Planning Ahead In Case UH Is Left Out

Football
21

One has to plan for worst case scenario in the event UH is left out of the Big 12.

  1. No P5s expand other than Big 12
  2. Big 12 expands by 4 taking Cincy, UCF, Memphis, and either BYU or Boise Sate leaving the top tier of the AAC decimated
  3. UH is left in the AAC with 8 remaining football members: UH, ECU, USF, Tulane, Tulsa, Temple, SMU and Navy.

One has to assume that ESPN would not be happy about this as the promotion of “worse teams” to AAC pay would need to occur. I believe 10 teams are required to have a conference championship so there would be expansion to that while not going above 10 would keep ESPN’s costs down.

Top teams to consider promoting would be:
Boise State, Colorado State, UNM, UTSA, ODU, FAU, FIU, Southern Miss although I’m not sure any MWC would want to jump to that AAC. It could be time to promote UTSA and whoever brings us the best value between ODU, FAU, and FIU.

New AAC would be 10 teams round robin style with top 2 playing in conference championship to get the best matchup possible on tv (sound familiar?):
UH, ECU, USF, Tulane, Tulsa, Temple, SMU, Navy, UTSA, and ODU/FAU/FIU. The upside would be 3 good drivable roadies to Dallas, NO, and SA and we should be able to be VERY GOOD in that conference in football and basketball. Plenty of schools in larger markets that will keep our floor higher than CUSA or MWC in terms of payout (Houston, SA, Dallas, DC area, Philly, New Orleans, Tampa, and Norfolk or Miami).The downside is there wouldn’t be many teams that would kiss the top 25 in football or basketball other than us and maybe SMU occasionally? We would need to aggressively schedule THE BEST OOC schools so we could to gin up some excitement in terms of scheduling which is opposite of our philosophy now.

The alternate option would be trying to go with SMU to the MWC and get them to expand to 14, but does the time zone difference, travel, $, etc… make sense and would they even want to expand?

22

Ohh lord it’s getting worse. Only way I can think of getting this thread shut down is to talk Politics.
May be worth it. :grin::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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23

Sorry but this is reality if the Big 12/8 takes 2 to 4 and we’re not one of them!

24

I don’t thk the higher ups at UH are planning for any of that nonsense at this point in time. Sorry that’s just reality.

25

If the Big 12 takes any of those 4 or all of them, it means absolutely nothing.

They get nothing at the new contract time. They can call themselves whatever they like. It is the end OPI the P5.

UT and OU were carrying them and sadly we all know it.

26

the already decided playoff expansion format is 6 highest ranked champions and 6 atlarges…

the sec fear is that theyve built such a reputation and catalog of schools that theyd get all the atlarge spots

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ALWAYS plan for the best and prepare for the worst…

aka got the PAC12 stoogies in the humidor and Coastal Carolina on speed dial

28

Hence the alliance was formed to put up hurdles keeping SEC from getting the abundance of bids and keeping ESPN from having total control

29

Don’t sleep on Rocco’s, they have some talent…

image

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30

not sure why people keep name-dropping texas schools… I think the only texas school we will look at is rice based on academics, history with current aac members, and former swc prestige… smu will not want to be seen as equals with utsa or unt

(keep in mind the conference MO, is big metro teams with high potential- with academic considerations)
i think the list of teams that will have legitimate chances are:

  • IMO 1st we will attempt the true west division. Both boise and sdsu want to join the {current} aac as full members (nowhere to put their Olympics), the aac only wants them football only (huge financial burden with Olympics). if we lose enough, we try to add those 2, and 2 other MWC and make a true west division… they might still be interested if the houston/smu/memphis core remained in the AAC… if that fails we go to one of the options below

the get the band back together options:

  • USM - long history with current aac members, but low ceiling budget-wise and potential wise
  • UAB - rivalry with Memphis, respectable academics, invested a ton into facilities…but in Birmingham (not great market), not historically good in football & at the mercy of bama (already tried to shut down once)
  • Marshall - (read usm)

Academic options:

  • Rice- the best academic option available, swc history, Houston rivalry-- doesn’t invest in sports
  • Buffalo - aau member is a decent metro, competitive in basketball and football

The high ceiling but need work options:

  • Georgia State- 50k enrollment, in a huge metro, in a recruiting hotbed, in a state with not many fbs teams… perfectly fits aac MO (basically UCF 15 years ago)… but facilities are poor
  • UMass- in the top 29 most populated states, all state flagship universities are doing 50k-70k+ attendance except UMass {mass is #16 most poluated} but UMass is new to the FBS and could get there with time… but facilities are very poor
  • Charlotte- GaState but less students and smaller metro

The odd but worth a look options:

  • Liberty - mega-donors spending extraordinary amounts to be competitive in football and basketball, 45k student… but very strong religious ties
  • App state- no market at all, not great in academics, smaller enrollment (20k), horrendous basketball… but averaging 11 wins a season for the last 7 seasons in football, and the 10 seasons before that they averaged 11wins a season but in the FCS… they are 1 statue of liberty play vs Oklahoma in a ny6 from putting themselves on Boise status
  • army - if they want but are likely to say no

The “build-up basketball” bball only invite options:

  • vcu, dayton and saint louis

we’ll have lots of options

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31

Having options… And having good options are two very different things.

32

there no homerun options, or the aac would already currently be at 12 (instead f 11)… but there are option we can add today that can be seen homerruns when we look back on it in 5-6years from now…

we once added recent fcs ucf, horrible football bottom feeder memphis, historically horrible at football cincy, death penalty smu that was never going to recover, temple who was kicked out the big east for being horrible… that worked out well for us …itll work itself out again

33

Most depressing topic since 2016. Worse than the Army game. LOL

6 Likes
34

I agree with most of this, though would not count UTSA out if they can put together a good presentation. If they’re the only ones that can show the ability to raise the kind of money to compete, then I don’t think the AAC is to go pick Georgia State for the sake of SMU’s pride. They have attendance potential most other schools lack.

My guess is UAB at this point.

35

My fear is with ESPN having so much influence in a new playoff format the SEC will get at least 3 teams in every single year, whether it be earned or not. To me it has a basketball feel where the CBS/Big 10 gets 8-10 bball teams in the Dance and 7 of them lose on the first weekend. I would like to see more competition from the other networks.

36

OMG! Please stop!

That is nightmarish. I don’t want to go backwards again.

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