regional conferences

[Cerebus]

10 minutes ago, mgfan said:

 

The sunbelt never brought fans. 

ULL, ASU and even NMSU did.  Because they were close.  Idaho, the F_As, and Utah St?  Not so much.  

One of my favorite pictures I took is when Cody Spencer recovered a fumble against NMSU @fouts.  He is a standing there holding the ball triumphantly above his head with a sea of red behind him.

Do you realize that the 2013 game against UTEP was our 4th all time largest crowd?  Place close teams and WIN.  The only other crowds above that were Baylor (twice) and SMU.

Play as many Texas teams as possible (lets get TexSt in with us ASAP) and WIN.  That builds programs.  

[Stix]

56 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

Do you realize that the 2013 game against UTEP was our 4th all time largest crowd?  Place close teams and WIN.  The only other crowds above that were Baylor (twice) and SMU.

It's not that UTEP is so close, it's that they have that many active alumni in the DFW area.  And if more ASU & ULL fans attended those games when we were in the SunBelt, it may be for the same reason.  There probably are not many MUTS and WKU alumni in DFW, never mind the Florida schools.

[MeanGreenMailbox aka TFLF]

Anti-Texas/Regional teamers, what are you saying?  FIU fans outdraw Louisiana fans on the road?

It's preposterous.  We are in the fix we are in because we - all of us - as alumni don't have such small penises that we donated every spare dime we had to our alma mater's athletic department.  Admit it, our big money grads didn't give enough of a sh*t, and neither did the small money ones.  We just, collectively, didn't give enough of a sh*t to pour money into the athletic department's coffers.  Okay?

So, we are where we are today.  Accept it and make the best of it because the only school with the balls to sue the NCAA for the anticompetitive nature of the BCS was Utah - and, they've now joined the other side in the Pac-12, alright?  Couldn't beat 'em, so they joined 'em.

The truth is, if it comes down to who would you rather see in the stadium, Old Dominion or Texas State, I'm going to say Texas State because I have many friends from childhood on who went there. Tailgating is going to be fun with them.  There will be bragging rights for the year to the winner.  Etc.

I don't know one f*cking person who went to Old Dominion.  Okay, I know Chris Gatling played basketball there about 25 years ago...but, I don't know him personally and doubt he'll be at the game.

The point is, we need to fill the stadium any way we can.  It's not getting done being in a conference with schools in Florida and up and down the f*cking East Coast.

Crazy.

Edited June 20, 2016 by MeanGreenMailbox

[Ben Gooding]

6 minutes ago, MeanGreenMailbox said:

Anti-Texas/Regional teamers, what are you saying?  FIU fans outdraw Louisiana fans on the road?

It's preposterous.  We are in the fix we are in because we - all of us - as alumni don't have such small penises that we donated every spare dime we had to our alma mater's athletic department.  Admit it, our big money grads didn't give enough of a sh*t, and neither did the small money ones.  We just, collectively, didn't give enough of a sh*t to pour money into the athletic department's coffers.  Okay?

So, we are where we are today.  Accept it and make the best of it because the only school with the ball to sue the NCAA of the anticompetitive nature of the BCS was Utah - and, they've now joined the other side in the Pac-12, alright?

The truth is, if it comes down to who would you rather see in the stadium, Old Dominion or Texas State, I'm going to say Texas State because I have many friends from childhood on who went there. Tailgating is going to be fun with them.  There will be bragging rights for the year to the winner.  Etc.

I don't know one f*cking person who went to Old Dominion.  Okay, I know Chris Gatling played basketball there about 25 years ago...but, I don't know him personally and doubt he'll be at the game.

The point is, we need to fill the stadium any way we can.  It's not getting done being in a conference with school in Florida and up and down the f*cking East Coast.

Crazy.

Bravo

[Aquila_Viridis]

Forget about filling the stadium, not on the horizon right now. And no to playing whatever team your buddy went to.  All that matters is winning games. The question is, how are we going to win games? The answer is more money. You aren't going to get hardly a drop of what is needed, from the little bit of attendance from your buddies. I think you have made it about yourself not the university; the event and not the result.

[UTSA Fan]

10 hours ago, Cerebus said:

The benefit to regional is that it builds rivalries because you bump into graduates/fans of those other programs.  If the programs those close they bring in fans to the away games and there really is no worst feeling that seeing  a bunch of visiting fans celebrating a win in your house.  This is why we hate UTSA.  Also because they are all bad people.  And because a UTSA 10 is a NT 4.

I've never met a single graduate of FIU.  I don't even know if anyone actually graduates from SDSU.  Why do we want to be in a conference with them?  I work with a ULL grad.  My brother married a TexSt grad.  Those connections build rivalries.

You improve your brand by winning.  There is no G5 conference that would fix our problems.  No one is going to show up because SDSU rolls into town, and we have already seen what UNLV would bring. Win games. WIIIN.

Make fun of LaTech and ULL but they always brought in some travelling fans.  Win.  Play teams that have alumni in the area so we can hassle each other over the water cooler.  But mainly WIN.

 

Aside from all UTSA people being bad people, I think the series is one step below a rivalry (hate), it's at disdain. UNT sees UTSA as an inferior university and UTSA sees UNT as an inferior football program. With the scheduling benefit of being in the same division, there is plenty of opportunity for this to escalate beyond butt hurt. Vito may be correct that this may become a rivalry if SMU keeps conference seperation and stops scheduling.

[Ben Gooding]

9 hours ago, UTSA Fan said:

Aside from all UTSA people being bad people, I think the series is one step below a rivalry (hate), it's at disdain. UNT sees UTSA as an inferior university and UTSA sees UNT as an inferior football program. With the scheduling benefit of being in the same division, there is plenty of opportunity for this to escalate beyond butt hurt. Vito may be correct that this may become a rivalry if SMU keeps conference seperation and stops scheduling.

nutsack IS an inferior university. nutsack has no ground to make the claims of being a superior football program. They're not even a decade old. 0 championships of any kind to speak of. 0 bowl appearances, let alone wins. 0 owned football facility. Etc. UNT takes that cake also and we take it very easily. 

[Arkstfan]

It isn't 2001 any more. ULL averaged a bit over 9000, AState 10,700 and some change, UNT 15,000 and some change.

The early Sun Belt was about repairing the damage caused by being an independent or in a malaligned out of region conference.

At least some of those early members now sell more season tickets than they had average attendance in 2001.

Seriously how many AState, ULL fans did you expect to come to Denton in those years when people wouldn't drive across town to see them play? The last few years UNT was in the Sun Belt the number of UNT fans who came to Jonesboro went down because UNT fans had given up the hope of seeing the Green having much of a chance to win.

But Marshall can go 12-0 and will still bring fewer fans to Denton than a ULL team pushing for 8 wins. They just weren't often pushing for 8 wins for a long time.

Now AState isn't going to be rolling in it in any G5 conference that doesn't include Memphis because every other G5 is 300 or more miles away.

But keep this number in mind. 11

Eleven matters because if you play someone who is more than an 11 hour drive you either have to put two drivers in the equipment truck or you have to park the truck for a mandatory 10 hour rest.

400 miles is about the limit for putting a non-revenue sport on a bus or charter vehicle.

Simply put it costs significantly more to send a volleyball team to Boca Raton than Jonesboro or softball team to Norfolk than Lafayette and what is the return on the higher investment?

Wearing the patch that Louisville, Cincinnati, UCF, Houston, SMU all so eagerly cut off their jerseys? Does that justify traveling to Charlotte, NC or Miami, FL? The money certainly doesn't justify it.

[Cerebus]

37 minutes ago, Arkstfan said:

The money certainly doesn't justify it.

So @Arkstfan is the SBC ready to negotiate with CUSA and sit down and swap teams?  Are the SBC teams going to want to cut their CFB payout by bringing in more than 10 teams?

Until both leagues can swallow their pride and sit down and make two 12 team football conferences it won't happen.  I really want it to, but I don't know if the conference administration or school presidents of either league is anywhere near ready to do that.  

[mgfan]

2 hours ago, Cerebus said:

So @Arkstfan is the SBC ready to negotiate with CUSA and sit down and swap teams?  Are the SBC teams going to want to cut their CFB payout by bringing in more than 10 teams?

Until both leagues can swallow their pride and sit down and make two 12 team football conferences it won't happen.  I really want it to, but I don't know if the conference administration or school presidents of either league is anywhere near ready to do that.  

Because they know cusa is a better conference. If they wanted any Sunbelt teams to join they would have asked a long time ago.

[wardly]

Arguing which conference is better, CUSA or the Sun Belt, is like 2 bald men fighting over a comb.

[RBP79]

Right now NT has no options. We have developed into the bastard step child of college football and the only thing we have any kind of control over is trying to field  "winning" sports programs. Then the door may crack open. I don't think NT will ever get invited to the AAC, because of SMU....it won't happen, MWC a possibility because the TV market we are in. Until the so called conference re-alignment occurs in the future the only thing NT can do is win.

 

[Arkstfan]

22 hours ago, Cerebus said:

So @Arkstfan is the SBC ready to negotiate with CUSA and sit down and swap teams?  Are the SBC teams going to want to cut their CFB payout by bringing in more than 10 teams?

Until both leagues can swallow their pride and sit down and make two 12 team football conferences it won't happen.  I really want it to, but I don't know if the conference administration or school presidents of either league is anywhere near ready to do that.  

 

All it will take is a respected league president within CUSA to open the conversation. Sun Belt won't start the conversation.

Fans just aren't grasping the scale of the travel. Take TCU in MWC how awful was that? UNT to ODU and FIU are both longer than the longest trip TCU had and FAU just slides under the longest trip TCU had.

The longest distance across MWC with or without TCU is/was shorter than the longest distance across CUSA or AAC and without TCU shorter than the longest trip across Sun Belt.

Marshall, USM, and Rice ought to be talking right now.

20 hours ago, mgfan said:

Because they know cusa is a better conference. If they wanted any Sunbelt teams to join they would have asked a long time ago.

By what measure?

Money? Sun Belt now wins that battle. Bowls? Sun Belt has five for 10 teams vs CUSA five for 13ish. 

Do we want to talk about how the Sun Belt departees did against the teams they left? 

Budgets, salaries, NCAA performance?

Don't pretend there was a grand plan to reach 13ish teams, each move was a reaction to the move that triggered it.

[mgfan]

4 minutes ago, Arkstfan said:

All it will take is a respected league president within CUSA to open the conversation. Sun Belt won't start the conversation.

Fans just aren't grasping the scale of the travel. Take TCU in MWC how awful was that? UNT to ODU and FIU are both longer than the longest trip TCU had and FAU just slides under the longest trip TCU had.

The longest distance across MWC with or without TCU is/was shorter than the longest distance across CUSA or AAC and without TCU shorter than the longest trip across Sun Belt.

Marshall, USM, and Rice ought to be talking right now.

By what measure?

Money? Sun Belt now wins that battle. Bowls? Sun Belt has five for 10 teams vs CUSA five for 13ish. 

Do we want to talk about how the Sun Belt departees did against the teams they left? 

Budgets, salaries, NCAA performance?

Don't pretend there was a grand plan to reach 13ish teams, each move was a reaction to the move that triggered it.

Name recognition a lone is enough. Don't act Arkansas State wouldn't jump at the chance to leave the suck belt. 

[wardly]

One of the basic problems is our alumni base. I am 73, majored in business, and did well enough to be able to support athletics on an ongoing basis.to a limited degree. However, for decades North Texas State was known as an education and music school.Teachers don't make much money, and unless you are a founding member of the Eagles, musicians don't either. My point is that alumni contribute with discretionary funds, and our historical alumni base doesn't fit the bill, plus seem to have little affiliation with UNT.Until our alumni base changes it will be difficult to generate meaningful contributions.

[Arkstfan]

21 hours ago, mgfan said:

Name recognition a lone is enough. Don't act Arkansas State wouldn't jump at the chance to leave the suck belt. 

For AAC yep.

Spend $2 million exit fees from the Sun Belt, $2 million in entry fees to get less money in CUSA?

Nope.

As for the Suck Belt. Maybe ya'll would have been better off riding the Big West horse into the ground.

It's not the Sun Belt's fault UNT parlayed four conference titles into no progress on facilities and a 16-40 conference record after that. If anyone uses the Suck Belt name think of why they might use it? Following the rules and sending a 5 win team to a bowl, having a team post three seasons of 1 or 0 league wins and a couple more 2 win seasons?

CUSA name recognition? That name recognition was built by Louisville, Cincinnati, UCF, Houston, Memphis, etc. Maybe you should explore the Southern Conference for name recognition. Alabama and Duke USED to be there, just like Louisville and SMU USED to be in CUSA.

The money has changed because TV has just explained the value of that CUSA brand.

Edited June 20, 2016 by Arkstfan

[VideoEagle]

The simple fact is the last round of conference expansion sucked for most conferences. The Big East/AAC, CUSA, Sun Belt and even Mountain West all saw the average strength of their football teams fall. 

Arkstfan is quite correct that is not the Belt's fault NT didn't build on it's early 2000s success. THAT's when the push for the new stadium should have been done! And don't forget the Belt didn't change the rules in 2001 when NT won the conference with a losing record. They could have and avoided some embarrassment. But the Presidents stuck with the rules they had decided on earlier and showed some character. 

A lot of college football fans are literally focused week to week. If you lose a single game, a school has "passed you by." That's just ridiculous. 

Yes, based on last year the AAC is the top of the G5 but a couple of years ago it was CUSA over both the AAC and MWC. There just isn't that much difference between ANY of the G5 conferences - a really good year by the teams in ANY of them could push that conference to the top spot. While the AAC and MWC are generally better, a bad year by teams in either of those and they could be third and just maybe even the fourth of the G5. 

The problem is, most fans reject this reality just as most P5 fans reject the idea a G5 school might beat them in a game. OU still considers the loss to Boise a fluke and ignores that it ever happened. Until G5 fans accept there simply isn't that much difference in the conference uniform patches, things are going to stay the same. I would hope rational thought would eventually prevail but I'm not sure about that. 

[MeanGreenMailbox aka TFLF]

On 6/18/2016 at 6:21 PM, wardly said:

Arguing which conference is better, CUSA or the Sun Belt, is like 2 bald men fighting over a comb.

This

On 6/18/2016 at 11:18 AM, Arkstfan said:

It isn't 2001 any more. ULL averaged a bit over 9000, AState 10,700 and some change, UNT 15,000 and some change.

The early Sun Belt was about repairing the damage caused by being an independent or in a malaligned out of region conference.

At least some of those early members now sell more season tickets than they had average attendance in 2001.

Seriously how many AState, ULL fans did you expect to come to Denton in those years when people wouldn't drive across town to see them play? The last few years UNT was in the Sun Belt the number of UNT fans who came to Jonesboro went down because UNT fans had given up the hope of seeing the Green having much of a chance to win.

But Marshall can go 12-0 and will still bring fewer fans to Denton than a ULL team pushing for 8 wins. They just weren't often pushing for 8 wins for a long time.

Now AState isn't going to be rolling in it in any G5 conference that doesn't include Memphis because every other G5 is 300 or more miles away.

But keep this number in mind. 11

Eleven matters because if you play someone who is more than an 11 hour drive you either have to put two drivers in the equipment truck or you have to park the truck for a mandatory 10 hour rest.

400 miles is about the limit for putting a non-revenue sport on a bus or charter vehicle.

Simply put it costs significantly more to send a volleyball team to Boca Raton than Jonesboro or softball team to Norfolk than Lafayette and what is the return on the higher investment?

Wearing the patch that Louisville, Cincinnati, UCF, Houston, SMU all so eagerly cut off their jerseys? Does that justify traveling to Charlotte, NC or Miami, FL? The money certainly doesn't justify it.

Agree about the distances. 

The bottom line is, we are all programs - those of us in the Sun Belt and C-USA - whose leadership in the late 80s and early 90s didn't recognize that the college arms race was heating up.

So...I mean, we can pretend to be many things.  But, the reality is, we are what we are:  schools whose alumni didn't pony up enough money fast enough - and, largely, still are not ponying up enough money - to get to even Tulsa- or Cincinnati-like status.  And, that to go along with school leadership that didn't understand what was happening in the broad college football landscape.

It just didn't happen, and still isn't happening.  So, again...look reality in the face and get us into a conference which makes more sense regionally for the sake of, at minimum, cutting costs for our already cash-strapped athletic departments.

In short, what happened to our schools beginning in the late 80s to now is the real life illustration of Nice Guys Finish Last.  We never pushed, fought, and clawed anyone to work our way up - not conferences, not schools, not the NCAA, not our own alumni. 

Edited June 20, 2016 by MeanGreenMailbox

[MeanGreenMailbox aka TFLF]

21 hours ago, wardly said:

One of the basic problems is our alumni base. I am 73, majored in business, and did well enough to be able to support athletics on an ongoing basis.to a limited degree. However, for decades North Texas State was known as an education and music school.Teachers don't make much money, and unless you are a founding member of the Eagles, musicians don't either. My point is that alumni contribute with discretionary funds, and our historical alumni base doesn't fit the bill, plus seem to have little affiliation with UNT.Until our alumni base changes it will be difficult to generate meaningful contributions.

True, as always.  I also think, as I posted before, that our alumni just didn't put alma mate athletics #1 on their to-do lists.  Is that good or bad?  Don't know.  If you crave what OU and Texas have, it's bad.  If you are fine with college football being a social event you hit every now and then to see old friends, it's good.  It can be both.  But, our alumni historically has simply had a different train of thought about athletics.

[TreeFiddy]

I really don't see having more regional conference mates means that we will fill our stands with their fans.  What we need is opponents that will cause our fans to fill the stands.  Sorry, but bringing in teams like ArkState, ULL, ULM, etc... are not going to suddenly awaken our fan base and pack the stadium.  

We essentially already have ArkState on our schedule and in our conference.  They are named Latech.  A small, rural university with some limited regional following, but no national appeal.  They have a few alumni in the metroplex and they tend to come to Denton when they play.   However, we have virtually no alumni in their area.  There is no great animosity or rivalry with those schools.  Surrounding ourselves with more of them will not move the needle.

Another thought is to decrease the number of conference games to 6 or maybe 7.  We already have a regional division.  What if we just play our division in conference and send the division winner to the championship game.  It will be sort of like having a new conference, without the headache of starting a new conference. By having less conference games, we have more OOC games to schedule and should be able to create more attractive home schedules.

[Cerebus]

59 minutes ago, TreeFiddy said:

I really don't see having more regional conference mates means that we will fill our stands with their fans.  What we need is opponents that will cause our fans to fill the stands.  

Our fans are already in the stadium.  The truth may hurt, but the truth is there just isn't a lot of us.

Bringing in someone like Texas Tech would bring in some more people who aren't out fans to check the place out.  But if the draw is Tech and not us, they will be gone by the next week, especially if we lose big.

You know what will get non fans to come in and become our fans? Win 8-10 games for 2-3 years.  Then people will start to hear about North Texas and come check NORTH TEXAS, no Texas Tech out.  They will start becoming our fans.

 

[MeanGreenMailbox aka TFLF]

22 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

Our fans are already in the stadium.  The truth may hurt, but the truth is there just isn't a lot of us.

Bringing in someone like Texas Tech would bring in some more people who aren't out fans to check the place out.  But if the draw is Tech and not us, they will be gone by the next week, especially if we lose big.

You know what will get non fans to come in and become our fans? Win 8-10 games for 2-3 years.  Then people will start to hear about North Texas and come check NORTH TEXAS, no Texas Tech out.  They will start becoming our fans.

 

Agree.  This is essentially what happened with Houston in 2011.  Opening the new stadium.  Texas school with more pull as an opponent.  We actually miss a bowl bid by one game that season, but what thereafter?

I do think there will be value in the SMU series if we win more than we lose during its span.  SMU is not Houston or Tech, but some think its more visible nationally than us.  Win SMU, and I think every season sets up pretty nicely for us.

Army is not ever going to be competitive because of their constraints.  So, with a serious coach, wins there should be relatively easy to come by.  Ditto FCS schools.  

It just sets up well.  We can get half of our wins needed to be bowl eligible every year just in OOC games.  As I've said before, then, just breaking even in C-USA would have us bowling every year - and that would add butts in seats without all of this caterwauling about Tech and other schools not coming to Denton.

Take advantage of what we do have coming to Denton:  SMU, Army, and winnable FCS games.  It's really not as bad as people make it out to be.  It's not like we're Kansas football sitting at the bottom of the Big 12 trying to untangle the Gordian Knot of how to compete with Texas and OU. 

 

[TreeFiddy]

1 hour ago, Cerebus said:

Our fans are already in the stadium.  The truth may hurt, but the truth is there just isn't a lot of us.

Bringing in someone like Texas Tech would bring in some more people who aren't out fans to check the place out.  But if the draw is Tech and not us, they will be gone by the next week, especially if we lose big.

You know what will get non fans to come in and become our fans? Win 8-10 games for 2-3 years.  Then people will start to hear about North Texas and come check NORTH TEXAS, no Texas Tech out.  They will start becoming our fans.

 

I do agree with the winning part being the path to building long term interest from our alumni and local community.  Unlike some, I am not suggesting that we over schedule based on the current state of our program.  My point being that bringing in ArkState/ULL/ULM is not the answer to attendance (nor TV imo) as it seems to keep getting suggested. 

Our TV contract $'s seem to have decreased dramatically (although still no official word).  If it is true, TV has clearly said that it does not value our league games very highly.  If this is the case, why not look at decreasing the amount of league games and allow the teams to schedule however best suits their needs.  I suggested that each team be required to host a P5 program as a way to increase the value of the league TV content since those are the games that TV is choosing to televise.  Scheduling for wins probably involves a different strategy.  However, if you have 6 OOC games to schedule, it seems you would have quite a bit of flexibility to schedule for both bowl eligibility and an attractive home schedule.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the road paycheck game.  If you are going to remove that from the schedule, somebody has got to come up with the money (university, boosters, students, conference, etc...).

[wardly]

In a really good program fans comes out to see their team play, not who they play.I mean, why would LSU,Tennessess, Oklahoma,etc. fans come out to see us?

[Aldo]

1 minute ago, wardly said:

In a really good program fans comes out to see their team play, not who they play.I mean, why would LSU,Tennessess, Oklahoma,etc. fans come out to see us?

Because LSU, Tennessee, Oklahoma, etc fans would come out to watch their team play tic tac toe.