Wichita State to join the American

John Royal’s only looking at Wichita State through the lens of TV money. With how much CBS is paying for the NCAA tourney, another way to make good money is going deep into the NCAA tournament. Wichita State will hopefully help with that, especially this year. If they do, as well as others, that helps the conference financially.

He also took that last quote by Aresco out of context as the commish was saying that in terms of basketball not in terms of the entire picture.

It wasn’t John Royal.

The byline says John Royal.

My bad. I was looking Jackson Gorman, but he’s apparently the photographer.

100% agree. This expansion is less about becoming a P5 and more about making our conference better any way we possibly can. Bringing in WSU’s basketball program certainly does that. It instantly increases the RPI of every team in our conference, which could easily result in converting a bubble team to a tourney team. It also gives us another perennial dancer in March. This expansion will bring more money to the conference which is about all we can do until we get a P5 invite.

I agree, it only helps, it does not hurt. It’s a good move. I was not aware they don’t play football.

http://www.gctelegram.com/sports/wichita-state-pays-million-entrance-fee-to-join-american-conference/article_2e5c98c2-579e-50d2-ad38-bf799c6d9510.html

:expressionless:

John Royal always says the sky is falling. He’d throw sh*t on a gold brick. I bet drinking with him is as much fun as going to the holocaust museum.

Bingo. The NCAA Selection Committee is biased against mid-major conferences based on SOS. This bias is reflected in the number of teams selected and the seed of those teams. Adding WSU will help both, which will lead to more postseason glory (aiding recruiting), and more tournament $$ credits.

There’s another Wichita State available to us – in baseball.

Dallas Baptist is a D3 school who plays D1 baseball. They’ve made 7 NCAA tournaments in the last 10 years, advancing to a Super Regional in 2011. They have a beautiful new stadium. I would love to add them (on the condition that they will never be more than a baseball member). It would solidify our league as Top 5 in baseball, and there would be years where we would be 3rd or 4th.

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I like the idea of adding Dallas Baptist for baseball.

That said, the problem with adding schools for specific sports is that their success is oftentimes linked to the particular coaches.

Wichita State has had intermittent periods of success in basketball over the years, but Gregg Marshall is single-handedly responsible for turning Wichita State into a perennial powerhouse. Dan Heefner is Dallas Baptist baseball.

If either of those guys leaves, then both schools are one bad hire away from retreating into irrelevance in those specific sports.

Let’s be real about this. We were 0-8 against them in C-USA and we are 1-7 against them in the AAC. Saying we are 2-17 since we got good, doesn’t feel any better. lol

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