Man, LaTech is fucked. ESPN has to be telling the MAC they're getting a raise if they add those 2. That's a pretty tight-knit group of schools that I don't think would add teams just to give them a lifeboat.
with the SEC having like 22 teams now, are they ever gonna play 9 conference games? Last two times Bama has played in Nashville were 2007 and 2017. Wtf are the intervals gonna be like with Texas and OU joining the mix??
I've seen 8, 9, and 10 bandied about. The road blocks to 9 and especially 10 are getting the mid-to lower-level teams on board because of the bowl eligibility thing. But Pete Thamel said awhile back there was an effort to lower or eliminate the 6-win threshold (hello, 5-7 Missouri vs. 4-8 Nebraska!). I bet they'll eventually settle at 9. With the pod system, you can play everyone home/home within a 4-year period. Could eliminate the P5 OOC requirement as a compromise. If they go to 10, it scares the hell out of me as a fan of a G5 school reliant on SEC money games. That'd close a bunch of buy game opportunities. At least with 9, it's essentially the same format as 1992-2005 with 3 non-con slots (but with 12 regular season games instead of 11). Wouldn't be surprised if the Big 12 dropped down to 8. No round-robin to protect now.
As long as were playing clemson+a north carolina school every year, yall can go fuck yourselves with your 9 game conference schedule
Yep. FIU as well. Those 3 will probably try independence for a little while. FIU can park their non-football in the Atlantic Sun. UTEP in the WAC. Louisiana Tech probably in the WAC too. Southland makes sense geographically for Tech but it's a SWAC-level basketball conference with the losses of SFA/SHSU/Abilene to the WAC. WAC has a strong East Texas presence which will be attractive to them. Plus, they wouldn't want to share a conference with the smaller Louisiana universities (just look at their relationship with ULM). NMSU, Liberty, UConn, UMass, and the 3 C-USA leftovers should have some scheduling alliance. That's 6 built-in games. Schedule 2 or 3 buy games to make up for lost revenue. I don't know what NMSU and UMass are trying to achieve but the others could at least conceivably land somewhere in the next re-shuffling.
La Tech would be a shoe-in for the Sun Belt if they didn't treat ULL and ULM like shit. Fucked around and found out.
Any CUSA teams wanna trade spots? I’d like to know what it’s like to compete for a conference championship
We’d still be a middling football program I’m sure, but better off. Hey at least we get tons of money every year to plough back into our clown squad
Even if we were just as unsuccessful at football, at least we would be playing the sort of teams we belong with; UNC, NCST, UVA, GaTech, Virginia Tech
They just have a general superiority complex with them. ULM in particular. They've always wanted to establish themselves as separate from those schools. With ULM, they refuse to play them in football. Haven't done it since 2000 despite the schools being 30 minutes apart. In 2012, they had their best team ever (went 9-3, beat 2 P5 teams + nearly took down A&M with Manziel) and were offered to play ULM in the Independence Bowl. They told them no at the time because they wanted the Liberty against Tulsa. Liberty took Iowa State and a 9-win LaTech was left holding the bag. ULL less so because it's in a different part of the state + they have generally competitive athletics but the superiority thing still exists. Their AD (now an associate at Vandy) took a shot at them and the Sun Belt in a Zoom call last year. They played a home-and-home in 2014-15 but that's it for the last 15+ years in football. The ULM superiority I kinda get because ULM is a small regional university with an athletic budget that's dead last in FBS by a mile. They've had virtually no success in football since moving up to FBS. Plus, it's right there by Ruston. But no one knows the difference between LaTech and ULM outside of the most diehard CFB fans. The ULL superiority is bullshit. They both have a pretty similar academic profile in terms of enrollment and research (Tech is more STEM-oriented whereas ULL is more of a liberal arts school but both are R2). Maybe there was a time in like the 90s or 2000s when Tech was ahead in athletics but there's been little difference in the last decade. If anything, ULL has been better in the major sports.
edit: accidentally attached a screengrab from some article about Gannett gutting local newsrooms and low key endorsing austerity in city governments lol
IIRC CUSA was the first G5 league to renegotiate their TV deal after the cord cutting movement really took off
FIU Liberty Louisiana Tech New Mexico State UConn UMass UTEP I would guess independence? That's enough to fill out schedules, and I'm sure Army will play some of them as well, but I don't really think you can form a conference out of that. Especially since UConn, UMass, and NMSU would be football-only members.
What needs to happen is the MWC adds UTEP and Texas State. LaTech takes Texas State's spot. Then only FIU is left standing.
I wouldn't mind if FIU, Liberty, NM State, UConn, and UMass stopped playing FBS football. Keep UTEP for the bowl and La Tech for the Tim Rattay era nostalgia.
More G5 programs in the South to dilute the talent pool further. They really need to step in and only allow a school like a James Madison with an AAC/MWC-level budget and 20,000+ attendance the ability to go up to FBS. They can't be getting more $10 on their new TV deal. Not even the sickos are watching Jacksonville State/NMSU and FIU/Sam Houston. Granted, there was no coherent way forward with the 3 left, but there's still no identity in C-USA. You have schools scattered from Virginia to South Florida to New Mexico. Big commuter schools, smaller, rural schools, and Liberty.
had seen this earlier on reddit when I saw your post: Stadium Capacity vs. Undergrad Enrollment in FBS Schools The post about 80% of Wake's undergrad enrollment going to saturday's game, and the ensuing discussion, got me wondering which schools could most easily fill their stadiums with students and which needed the most outside help. I pulled enrollment and stadium capacity from these two wikipedia pages respectively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_programs#cite_note-10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_stadiums Spoiler Top 10 highest enrollment to capacity ratio (so anything over 1 means that they have more undergrads than stadium capacity): FIU - 2.42 (56,800 undergrads vs. 23,500 capacity) Georgia State - 2.11 (52,800 vs 25,000) Charlotte - 1.94 (29,700 vs 15,314) UMass - 1.80 (30,600 vs 17,000) Hawaii - 1.77 (17,700 vs 10,000, is their stadium really only 10k?) Kent State - 1.57 (39,300 vs 25,000) UCF - 1.55 (68,600 vs 44,206) Ohio - 1.45 (34,900 vs 24,000) Texas State - 1.29 (38,800 vs 30,000) San Diego State - 1.29 (34,900 vs 27,000) Bottom 10: Air Force - .09 (4237 vs 46,692) Tulsa - .11 (3,297 vs 30,000) Army - .11 (4,300 vs 38,000) Navy - .14 (4,600 vs 34,000) Rice - .15 (7,100 vs 47,000) Notre Dame - .16 (12,300 vs 77,622) TCU - .23 (10,400 vs 45,000) Wake Forest - .26 (8,100 vs 31,500) Miami (FL) - .27 (17,300 vs 65,326) Tennessee - .28 (28,900 vs 102,455) The thing I found the most surprising was how many schools (21) had as much enrollment as stadium capacity. Also, didn't realize how small a school Tulsa was. What does this all mean? Not much as far as I can tell. Some of those G5s could definitely pack their stadium with undergrads alone if they ever were good (and I'd imagine this is part of the reason that UCF has had such success selling their stadium out).
Is there ever realignment in basketball, or do these Ohio River Valley conferences just stay static forever?
~30k is pretty robust. What were you expecting? I think that's about the size of most SEC members. UF is like 50k but we don't have too many mega enrollments (til Texas joins)