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The Predators ownership did their best work in becoming profitable, by getting an additional break from the state the city did not know about after the city redid the arena lease.

Prices also increase by round and are set by the NHL. Thing is the $1 million/game in gate receipts does not assist the city much since that revenue goes to the team plus the city is not going to receive a very small portion in taxes off of each additional home game.

Encourage him not to buy a Harley or hire a former Lady Broncio athlete to his team

Ask those on a FCS forum.

So much for the C-USA/MWC merger.

East Carolina's President spoke about the merger yesterday. From the transcript:

Yesterday's meeting was a Budget workshop and on the agenda was "HR and Compensation". The mayor were talking about benchmarking all salaries for non-union city positions. The man that she and the council was speaking to was their interim HR Manager. They are worried about all FTEs (full time jobs) and the benefits which they have attached with them since benefits. Typically add 30% to one's salary to calculate what it cost a municipality for a worker. This council, like most during budget time, is going through budgets line by line and will question the department head to justify every item they ask about. I have sat through this for five years. A lot of it is grandstanding since they are on TV, some of it is that they did not have much clue on the business of running a city, and some of it brings up actual good questions on operations.

It is easier to schedule a ten team league than a nine team one. Also, adding two more conference games against U of P may take away a higher profile game for a Gonzaga ot St. Mary's to schedule against a top 50 RPI opponent.

Apparently, there are still issues with the C-USA/MWC merger which may have it going back to an "alliance". Note: Wilner and CBSSports' McMurphy went to the web at about the same time Monday afternoon with updates. From Wilner:

However, if Butler/VCU/George Mason were to join, wouldn't that just make the A-10 the same multi-bid conference (2-3 teams) but with three more teams and possibly a higher RPI by one? VCU has not won the CAA regular season title under Smart, GMU is upper tier, but may not remain there under Hewitt. Their TV value may not be raised much, but the competition for the same number of NCAA bids would.

What that article did not state is that the A-10's current tv contract ends in 2013.

It wouldn't surprise me. You don't play home games in the Georgia Dome as a start up with an ultimate goal of the CAA. And C-USA/MWC would love to get a toehold in Atlanta. Makes sense. Isn't UTSA (Texas, San Antonio) pretty much joining the WAC after a few startup years in FCS? They play home games in the Alamodome. Yeah. The difference is that while Georgia State is taking their time before trying to make a move while UTSA is making the move just one year after they started their football program up. You also had to consider that the WAC needed members after losing Fresno State, Nevada and Hawaii so any delay in the move would be horrendous for them. UTSA may not join the WAC on July 1. They could abandon that plan to go to the Sun Belt.

The Big Lead on why Rutgers is basically a bad choice by either the Big Ten or ACC.

On the road. In overtime. 24 hours after a school tragedy. The plane crash is so overstated and not really relevant. The football players have little connection to a WBB coach. More relevant is that they blew a 17 point lead in the 2nd half.

Closing public libraries to subsidize sports teams is so damn American it makes me crap eagles. Since Lieberman voted against the funding, he is going to ask these questions every two weeks at the public meetings. Good for him. Sadly, there will soon be at least one casualty in the upcoming weeks: the Glendale City Manager and possibly an Asst. City Manager. All of them are hired by the council and can easily by fired for not being able to provide the funds the council voted for. The other side is that Gelndale would have to come up with termination pay and spend the money in searching for new executives.

Your best bet is to read columns of beat writers for the respective (err remaining) schools, and follow the WAC message board on scout.com

Within a week? When will the owner's meeting be scheduled? From the story: That is heard every day in other industries and means little. Plus, shouldn't the NHL owners be doing the due diligence since they do not want to keep subsidizing the 30th team any longer?

Karl Benson will hurt the Sun Belt than help it. It would be more cost effective for the Sun Belt to partner with the MAC. All in all, it is clear that the MWC/C-USA merger and the remaining conferences currently seen as "non-AQ" are essentially a group of teams sandwiched in between the FCS and FBS. For the past two years, Big Sky schools realize that the additional cost in providing football scholarships (and salaries for staff at a FBS level) is not worth the effort and process in moving up.

Supposedly, there's going to be some sort of discussion about the BCS this coming May down in Miami. From folks in the know, the consensus is that there's not going to be "AQ status" for any conference, which could begin as early as either this season or 2013. The champions of the SEC, ACC, Big XII, Big Ten, and Pac-12 wil retain their spots in their respective BCS bowl games, with the other three slots essentially becoming "at-large" spots for any team from any conference (contingent on qualifying rules, of course), with no limits on conference representation in these four bowl games. There's also a lot of smoke about using these bowls as a sort-of semifinal round for a national championship game to be played a week later, although the biggest hurdle will come from the Rose Bowl, since they don't want to become some sort of relegation or inferior game to a championship game being played a week later. Some of the discussion will start next week as the BCS ADs (plus Notre Dame) have meetings in Dallas. Remember, they claim that there are "dozens" of proposals for reform.

Please don't link to bleacher report. In fact, stop reading bleacher report. Legit news source here. If I'm the Conference USA, I either make sure this Mountain West merger goes for all sports or I make my pitch to Louisiana Tech and/or a few good Sun Belt schools (maybe even Appalachian State, Wofford, or Georgia Southern from the FCS SoCon) that have wanted to step up to the next level. Their saving grace is the possibility that the AQ status looks to be going away in a few seasons. A dissolved TV contract with one which includes the MWC could give them more revenue as their footprint is large, but markets are not very desirable.

Unlike 1996, there are more options as to who can air their product. Then, it was just ESPN and the FOX regional network. CBS College and NBC Sports Channel had different names, different owners, and did not focus on airing college sports live. There is even the option to stream ones game live if partnered with someone like Yahoo! or Google. The MWC would like to dissolve to void that terrible contract they agreed to which gives the entire conference $12M, meanwhile each ACC school receives that per team. C-USA gets slightly more as a conference than the MWC, but that contract is a year old so any more is just extra for them if the new pool of teams gets to bid for their rights before the Big East does. They don't need ACC or possible BE money, they just want more than what they currently are getting.

From nearly two weeks ago, MWC and CUSA merger in hands of lawyers (and possibly the courts) since both could essentially go out of business to get a new TV deal before any reformed Big East does.

Big XII expansion committee meets today. Again, BYU and Louisville most likely targets.

Isn't the bigger question if there will be a Big East Conference in any form in 2015?

I, for one, look forward to dedicating my life to the utter destruction of Colorado again. /Sucks about losing the 9 game Conference slate, though. Pat Forde talks about how Notre Dame fits into this agreement.