanaged its athletic program over the years. I doubt any school in America has done less with more. But here's the thing, SMU knows they're bad. So why take another school that could string together a few good years and surpass them, both in the American and in getting into a better conference? It just doesn't make sense. 3. I could get into all sorts of talk about markets and and value and how he's just telling you what you want to hear, but I'll just leave it at this: based upon Leopold's assertion that if North Texas is a jewel SMU just won't be able to say no to because Methodists crave those crisp, crisp bills, why is North Texas not already in the AAC? There's presently an opening. And there's going to potentially be another when Tulsa inevitably drops. But to my knowledge there's not such much as an exploratory committee looking into North Texas because they aren't a real contender. So, after all of that, what happens to North Texas? Where is your future? Given the reality of the coronavirus and that A LOT of programs could shut down, that's hard to say. I'm not saying North Texas will shut down, on the contrary, I believe you will make it, but if a worst case scenario happened and 30 G5 programs drop football, that's a lot to imagine. For the sake of simplicity, let's say no one drops football though and things remain exactly as they are. If I'm SMU, it's in the best interest of my conference to add some combination of SDSU, CSU, and Boise State (the real one). This would do two things: help with the television contract and eliminate the AAC's closest competitor in the MWC. It's at this point that North Texas needs two things: 1.) Never, ever join the MWC. And 2.) Hope for SMU to get taken by someone else. If SMU moves up, you take their place. Will that happen? I have no inside knowledge and cannot say. Unlike Leopold, I'm not lying to you.