DentonStang

What do you mean travel? They've all moved to Frisco from what I can tell

Nothing was retaining Dykes except a conference change. As far as success with NIL, this is year one. Last year was the real first year of NIL being open, but we had to use it to keep Dykes from raiding the roster. We were pretty successful, but it didn't allow for mass upgrades like this year

The ability to show off a nice locker room is insignificant next to the power of the NIL

It would be a distraction, but nobody actually knows if they are trying to beat that deadline. It's been a distraction for a year. They may not care if it is a distraction on July 21, or may believe it's worth the distraction to continue whatever they are doing. It's a fan/media derived deadline

Yes. It's still 8 figures of additional media income every year, it still comes with much more visibility in the media, better opponents that people have heard of and have credibility, this easier recruiting and better attendance, and associates SMU with some premier national universities. There are almost no downsides, despite having to deal with California idiots and dysfunction. Plus, think about Cal fans showing up at SMU and realizing the Bush II presidential library is there! Perfect.

It's a valid question. I think the reasonable answer is it's foolish to leave before you have a sure thing in hand. Anything could always blow up. Leverage that risk against the $17M, which likely won't actually be $17M. Pretty much every conference change we've seen has had a negotiated exit for better terms. I will push back against the idea that someone had to have changed recently. The original SDSU letter to the MWC said they were not giving notice of leaving before July 1, but that they intended to give notice at some point after that. Nothing was ever happening on June 30. Their strategy may be dumb, but it hasn't changed.

Yes, we should. And if we don't then there is something majorly wrong.

It's not embarrassing. Everyone knows it was BS. Even the ESPN 30 for 30 on the topic was sympathetic. The anti-athletics administration that came to power after it is embarrassing. The amount that this board tries to make it into something embarrassing for personal schadenfreude should be embarrassing to you

What is there to respond to? They tried to get out before the deadline (in a bungled way) and then the MWC made it clear they weren't going to play nice and said they're "informing that we are going to inform" would be treated as an official intent to leave. So what else can they do? You can't leave without having an offer somewhere else. This doesn't prevent them from turning around and leaving tomorrow (just at full cost this time)

The poor communication from the PAC on expansion: ceding the narrative to their enemies (Big12) and then finally responding with vague and deadlines that didn't exist creating expectations unnecessarily is bad enough, but the SDSU thing is beyond bizarre. How can this level of PR dysfunction exist in California, the home of vapid and endless PR?

Remember when UNT was relevant? Oh wait, no, nobody does.

I wonder how these lists could even be created. There's no 3rd party data, the deals are generally secret, and nobody is giving their total spend except as advertisment so exaggeration is guaranteed.

Again, quit reading these junk outlets. Go through his tweets and tell me how many of them have been correct. He just puts out BS. It's clickbait. I went and listened to the Canzano interview. He didn't say SMU was doing this. He was musing about how much money the SMU collective has, and the wealth of the donor base, and said SMU has enough money that they could do that. Not that they would or would be asked to. Something like 'they have enough wealthy donors they could accept a substantially reduced payout. They could even accept no money and pay off the Comcast $50M'. Use some critical thinking on this stuff. I feel like I'm watching a confused boomer sending out bizarre fake radical political junk on Facebook.

Hilarious article shifting goalposts around to fit their narrative. So Cincy football success matters because it's way better than SMU. Ok, can't argue that isn't true. But BYU is a national brand, so we can ignore their success doesn't look too different from SMU. Ok..... So now it's either brand or success. Ok. But then Houston "has had its ups and downs". So they are no more relevant in Houston than we are in Dallas AND their success is not any different. But that's OK because .......? Also he can rant and rave about the moving deadlines from PAC media (true) but says nothing about the endless "Colorado is moving" "PAC deal is done and only 35 cents/yr" "4 corners coming to Big12 if deal not done by _______" which have all also been wrong. All of the media are varying degrees of BS because nobody is leaking info. They aren't under any kind of time crunch with another year still left on their current deal. This could go on for months more and the PAC obviously doesn't care about the publicity aspects. So sit tight and quit reading hyperbolic fake news outlets on either side.

Really? Do you think they cared before? Reality is, the players making real money think they will go pro, just like they thought before. Some have the sense to care for their educational opportunity in front of them, some you just hope to keep eligible. None of that has changed. And I'm OK with that. You can lead a horse to water, and such. I expect the university to give them what they need - majors they can benefit from, professors that are flexible with schedule and understand the load of a FBS football player, all the academic support needed to help them through when they may not have had a good academic background. But the job is theirs. Either way, they are there to play football

NIL is the greatest thing to happen to college football. Instead of wasting, say a moderate sized donation of $20M on a stadium upgrade that could easy translate into zero additional success, you can route it to NIL at $2M a year for 10 years and have a real tangible impact on wins, and give money to players not construction firms.

A lot like UNT fans throwing out attendance quips toward SMU eh?

Rice and Tulane have the resources.... But not the will to try. That's why I said "and willing to invest the resources to try to win". If Rice wanted to invest their vast resources, make curriculum changes, etc to facilitate winning they'd absolutely be an option.

Not even a season in at the truck stop conference and you are already high and mighty. Your attendance doesn't look substantially different from ours (despite vastly more student and alumni) nor does your recent football success. You got called up based on market just like we will be. There are a dozen other schools who are also willing to invest the resources and try to win, but are totally doomed because they don't have an in-demand market. We're getting on the last lifeboat to safety. You got on the second-to-last. How impressive.

You have to stop reading this stuff. There's two dozen articles every week by generic sports writers that either say everything is amazing and great, or doomed and chaos. They are all BS. A handful of people know what is happening, none of them are out talking to journalists. It's pure wait and see.

Hoping for 2024

Who knows. There's a lot of shuffling to come. ACC will get raided. Do leftovers go to B12? PAC? Both? Raid others? So incentives like the playoff put pressure on lower teams in B10/SEC to leave? Do they keep expanding? Leave NCAA? Do judicial rulings make scholarship athletes employees and blow everything up? No idea. But PAC is an upgrade for now and that's all we can know

There are really no G5 schools that move the needle themselves on TV ratings, including the crew headed to B12. It's just not that important because TV viewers are driven by opponent/relevancy of matchup and what channel they are on. Teams willing to put in a decent effort at the P5 level (facilities, coaches, NIL) will be good enough to drive these numbers. There ARE a ton of teams that sell out their stadium and are 100% irrelevant in expansion like ECU. It just isn't important. I'd take SDSU and UNT all day before ECU with vastly better attendance. Interviews with former conference commissioners and TV execs are out there in this round - PAC needs to replace major metro footprint for a variety of market potential and recruiting. SMU does not deliver the DFW market. But the combined force of PAC playing in the 4th largest metro is vastly more beneficial than being the king of wherever ECU plays. And SMU has academics that complement which isn't everything but definitely matters to PAC. Look at their expansion options. Who is available and better than SDSU and SMU?

Do you actually read? Money (and different timeline) is the reason we haven't informed the AAC we are leaving before getting an invite like SDSU has. Topic entirely about exit fees, and SDSU trying to avoid exit fees, is it not relevant to say "we don't need to avoid the exit fees"? You're like someone who only reads the headline of an article and immediately starts yelling "Trump blah blah blah/Liberals blah blah blah"

It's super bizarre. It's like telling your wife you want a divorce, but your side piece isn't ready to be official yet, so you are delaying demanding a divorce until she's ready next month.