Continuing the discussion from Wichita State emerges as potential basketball-only addition to the AAC:
@BradFromHouston pondered why not become the first 16 team conference?
My question, are there 4 quality teams that could both add value to the conference and the conference to them? If so, who are those teams?
Raid the MWC:
Boise and SDSU were in the original Big East soon to be AAC. Wish they would have stayed. This would expand the footprint and markets for the AAC. The new 16-team AAC would be a Cage Match of what are arguably the best of the non-P5.
Are they tied in to a grant of rights?
I don’t think Boise will get rid of that ridiculous deal they have right now. I don’t think Utah State carries that much of Utah (or the western US for that matter).
I think from a media/viewer footprint view, it would make sense to go after…
UNLV
San Diego State
Colorado State
As for the fourth, I would suggest New Mexico (for academics and being an up-and-coming flagship football school with a decent recent basketball history).
I like the idea of covering all timezones so that you can squeeze any of your matchups into any timeslot for more conference exposure. It’s a bit of a booger on team and fan travel…but with a year’s worth of heads up from the conference, who wouldn’t love a long weekend trip to Colorado, San Diego or Las Vegas?
How about Air Force rather than New Mexico? I don’t research any of this…just throwing out ideas that look good on paper. Navy and Air Force in the same conference would be pretty cool.
I figured Utah State would bring the American brand to Utah. I don’t expect it to be huge but it would be new. I don’t think BYU or Utah are joining the American.
I didn’t even think of Air Force. Good add. I think it might make a little more sense than New Mexico. Would make travel easier by knocking out two in Colorado for the non-football sports.
We’d be the second 16-team conference. The WAC went from 10 to 16 in 1996, adding Rice, SMU, TCU and others. It was such a disaster, half the league split off to create the MWC in 1999.
Where did they go wrong? Also, the landscape has changed much since 1996 and 1999.
BYU, Air Force, San Diego State and Boise State.
The reason why Boise State bailed out last time was that we were offering them football only. With adding four from the west, they will be able to be their own division for all the non-football sports. For example in basketball each division plays each other home and road which is 6 games, then you play the other 12 teams each once. In football however becomes the problem. Many teams have been scheduling 4 OOC games up to 5, 6 years in the future and an 8 game conference schedule with 16 teams will cause serious problems every year in tie breaking scenarios.
I think you try to avoid BYU if at all possible. They are the junior religious version of UT (Notre Dame being the senior).
Scrap Utah State in favor of either New Mexico or Air Force. Utah State has zero of a national footprint. Zero! New Mexico is taking football seriously and would take advantage of an AAC affiliation to continue building their program. They have had a strong basketball prigram for 40+years. Air Force? They’re Air Force.
Bad idea, 16 g5 schools in one conference. There will be 4 16 team conferences:
Sec, acc, big and Pac 12.
UH needs to consistently big in the sac championship game and win most of time this making ny6. This should get UH into the correct one of 4 16 team conferences.
Would rather see an 18-20 team conference than 16. Get a full round robin on one side and then play a championship game against the other. As far as G5, winner would basically get the access bowl spot each year.
The league stretched from Hawaii to Houston. Travel expenses were nuts. And there wasn’t enough revenue to justify splitting it 16 ways.
UCONN Blog touched on AAC expansion today:
Without knowing financials, I’m not sure any of the available choices make sense. Boise State and BYU are probably a no-go without getting guaranteed access to the NY6, Army and Air Force don’t make sense by themselves, and Georgetown and Villanova, while extremely enticing for basketball, wouldn’t move the needle on football for years.
Remember that ESPN is bleeding revenue and viewers. Fox is right behind them. They own college football right now but that is going to come to a screeching halt in about 5 years. Cut off that cash flow and the whole P5/G5 BS falls apart. There will be a calf scramble as teams and conferences frantically try to adjust to a post-ESPN world.
It is almost impossible to sit here today and predict how things will fall out. What I do know is many teams arrogantly act as though they are in a particular status due to merit. In a post-ESPN world they are going to get a huge dose of reality. In that world schools like UH will no longer be artificially repressed by so called flagship programs. Our natural resources will see us through this transition. Pity schools like Tech which are artificially proped up by programs like UT. It will indeed be a brave new world, and its just around the corner.
Hopefully the powers that be at the AAC and school presidents are at least conisidering all options including adding four of the following…BYU (Morman following), Air Force (national interest), New Mexico (small state, but you pretty much tie down the whole state), Boise St (respectful opponent plus see New Mexico), San Diego St (semi respectable program with SoCal eyeballs), San Jose St (NorCal eyeballs) and UNLV ('nough said).
SEC or bust!
Who all would you add? Any MAC teams?
Why make a big pile of crap even bigger? Just plot our exit strategy and follow through.
©Copyright 2017 Coogfans.com