Seems legit they have explored other options.
Cant chalk it up to creating demand to get a better ($) deal from MWC.
There just isn’t any $ for wiggle room in MWC.
I heard from some guys who work for FOX that Dayton & St Louis are next up for BE.This was before Gonzaga was ready to make a move. BE already a grind. Zags kick it up a notch.
Gonzaga would be a fine addition to AAC (hoop only)despite the long, long flight.
Agreed. Would love for the conference to add them and entice BYU. Just makes too much sense, especially if you can talk BYU into joining the conference in football.
During the playoffs the announcers would talk about the basketball p6 with the Big East and AAC being referred to as the 6th. The AAC is getting respect as a basketball conference.
Definitely. Conference could have had 4-5 bids this season if UCF and SMU had stayed healthy. Throw in Dan Hurley at UCONN and (hopefully) Penny Hardaway at Memphis and this conference could easily be Top 5 in the nation. Hell, even Tulane was a little frisky this year under Dunleavy.
Now, need to get USF and ECU to become respectable or at least play Non-Conference schedules that aren’t some of the worst in the nation (348th and 350th). It does no good for any team in the conference that they play such weak schedule as all of our RPIs drop when we have to play them.
Which brings up another issue…ECU. Can’t get on USF too much as they do well in football and other sports while having decent academics and exist in Tampa, but East Carolina is a different matter and has become a huge anchor on the conference. They aren’t in a good market, they require extra travel as they don’t have an airport close by, their money sports are at the bottom of the conference, their non-money sports aren’t anything to write home about, their academics are nothing special…at some point, it might behoove the conference to cut bait. It’s time to impose standards on East Carolina and ensure they meet them or bye-bye. To me, that begins with making sure they are at least scheduling halfway decent teams in football and basketball.
Folks, if Gonzaga bolts for another league, BYU isn’t going to stay in the WCC.
Just saying.
Looking at the attendance figures. Its BYU -#14 in entire NCAA.
Gonzaga- smaller gym but sold out every game then a bunch of either small gyms or crowds.
From
http://www.wccsports.com/sports/m-baskbl/stats/2017-2018/confldrs.html
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketball_RB/Reports/attend/2017.pdf
I never understood the Tulane/Tulsa/ECU additions. The conference would be better off with 8 teams in all sports, Navy in football, and Wichita State basketball. I think ECU should be cut from the league as they don’t help tv, are terrible in basketball, and don’t really have any rivals in this conference or travel partners.
ECU has beat us in averaged higher football attendance 20 of the last 20 years…maybe longer.
Tulane = New Orleans.
Tulsa = they’ve been good before.
Not saying I agree with the arguments, or that I don’t agree with you…just saying.
I honestly think we plucked them from C-USA not as much to make AAC stronger, but make C-USA weaker.
East Carolina was once a football school especially in the late 1990s - early 2000s and gave us problems. ECU and Southern Miss should have been added to the conference before Tulane or Tulsa was added…
I believe they’ve led the league in football attendance every year even though they haven’t been very good on the field
I get the argument about attendance, the problem is that doesn’t translate to TV eyeballs and they don’t travel at all. So, basically, their attendance is good for them, but doesn’t do anything for the conference as a whole.
And, their attendance doesn’t translate over to basketball.
In the end, I’m OK with them being in the league, but some standards have to be set. USF and ECU both hurt the conference this year with their pitiful non-conference schedules. They have to do better, and the first step is to schedule a schedule that would at least be in the top 200 RPI. Same for the rest of the conference, which includes us.
@pray10, how hard is it to schedule better teams in basketball? We talk about football all the time, where it is incredibly difficult to schedule P5 teams, and nearly impossible to schedule good P5 teams. Is the same true of basketball?
ECU has played good East Coast teams in the past and I’m sure will continue to do so. I get that Tulsa and Tulane were brought in to include the urban areas where they are located, even though schools are small. Despite ECU’s game attendance, they have no urban footprint hence limited TV viewers (I’m assuming). As far as including So Miss in the conference, please forget that one. Talk about hicksville with no footprint. Mississippi, ugh. If Wichita fielded a football team I’d much rather see them in AAC than ECU. If UMass wanted to upgrade their football, I’d like to see them added to the conference at the expense of any of the three late additions. Amherst, Mass isn’t that far from Boston and they also play a couple of games every year in the city. Besides, a heck of a lot better road trip than Greenville, NC, or Wichita.
P5 teams may be hard to schedule, but there are enough other teams that are better than 200 in the RPI that they can schedule. ECU scheduled one team in non-conference this past year that was above 200 in the RPI (Radford - 115). USF ended up playing 2, but both were because of the tourney they were in (Indiana - 125, Eastern Michigan - 110)
This was the same thing that Dickey and Sampson did early on…coaches do this to get wins when they have a bad team in order to pad the record a bit. Problem is, it’s a very selfish thing to do as it kills the conference RPI as a whole since RPI doesn’t just include your record, but the record of your opponents as well. It’s why the AAC continues to struggle to get more teams in as the better teams are handicapped by having to play the bad teams at the bottom of our conference with RPI’s in the 200’s and 300s. Power conferences don’t usually have teams ranked that low.
There was an initiative on the women’s side to start getting teams to play better non-conference schedules and it has improved the overall strength of the conference. The time is for the men to do the same.
WCC making concessions:
“The WCC announcement could throw a wrinkle into negotiations, giving Gonzaga two key scheduling provisions that it has pushed for: an unbalanced 16-game conference season in the 10-team league, down from 18, plus a double bye directly to the semifinals of the conference tournament for the top two seeds.”
“The West Coast Conference has been an great diving platform for the growth of the program, but it has become an anchor as of late, and the Zags can’t wait around to see what will happen.”
Figured the WCC would try.
Gonzaga will counter and ask for a bye right into the finals.
“You look at what the West Coast Conference did to accommodate them,” Thompson said. “Congratulations, that’s a good deal for them. There are just some things in there that I don’t think our membership would have accepted.
“They’re offering some things that probably don’t make sense for our league. Most conferences are adding games. They’re going to fewer games. We’ve increased our (NCAA Tournament) unit bonus, but what I’m hearing they’re doing, we’re not going to do that.”
In addition, Gonzaga is believed to receive a big chuck of the WCC’s TV contract with ESPN. Coming to the Mountain West would have meant more games on CBS Sports Network, which isn’t as widely available as ESPN and which Zags coach Mark Few privately told people concerned him.
Its official.
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