rams80

The WAC's been a multibid once in the last 4 years. I don't suspect trading Fresno State, Nevada, Boise State, and Hawaii for Seattle, Texas State, Texas-San Antonio, UT-Arlington, and Denver is going to improve that state of affairs anytime soon. Also keep in mind Hawaii bailed out after Fresno, Boise, and Nevada bailed. I don't particularly blame them for wanting to leave at that point. And their athletic department IS sufficiently cash-strapped that cutting travel costs is important.

And an upgrade in travel savings. Say goodbye to trips to Ruston, Louisiana WOOF. "No, we're not ever going to get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament playing in the Big West... but at least we saved some money." The selection committee doesn't exactly look kindly on the WAC and hasn't for some time if I recall Utah State's past bubble troubles. Hawaii basketball isn't that good anyway (4 NCAA bids lifetime-3 of the autobid variety), why chain yourself to a WAC that is shifting to the center of the US?

Should this continent-spanning realignment/expansion come to pass, the Big East should rebrand itself as either the Big America Conference, the Great America Conference, or the Great American Conference. "The Conference that will Mount the Orange Bowl" is also sitting there.

And an upgrade in travel savings. Say goodbye to trips to Ruston, Louisiana WOOF.

Oh for s sake. That amusement park in Houston is far more an AL stadium than an NL stadium anyway.

........ ...You can't be serious can you? You are? Congratulations. You trotted out one of the few athletic organizations in this region that does an even poorer job of catering to the well being of the people involved in it than NCAA Division I-A.

Tech is still recovering from getting its accreditation suspended and Oklahoma State's sugar daddy fund didn't weather 2008 all that well. Kansas State's FEDERALLY FUNDED facility is a different story entirely.

I could see the Big Ten being interested in Kansas State if they are looking for a 16th team, assuming Maryland, Rutgers, and Notre Dame have all agreed and Texas or Oklahoma are off the table. K-State isn't (and has never been) an AAU Member Institution - and their ranking of 143 by US News & World Report isn't exactly inspiring for a conference that actually takes academics into account. K-State's getting a multi-billion dollar federal biowarfare research facility. The CIC would want in on that. Good facilities aren't what separates great universities from good ones, it's exceptional tenured faculty and a track record of having alumni who go out into the world and make big things happen (read: having things published in stuffy research journals). And without research money you don't get either. If you get the money, the starving PhDs will come.

I could see the Big Ten being interested in Kansas State if they are looking for a 16th team, assuming Maryland, Rutgers, and Notre Dame have all agreed and Texas or Oklahoma are off the table. K-State isn't (and has never been) an AAU Member Institution - and their ranking of 143 by US News & World Report isn't exactly inspiring for a conference that actually takes academics into account. K-State's getting a multi-billion dollar federal biowarfare research facility. The CIC would want in on that.

The tradition of collegiate athletics in non-US countries does not lend itself towards competition at the NCAA Division I level. Athletics is typically a "club" organization, which therefore does not award mass full tuition scholarships to athletes and have a much lessened fan presence. With all that in mind, Division I for Canadian and Mexican schools is at present a non-starter. Additionally, with Mexico, the ongoing drug war in much of the country would likely give many athletic directors and university presidents much pause. Monterey and Mexico City aren't exactly safe at the moment.

I dunno, prior to Pinkel, Mizzou had elevated dick tripping and talent squandering to an art form over its entire existence. I suspect their most likely SEC outcome is to be another South Carolina in the east division.

Major college athletics (and professional athletics) have changed so much from 1941 that, well, it's kind of apples and fusion reactors.

Because it would be easier to just pile up and burn the millions of dollars NYU would inevitably piss away to bootstrap its entire goddamn athletic department to I-A level, with accompanying hundreds of expensive athletic scholarships and massive facilities upgrades, all to field a team in a city that really doesn't have that much of an interest in collegiate sports, all things considered. If the athletic director seriously proposed trying to take NYU to Division I-A level, I'm certain he would be fired on the spot. PROTIP: Nobody wants East Carolina. They didn't even get a Big East invite. You don't quite understand how things work in NCAA athletics and how things are run. Seriously, you don't. And your knowledge of current events could likely fit on a thimble.

No it doesn't. If it had stability, why would they go and raise the exit fee to $20m? Obviously the folks in ACC-ville are paranoid of the B1G raiding Maryland (though I have no idea why they'd go after a basketball school with an Athletic Department that's flat broke) and the SEC raiding Clemson and/or Florida State. Compared to the Big East though it's the rock of Gibraltar. Yes there is a chance certain schools might bolt if specific conferences came calling, but all of the ACC's membership isn't actively looking for an escape. You can't say that about the Big East.

And they would either refuse to pick up the phone or laugh in your face and hang up. There is no incentive on Earth that would drive those two schools to look at leaving FOR the Big East. The ACC is unimaginably better for those two schools. ,Tampa dropped football in the 1974 because it was a money-losing venture for the school. And South Florida didn't even have a football team back then, nor did the Buccaneers exist yet. It would be utter INSANITY for Tampa to try to resurrect a football team that has a best case scenario of "third banana" in the Tampa Bay football scene. The Shockers dropped football due to a combination of crappy attendance, lost money, NCAA violations, and generally sucking on the field. I suspect the school is more than content to avoid taking on that hassle ever again. No, but that's because I don't regularly drop acid. The ACC football schools have a pretty good thing going for them, and absent SEC or Big Ten invites, are not going to bail. The NCAA has made it very hard for schools to form completely new Conferences, so the chance of a complete breakaway is minimal at best. The WAC isn't a Division II Conference (yet.)

There are no clearly published, transparent guidelines from the BCS for losing AQ status. It'll either be that the Big East keeps their AQ status with minimal fuss, or there will be a huge mess complete with threats of legal action. No, there aren't any guidelines. However there is nothing in the contract that says they need to have six conferences and as the Big East does not have a contractual bowl tie-in, it would be relatively easy to drop them. The BCS needs TV money to function far more than it needs a set number of Conferences to function. If ESPN comes out and says, "we aren't paying you to give a slot to the best team in this random grouping of teams (none of which have sizable fanbases)", the BCS will fold.

...... Good Lord, I don't think its possible to calculate the WAC's desperation at the moment for members.

You still have to find a place to stick everything else, since the Mountain West is going to kick them out. /Air Force is rumored to be looking at the Missouri Valley Conference to park the rest of its athletics //That is going to SUCK

I don't. Having AQ status until 2015 2013 is better than not even sniffing AQ status in that ridiculous merger. Might as well take the Big East money now and move up to a better conference the second one comes calling. Fixed. That's renegotiation D-Day for the Big East. And there's not a whole lot of Big East money lying around thanks to a variety of factors.

1 UConn never had a MAC stage 2 UConn is a land grant school in a state that isn't actively dying and has no pro presence, Buffalo is a SUNY branch school that is located in a dying rust belt city...that is devoted to its pro teams. 3 Buffalo is the poster school in Murray Sperber's screeds about what is wrong in college athletics for a reason, and its because even midmajor football isn't bringing the boon that was promised. Their next step should probably be "build a stadium, any stadium." You don't seem to understand the fundamental issues about why teams want to leave the Big East for other major conferences and conversely do not want to leave other major conferences for the Big East. It's more than tradition and inertia keeping them in place. It's not that simple. The ACC promises its member schools stability, more money (possibly a lot more money) a modestly boosted research profile, and, oh yeah, DePaul and Seton Hall don't get to vote on matters exclusively impacting football. Oh. You're one of THOSE guys. Problem: Maryland does not have football fans. And Navy's a Patriot League school for a reason. 1. Army had a VERY bad experience doing that whole "Conference" thing back in the 90s. 2. They're on the opposite ends of the state dingbat. *Villanova vetoes membership* /See why the football schools might have wanted to leave?

Score another one for "tradition". ... oh wait. It's more like if you're splitting up the 4 biggest powers in the Big Ten, and are placing Ohio State and Michigan in opposite divisions, the other two are going to be paired up as well for inter-divisional rivalries. At least there is some mutual historical grievance between Nebraska and Penn State to work with.

Of course Missouri could still be pissed off about Broyles...WTF?!

I'm pretty sure Arkansas would be Missouri's designated rival under the alignment proposal most touted. I would assume it would be TAM. Arkansas-Missouri would leave South Carolina-TAM as annual rivals. That doesn't fit. To be fair currently Arkansas-SC isn't a fit either, but they have been playing each other a while now. TAM and Mizzou would fit as they are coming from the same conference and thus have some history of playing each other the last 14 years. Except they were in opposite divisions. Which means they played each other twice out of every four years, which boils down to nine times total since the formation of the Big XII. Prior to that, there was only a two-game series played back in the 1950s between the two. There's about as much historical basis for an A&M-Mizzou permanent rivalry as there is for an Arkansas-South Carolina rivalry. Conversely, Arkansas and Missouri share a border and do have something of a history off the field, if not on it. Additionally, speaking as the guy on the ground here, the locals would love to have a battle for the Ozarks, if you will. Yes, I understand this leaves us with A&M and South Carolina playing annually, but hey, the Big Ten has Nebraska and Penn State as designated rivals by default, so travel isn't always a consideration.

NCAA says that, major Conferences say "piss off laddie" and form their own College Athletics Premiere League. NCAA dies like the gutted fish it becomes. The NCAA really doesn't have a lot of regulatory power here.

I'm pretty sure Arkansas would be Missouri's designated rival under the alignment proposal most touted.