pmoehrin
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Posts posted by pmoehrin
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1 hour ago, Brass said:
The only place you're building a new arena in Hartford is the north end near Dunkin' Park or something.
I'd just assume tear down the XL Center and build a new arena in the same spot because, as you said, there's nowhere else to go, and I doubt you're beating the XL Center's location even if there was.
I know they've slapped a few band-aids on it over the years, but the design of the arena itself has been outdated for decades, which is why I wouldn't favor another renovation. There's no need for an indoor shopping mall in conjunction with an arena in 2024, which is now a giant atrium of mostly wasted space.
In the interim, the Wolf Pack could play in either Springfield or Bridgeport, maybe even splitting some time between both. And after 3-4 years, Hartford would have a new state-of-the-art arena to attract concerts, special events, and potentially an NHL team.
Regardless of what happens with the NHL, they're going to have to do something because that arena is about to turn 50, and it looks like it.
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Hartford and Springfield should be a CSA, and I don't know why it's not. I agree with keeping them separate metro areas, but plenty of people live in one city and commute to the other for work.
If you combined the two metros into one CSA, you would get something comparable to Vegas, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Nashville in terms of population. Hartford does punch a little above its weight class when it comes to economic performance relative to most other cities in the United States. But Springfield does not, and for the life of me, I don't understand why you would want to build an arena between the two cities, and not just in downtown Hartford. Not only is Hartford the more economically viable option, but it's not even up for debate. This sounds like the Richfield Coliseum plan, only worse.You also have one of the most elite college basketball programs in the country playing there, along with the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, so it's not like the area is underserved for basketball.
I'm not saying a team in Hartford couldn't work. But this layout, with the teams splitting time between the two cities and building a 17,000+ seat arena in the middle of nowhere, sounds like a very pie-in-the-sky idea.If you want to bring a team to the Hartford/Springfield area, go with an NHL team because that area is more into hockey than basketball. There's a reason why six out of 64 D1 hockey programs are in Connecticut and Western Mass in addition to three AHL clubs.
If the Celtics wanted to return to playing a handful of regular season games a year in Hartford, I think that would be enough.
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I think the NIMBY groups in Arlington Heights were gearing up to pitch the hissy fit to end all hissy fits, and the Bears simply noped out before it got to that point.
So, after all that, they're content to move across the street.
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2 hours ago, DCarp1231 said:
I'd just like to know the names of the people behind the group.
I want to call amateur hour on some of the data and wording they've used, but I've seen well that stuff plays when you're telling people what they want to hear. But I would have zero faith in any nameless group. There's a reason they don't want you to know who they are. -
52 minutes ago, TBGKon said:
Yeah, they really need to use that "market" term correctly. Orlando's market population should be 2mil+. Jacksonville is at least 1.5mil.
Atlanta was clearly ignored. They must've used Duluth, GA as the city "market"
The odd thing is I would actually agree with viewing potential market data for a low-level minor league team on a local level because you're not going to get more than a few dozen people a night traveling an hour to see ECHL hockey.
But if you want to know why nobody up until now has had the bright idea to build a 6-8k arena outside of the capital district in suburban Maryland, these figures start getting into why.
There's a reason why arenas outside of college venues tend to be built almost exclusively in population centers. People generally don't like getting in a car and driving 45 minutes at night to get to or from wherever they're going. And that's about how far you have to drive from Frederick to reach another significant population base.Frederick County ranks around 260th among the most populated counties in the US, and it ranks about the same by population density. What other areas are like that? Asheville, Poughkeepsie, Green Bay, Southeastern Connecticut, Tallahassee. And it's a mixed bag when it comes to arena quality or even existence in those areas. But you don't preach caution when you want something.
If it were me, I would be looking to go in and around Rockville before Frederick, but that would also be a lot more expensive, and maybe outside the budget range of whoever these people are.
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1 hour ago, DCarp1231 said:
The group is claiming that Frederick would be the 5th highest population market in the ECHL
For “market data” they’re clearly using city population data for the top four. And by that metric El Paso is just as good of a market as Boston.However, Worcester’s population is around 200k, and they have an ECHL team, so I don’t know why they’re not listed.
But for Frederick, they’re using their county population, so it’s not even an apples-to-apples comparison. Just blatantly using different metrics here.
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1 hour ago, throwuascenario said:
I am from the area and I don't consider Durham to be in the Raleigh metro but I can't fully explain why.
There is a clear difference between what the two regions do. Raleigh is a traditional, modern American city. Office-centric and with numerous research hubs in the surrounding area, just like Charlotte.
Durham is a clear manufacturing hub that also specializes in pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Duke has a medical school, NC State does not. But even these tend to bring in a lot of blue-collar jobs. You still need people to mop the floors of the hospitals and labs and provide cafeteria food.There is a clear difference there, but the same dynamic exists in many other places where the metro areas aren't split. That's why I'm curious as to why here but not there. They're in the same state, share the same airport, and I don't see a natural geographic border. 540 appears to be the effective border between the two cities.
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1 hour ago, BottomlessPitt said:
It's like that with San Jose as well. It's a separate market from San Francisco-Oakland as a MSA but is still lumped in with SF-OAK as a TV Market. Weird stuff.
I could understand splitting San Jose off from San Francisco because it's served by its own airport, and it's almost 60 miles between San Francisco and San Jose. That's not really that close, but there's definitely a connection between the two cities, hence the CSA designation, which I 100% agree with.
41 minutes ago, B-Rich said:Meanwhile , in New Orleans, we have nearby places an hour away, where a considerable amount of people COMMUTE from and go to New Orleans to work (Mississippi Gulf Coast, Baton Rouge, Houma-Thibodaux) but those are considered their own MSAs and TV markets. They and cities a little further away, like Lafayette, Alexandria, Hattiesburg) are also full of Saints fans and now, to some degree Pelicans fans.
In the Northeast, it's pretty much like pulling teeth to get people to travel more than 25 miles from their home. Obviously, I'm generalizing here. But once you get west of the Mississippi, people won't give a second thought to driving 70 minutes to the grocery store.
So, I can 100% believe that in a state like Louisiana, a two-hour drive from Acadiana to New Orleans is seen as nothing. How willing people are to commute is usually inversely correlated to how much money they make, and once you get north of I-10, you go from below-average incomes to some of the dirt poorest regions in the country.
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1 hour ago, BottomlessPitt said:
41. Raleigh
I agree with most of what the Census Bureau does, but I don't know why Raleigh and Durham would be considered two separate metro areas.
They share an airport, it's less than 30 miles between the two cities, and there's no natural or state border diving the two cities. Chatman County is considered part of the Durham metro area, but it's no further to get to Durham than to get to Raleigh from there.They don't separate Tacoma from Seattle on a metro level, and they're just as far apart from each other.
Maybe someone from the area can explain because I don't get it.
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Utah is an odd case because even though Salt Lake City is barely a top 50 US metro area, the Salt Lake City media market covers the entire state and bleeds into parts of Nevada and Wyoming.
So even though it would be the smallest metro area with an MLB team, in terms of media market, they would be ahead of several MLB clubs, whereas Vegas would be ahead of several MLB clubs when it came to metro size but dead last when it came to media market size.
It's also a state that's experienced 20% percentage growth in population almost every decade since the first census data was taken in 1850. The population of the state and the SLC metro area have both doubled since the Jazz moved there in '79, so I think its far more of a matter of when not if Utah gets an MLB team now that the financing aspect is set. It's just too big of a TV market for MLB to refuse.
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2 hours ago, Walk-Off said:
Thus, I am curious as to how much of an edge -- if any -- the MAC holds over the A10 in media rights revenue these days.
I would assume none outside of football.
The A10 regularly sends two teams to the tourney. Usually three.
The MAC has never sent more than two teams to the tourney, and even that feat hasn't been accomplished in over 20 years. They've only had one team finish in the top 25 since 1990.
I don't think it will do anything to help the football team out, but it sure will hurt the basketball team by sending them from one of the best conferences in D1 to one of the worst.Might as well drop down to America East. At least Albany, Maine, and UNH are fairly close by. But again, every sport has to suffer because nothing gets in the way of giving the football program what it wants.
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1 hour ago, BrySmalls said:
Does the Meadowlands have space for a baseball stadium?
The Meadowlands is just an undeveloped piece of land north of Newark.
You could easily build 3-4 MLB ballparks there, no problem if you wanted to. That's not the issue.
The issue with putting a ballpark in the Meadowlands is that there's nothing to do around there. You'd be coming for the game and going straight home as soon as it's over unless you want to check out that overpriced white elephant of a mall that finally opened after a decade. I wouldn't view that as a dealbreaker, but it's not what MLB teams want anymore. They want the ballpark to be connected to the surrounding area in some way. Not a standalone in a sea of parking like Kauffman Stadium, or Citi Field.
The problem is there's nothing on the North Jersey map that screams BUILD HERE!!!! There's always some kind of tradeoff between accessibility, the quality of the surrounding neighborhood, and the inherent issue of there being no geographic population center for that part of the state.
I don't expect ever to see a Jersey-based MLB team in my lifetime, but if they ever came, my advice for a ballpark location would be to build wherever you can.
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You could 100% put an MLB team in New Jersey, but it would never go in Trenton.
Besides being the effective northeast border of the Philly metro area, Trenton is very isolated from the rest of the state. No major highway goes through the city. You have to take 95 and get off onto either 195 or 295. There's no other way of getting there by car unless you're already on 195, which means you're coming from the shore. You're an hour's drive from any international airport, and train service is limited to one station.
Any Jersey team would have to be based in or around Newark. You couldn't go any further west or south than where 287 runs.
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2 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:
I'll take it in a different direction -- it shows the pull created by being on WGN all over the country and creating the mystique that is Wrigley Field.
The White Sox had a historic ballpark that Jerry couldn't tear down fast enough, and they also had a deal with WGN to carry all the games that Reisndorf couldn't get out of fast enough because he wanted his games to be exclusively on cable.
The Cubs thought big; he thought small. That's always been the difference.
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What I find interesting about Jerry Reinsdorf trying to move to the Loop in a clear effort to get the White Sox out of stepchild status is that the whole dynamic with the Cubs being the clear-cut number-one baseball team in Chicago didn't start until Reinsdorf bought the team.
All through the 50s and 60s, the White Sox outdrew the Cubs virtually every year, and even into the early/mid-80s, the teams were pretty much neck and neck with attendance figures.The last year the White Sox outdrew the Cubs at the gate was 1992, and it's not even close most years. The Cubs outdrew the White Sox by over a million fans yearly from 2014 to 2019. In 2017 and 2018, the difference was almost 1.6 million.
And it's not like the Cubs have had fantastic ownership at this timespan, either. Just one World Series appearance and win. Same as the White Sox. That shows how much people dislike what Reisndorf has done with the franchise since taking from Bill Veeck before the '81 season for the paltry sum of $19 million, or about $65 million in today's money. Don't let anyone tell you money doesn't grow on trees. It absolutely does.
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7 minutes ago, The_Admiral said:
The Bay Area has to have some of the weirdest, clunkiest geography in America. It's probably a big reason why San Francisco became an urban theme park: it had to become an attraction for people reverse-commuting to all the tech campuses 40 miles south. Nothing can make sense when the population horseshoes a giant bay.
It's basically four metro areas in one. San Francisco, Oakland, and Silicon Valley/San Jose are the big three, but even wine country, aka the North Bay, has multiple cities with over 100k+ people living there, and as a whole, the region is home to around 1.5 million people.
That area is not considered part of the San Francisco metro, but it definitely falls within the Bay Area ticket base. That's why you can't look at the metro area as the be-all-end-all when it comes to evaluating markets.
The simple answer would be to have the A's move to San Jose/Silicon Valley and call it a day, but nothing can be that simple.
The original sin of the Oakland A's was Charles Finley agreeing to be the stepchild franchise because he was that desperate to get out of Kansas City. Every issue the A's have ever had with trying to leave the Coliseum stems from the original agreement that said the A's would never consider moving to Santa Clara County.
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Pat lost some capital with me with how he handled this. Not that I had a strong opinion of him either way before any of this went down, but he could and should have shut this before effectively being told to. I still don't hate him, but I did lose some respect for him.
If you want Aaron Rodgers to talk sports on the show, that's fine. ESPN is a sports network, and that's what they should be focused on. They shouldn't be discriminating against who they have on their network based on political beliefs.
But when you start moving outside that lane, and it's not contributing to any meaningful conversation in a constructive way. And you're a national television network? Regardless of whether I'm watching that show or not, I got a problem with that.
I'm not saying ESPN couldn't or shouldn't ever talk about social issues. It's inherently engrained into everything. But it should be through the lens of sports. Jimmy Kimmel and what's going on with the fallout over Jeffrey Epstein has nothing to do with anything sports-related. At all. And that's not the only issue at play here.
I have family members who took demonstrably false information at face value, and it cost them their lives. That's why it's personal for me. That's where my anger over this comes from, and I direct as much of it as I can at the people I hold responsible for spreading that garbage. Aaron Rodgers is one of the names on that list. He ain't at the top, but he's there.
With McAfee, I hope that he learned some lessons here and that this is the worst thing that ever comes out of his show during his tenure at ESPN. I still don't have any ill will towards him. I'm just disappointed because I thought he was better than this.
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13 minutes ago, Cujo said:
Q: So tell me why the McAfee Show is on ESPN again?
Days after his show started that Rodgers/Kimmel fiasco (which I's sure ESPN/Disney was loving), he goes on-air to call an ESPN VP a "rat".
I don't know.
My experience has been if you call out an executive at your company for having it in for you, you might as well start packing up your desk right then and there. Especially if it's someone who's been there for over 30 years, and you've been there all of five minutes by comparison.
Even if they weren't actively looking for a reason to get rid of you before, they sure are now.Maybe McAfee thinks he's untouchable. Maybe he is. But we're still in the F around part. The find out part will be coming in the next week or so, I'm sure.
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5 minutes ago, mrcubfan415 said:
TBH I don’t mind Penn State in the Big 10. For 12 teams I’d do yours but with Penn State instead of Missouri (and moving Northwestern to the West). For 14 teams, I’d do yours plus Nebraska and Penn State, though I do think 14 is kinda stretching it. I agree though that USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten is not a good move.
They've been in the Big Ten for 30+ years now, so they've definitely made some inroads in terms of establishing long-term rivalries, especially when it comes to football.
But they were the most geographically isolated team in that conference until Rutgers and Maryland came aboard. Hindsight being 20/20, they should have been admitted to the Big East when they applied, and instead, they got big-leagued, and that wound up being the original sin of Big East football.
If Penn State had joined that conference from the start, the Big East would probably still be fielding football today.
In the grand scheme of things, I can think of far more egregious conference alignments than having Penn State in the Big Ten.
The more I think about it, I think what should happen is football should be allowed to do its own thing, much like ice hockey is, and every other sport can make sense.
14 college teams in a conference is insane. You can barely play half the conference in football. Any larger, and you might as well split it into two conferences again. The only reason not to would be for conference title game money.
But I digress. All these schools bought the ticket for all these crazy realignments, now they have to get on the ride. And it's not going to go how any of them expect it will, because I'm still hearing music playing, which means the game of musical chairs is still on.
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Hello all. So, this is probably the longest post I've ever done here, and it's because it covers an entire realignment of Division 1 conferences.
If you want to see my thoughts on the current situation of college conference realignment, click the spoilers button below.
One thing I will say is that I kept the maximum number schools of every conference at twelve for reasons mentioned in the comments below. I would also estimate each college saving about 200 miles round trip per road trip with these proposed conference alignments. Conference USA, the American Athletic, the Big XII, and the Big East would see the biggest differences.
SpoilerRegardless of what you feel should be done, I think everyone can agree it's getting ridiculous now and even past the point of making any sense.
Why on earth would you want a 16-team college football conference? You can't possibly play everyone in a single season, and if you divide a conference that large into two divisions, then you might as well go ahead and make two separate conferences. There's no difference at that point.
Travel-wise, I understand it makes almost no difference for football because they only play once a week. But for every other sport, traveling from North Carolina to Texas to California and back is a logistical nightmare. These aren't pro athletes. These are full-time students who go to class when they aren't playing. Money is tighter. Resources are tighter.
This is a challenge even under the best of circumstances; that's why teams plan travel arrangements as far into the future as possible.
That's also not even getting into the fans who now have to stay up later for games or any of that stuff.
Long story short, as I see it, everyone involved with college sports at some level, whether as a fan, coach, athlete, trainer, etc., is worse off now for all of these conference realignments than they were before. The only ones better off are the executives and those brokering the television deals driving this. Everyone else loses something here.
So, with that said, I've decided to throw my hat into the ring and come up with my conference realignment for the entirety of Division 1 sports. History teaches you to look for ideas that worked and repurpose them in a modern way, and that's the lens I tried to view this.
Let's get back to having the classic Big East basketball conference. Let's fix what was wrong with the original Metro Conference, something Conference USA tried and failed to do. It wasn't a bad idea; the execution was.Let's reign in the bloat of the A10 and CAA. They haven't improved through expansion because the geographic footprint was never the issue. Let's send some FBS teams back down to FCS, where they could be more competitive and not perpetually 2-10 or worse.
Let's correct wrongs with Penn State being in the Big Ten that should have never happened in the first place or the Big East dropping football and scattering the Northeast teams. Let's get Maryland back to the ACC, where they belong, and get that conference back to what it was about. Jordan/Bias couldn't happen now.
There are so many wrongs I've seen over the years that not only have never been fixed, but they've snowballed. And with the collapse of the Pac-12, it's spiraling. That conference existed in some form for over 100 years. How did you manage to break this? It's like someone breaking your fridge at a party. How do you even do that?And I feel the answer to that question is the same question here. This is the sports equivalent of being drunk, and the drink of choice is money, as it usually is with things like this. Money drove all these moves, ultimately making everything worse for everyone except the people drinking it. Everyone else is the sober person at the party who has to clean up.
I can cite dozens more examples than the ones I've already mentioned. Even if you don't agree with everyone, it's death by 1,000 cuts. At least a few are going to ring true.
I can't say this about any major pro sport, but I can say with college sports, almost every fan realignment proposal I've seen without exception has been better than what we have now. If that's your only goal, you accomplished that without hardly trying. That's my only goal, and I know I cleared that bar easily. How much higher is almost beside the point. Just go with what I have. Or what anyone who knows anything about this stuff has. Pick a name, and I will dump my proposal and get behind that 100% because I know it will automatically be better than what we have now.
I know this to be the case because every one of those plans has one thing in common. They're born of a sound and sane mind. What is in place now isn't. And it's only going to get worse.
I almost want to go to Congress and say you might start to think about getting a handle on this. Because these are not pro teams, they shouldn't be operating in that sense. This is becoming a net negative for society. And no, it's not the most essential thing in the world, far from it. But it's not the least, either.
But getting back to the 1,000 cuts comment, rather than cite them all, I just reproduced them in a new realignment. I don't explain all of them, but I try to cover the major ones and how I currently view each conference. Some are pretty much fine as is. Others only need a tweak or two. Other conferences need some work. And others should be blown up and drawn from scratch. It runs the gambit.
I've hidden these comments in spoilers to make it easier to go through. I'll also probably add more to these later. I may also go back and make changes, as there have been a few moves I've been toying with, and a fresh set of eyes may lead me to them.
Let me know if I missed an addition or subtraction listing. My main point is to show how bad the current conferences are rather than how good I make them because it's not even that hard to clear that bar anymore. An intelligent 13-year-old can do it.FBS Conferences
ACC
North Division South Division Duke Clemson Maryland Georgia Tech Penn State Miami (FL) Virginia North Carolina Wake Forest NC State West Virginia South Carolina Adds: Maryland, Penn State, South Carolina, West Virginia
Subtractions: Boston College, Florida State, Louisville, Notre Dame (non-football), Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia Tech
SpoilerTraditionally a mid-Atlantic football & basketball powerhouse, I tried to keep that tradition alive by contracting the geographical region covered while maintaining dominance in both sports. Penn State's arrival corrects what I feel is one of the longest-standing conference wrongs: the Big East denying them entry. I put them in the ACC over the Big East because of their football tradition, which I feel will fit in against other powerhouses like Clemson, Georgia Tech, and Miami.
American Athletic
Houston
Memphis
North Texas
Rice
SMU
Southern Miss
Texas State
Tulane
Tulsa
UTSAWichita State (non-football)
Adds: Houston, Southern Miss, Texas State
Subtractions: Charlotte, East Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Navy (football only), Temple, UAB
SpoilerConference USA and the American have always been a mess regarding where teams were placed, and this is my best attempt at correcting both. Just ten teams mean they don't have enough to play a conference title game, but unlike the current structure of the conference, every school is placed in or near Texas, which I feel should foster a lot of intense rivalries.
Texas State and UTSA may not be up to the athletic standards of the other schools, but given their endowments and number of students, I feel they will catch up in short order.Big XII
North Division South Division Arkansas Baylor Colorado Oklahoma Kansas TCU Kansas State Texas Nebraska Texas A&M Oklahoma State Texas Tech Adds: Arkansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas A&M
Subtractions: BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, Iowa State, UCF, West Virginia
SpoilerThis may be the best example of a big conference that started with a clear vision of what it wanted to be about and do, but realignment has turned it into a mess. Why is West Virginia here? Big East makes sense. ACC makes sense. Even the Big Ten makes sense. If Penn State can be justified, so can West Virginia. But the Big 12? How many fans are really looking forward to that Oklahoma matchup? Or going to Houston? Or Orlando? That's crazy.
This is simply about getting back to basics and reestablishing the Big 12 as the dominant conference in the southwest and lower Great Plains region of the United States.
Arkansas moving to the Big XII corrects a longstanding geographic wrong when they moved to the SEC. They go from being the most isolated team in the SEC to being within a day's drive of several schools.
Big East
Basketball Football Boston College Boston College Cincinnati Cincinnati UConn UConn Dayton Pittsburgh Georgetown Rutgers Notre Dame Syracuse Pittsburgh Temple Providence Virginia Tech Seton Hall St. John's Syracuse Villanova Adds: Boston College, Cincinnati, Dayton, Notre Dame (non-football), Pittsburgh, Rutgers (football only), Syracuse, Temple (football only), Virginia Tech (football only)
Subtractions: Butler, Creighton, DePaul, Marquette, Xavier
SpoilerThe drunkenness that is modern college realignment all seems to have stemmed from when the Big East dropped football and moved westward. Again, I think this conference is getting away from what initially made it so special. As problematic as Big East football was, it at least tied up a lot of powerhouse northeast football schools that don't have an obvious geographic home.
The problem always was the more you lean into football, the more you move away from the catholic and basketball nature of the conference.
What I did here isn't so much a realignment as it is a near-total reset to what the conference used to be like. The three football-only schools allow me to bring back all the original teams of the Big East, along with Cincinnati and Dayton. Why I put Dayton in the conference and dropped Xavier is due to the fact that with Cincinnati being in the conference, the Big East already has a Cincy-based school, Dayton is a private Catholic university, and with an endowment of just under $800 million, a 13k+ seat arena, and a strong basketball history, I think they will fit right in.
Big Ten
East Division West Division Indiana Illinois Michigan Iowa Michigan State Iowa State Northwestern Minnesota Ohio State Missouri Purdue Wisconsin Adds: Iowa State, Missouri
Subtractions: Maryland, Nebraska, Penn State, Rutgers
SpoilerThere are only a few changes here, mainly just shrinking the geographical footprint back to its original and intended upper-Midwest territory.
I was a little bittersweet about dropping Iowa State from the Big 12. I know they're a long-standing member of the Big 12/8, but I like them and Missouri in the Big Ten better, especially if they drop Penn State. The goal of that conference should be to geographically center themselves around Chicago because that's how the entire Great Lakes region is aligned. Penn State is borderline at fitting that image, but Rutgers and Maryland certainly do not. But Missouri fits that image, and Iowa State fits it as well. And I think they have more in common with the schools here than anyone from Texas. Iowa State can still go play a Big 12 school if it wants. I can think of at least one non-conference matchup that just freed up on the schedule.
Losing Penn State and Nebraska brings them down a tad with football, but this is still, bar none, one of the most dominating conferences in that regard, with Ohio State, Michigan, and Wisconsin all still there.,
Conference USA
Basketball Football Charlotte North Division South Division Davidson Appalachian State Charlotte East Carolina James Madison East Carolina Florida Atlantic Liberty Florida Atlantic Marshall Marshall South Florida Old Dominion Old Dominion UAB South Florida Western Kentucky UCF UAB UCF VCU Western Kentucky Xavier Adds: Everyone but Western Kentucky
Subtractions: FIU, Jacksonville State, Liberty (non-football), Louisiana Tech, Middle Tennessee, New Mexico State, Sam Houston, UTEP
SpoilerConference USA has always been a mess regarding its geographical alignment and now appears to be on the verge of collapse, as that geographical footprint is way too spread out for what is now arguably the worst conference at the FBS level.
This is a total reset to reestablish the conference as the second most powerful conference in the mid-Atlantic region after the ACC. Still, a lot to be desired when it comes to football, but with the additions of some southern A10 schools, as well as Charlotte and Xavier, I anticipate this conference being a solid mid-major basketball conference.
Of niche interest to me would be getting that Western Kentucky basketball program fired up again. That's a team that's had two separate stretches of making the tourney three years in a row, which is tough to do for even most power conference schools.
But Western Kentucky has never played in a quality conference, and I think they deserve to be in one. Charlotte, Davidson, Old Dominion, VCU, UAB, and Xavier will give them that quality basketball conference.
Independents
Army
Navy
Notre Dame
Adds: Navy
Subtractions: UConn, UMass
SpoilerNot a lot to say here. Notre Dame probably should be in the Big Ten, but their sweetheart deal with NBC and nationwide media presence pretty much makes it impossible to group them into a conference.
With the American Athletic moving west, it makes no sense for Navy to still be in that conference. UConn isn't good enough to compete in ACC football, which is why they are independent now, but I have faith in their ability to hold their own in the newly constituted Big East football conference.
Not so much faith in UMass, who makes UConn's program come off like Alabama's by comparison. More than any other school at the FBS level, they have absolutely no business being there, and moving them back down to FCS seems the prudent thing to do. I have more to say about them in the CAA summary.
MAC
East Division West Division Akron Ball State Bowling Green Central Michigan Buffalo Eastern Michigan Kent State Northern Illinois Miami (OH) Toledo Ohio Western Michigan Adds/subtractions: None
SpoilerI admire the Mid-American Conference's consistency in a world where everyone else is looking for something better. They got it right the first time as a Midwest mid-major conference that's too good for FCS but doesn't seek greater glory at the FBS level. They're fine as is.
I'm going to reward that by changing nothing here. They're fine as is.
Mountain West
Air Force
BYU
Colorado State
New Mexico
New Mexico State
Utah
UTEP
WyomingAdds: BYU, New Mexico State, Utah, UTEP
Subtractions: Boise State, Fresno State, Nevada, San Diego State, San Jose State, UNLV, Utah State
SpoilerThe problem with college football west of Texas is that there are too many schools for two big-name conferences but not enough for three. This situation will unlikely change unless Long Beach State or Cal State Fullerton decide to start fielding football programs again or a few Big Sky schools jump to FBS.
Rather than go for two big conferences with New Mexico State and UTEP sitting on the outside, I opted for three smaller conferences. BYU and Utah proved too good for this conference, and I anticipate that being much the same case here, but if I move BYU or Utah to the Pac-10/12, I have to drop one of my two small western conferences.
Given geographical and talent constraints, the arrangement could be better, but it's the best I can do. I would anticipate and would want to revisit this alignment in a decade or so.
Pac-10
Arizona
Arizona State
California
Oregon
Oregon State
Stanford
UCLA
USC
Washington
Washington StateSubtractions: Colorado, Utah
SpoilerWe're only in the early stages of hearing about the collapse of the Pac-12 conference and the fallout that's going to cause. How can you have an entire region of the country without a major conference to represent them? It's mind-blowing to even think about. But again, I look at the current state of college conferences, and I think this is clearly the work of a drunk person.
The conference worked for over 30 years when it had 10 schools. It was only when they started expanding that they got themselves in trouble. So, let's go back to what worked and shelf any ideas of expansion until the holes those moves leave behind can be filled in. If and when it happens, BYU and Utah should be the picks for expansion. Not Colorado. Taking them out of the Big 12 was a net downgrade for both conferences because you have to go through two other states to reach California from Colorado. And they're big states.
But Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma? All right next door and that's half the conference. Texas Tech? That's only an hour further drive than Salt Lake City is, and that's the next closest team to Colorado in the Pac-12.
SEC
East Division West Division Auburn Alabama Florida Louisville Florida State LSU Georgia Ole Miss Kentucky Mississippi State Tennessee Vanderbilt
Adds: Florida State, LouisvilleSubtractions: Arkansas, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas A&M
SpoilerThe SEC is a conference that has maintained and preserved its image of what it wants to be about, which is the most dominating conference in the Southeast.
There are few changes beyond tightening the geographic footprint, but I like having Kentucky and Louisville in the same conference. Historically, the biggest roadblock to this has been Louisville not being good at football, But that program has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 25 years, and they could handle an SEC football schedule. That was different in the early 90s when the conference expanded.
Arkansas/LSU is nowhere near as big of a rivalry matchup as most would expect. And it's mostly because the schools couldn't get any further apart without leaving their respective states. It adds up to almost a nine-hour drive. That's not a close geographical rival at all. You can get to Norman, Oklahoma, and back in that time. Same with Stillwater. And Arkansas was never in a conference with Oklahoma or OSU. But they probably should be.
Sun Belt
Arkansas State
Coastal CarolinaFIU (football only)
Georgia Southern
Georgia State
Little Rock (non-football)
Louisiana
Louisiana Tech
Louisiana-Monroe
Middle Tennessee
New Orleans (non-football)
South Alabama
TroyAdds: FIU (football only), Little Rock, Louisiana Tech, Middle Tennessee, New Orleans
Subtractions: Appalachian State, James Madison, Marshall, Old Dominion, Southern Miss, Texas State
SpoilerThe bastard stepchild of FBS, or at least it feels that way. Probably because we're talking almost exclusively about smaller schools playing in some of the country's poorest regions. But also because it's been a revolving door of schools since it went to FBS. New Mexico State, North Texas, Idaho, and Utah State are just four of the 20+ schools that have called this conference home at some point over the past two decades.
But the schools that have stuck it out through thick and thin, Louisiana, Louisiana-Monroe, Arkansas State, and Troy, have been located in or around Louisiana, and that's where I tried to limit the footprint. Coastal Carolina is a bit of an outlier in this conference, but I don't think they have the chops to keep up with what the newly constituted Conference USA would be throwing at them when it came to basketball.
I thought about sending them down to FCS down to their football stadium capacity, but I can't send a team that good back down in good faith.WAC
Boise State
Fresno State
Hawaii
Nevada
San Diego State
San Jose State
UNLV
Utah StateAdds/Subtractions: Everyone (effectively a new conference)
SpoilerWe're getting the band back together with this one. Unfortunately, this conference fell victim to the geographic/talent issue I referred to in my Mountain West comments. Too many teams for two conferences, not enough for three.
This essentially takes the Mountain West Conference and divides it in half, with the WAC getting the Western-based schools.
I think the Mountain West has a clear-cut edge in football, but I feel the two conferences are pretty even in basketball, especially considering that San Diego State is now arguably the best basketball school in southern California.
Non-FBS Conferences
Mid-Majors
Atlantic 10
Duquesne
George Washington
La SalleUMass
Rhode Island
Rutgers
Saint Joseph's
St. Bonaventure
Temple
Virginia TechAdds: Rutgers, Temple, Virginia Tech
Subtractions: Davidson, Dayton, Fordham, George Mason, Loyola (IL), Richmond, Saint Louis, VCU
SpoilerThis is another conference that started out strong and had a clear geographic center around Philadelphia but has gotten bloated in recent years with too many schools over too large an area.
Like the Big East, this is about getting back to basics and what the conference was originally about, and that's having a strong basketball presence in the northeast. That doesn't mean having Saint Louis or Loyola in the conference.
Top-to-bottom, this is the strongest basketball conference on the East Coast after the Big East and ACC. Virtually all of these schools are well into double-digits with the number of tournament appearances they've had, and about 1/4th of the schools have been to the Final Four at least once.
In the case of a school like Rutgers, I would say their basketball program was doing just fine in the A10 until they decided to leave and be the Big East's punching bag.
Big SkyBasketball Football Eastern Washington Cal Poly Gonzaga Eastern Washington Idaho Idaho Idaho State Idaho State Montana Montana Montana State Montana State Portland Portland State Portland State Sacramento State Seattle UC Davis Weber State Weber State Adds: Gonzaga, Portland, Seattle (all non-football)
Subtractions: Northern Arizona, Northern Colorado, Sacramento State (non-football)
SpoilerAlthough not currently considered a mid-major, I think the additions of Gonzaga and Seattle will help put them over the top, especially with Seattle playing the majority of their games in an NBA-caliber arena. That school has a very rich basketball history that I'm hoping to rekindle with this move up to what is effectively the Pacific Northwest Conference now, and having a built-in conference geographic conference rival the quality of Gonzaga. I'm sure they would prefer a trek to Seattle than San Diego or Malibu. Well, maybe not Malibu. Malibu's pretty nice.
Anyway, eliminating Sacramento State from the conference will probably help the conference in basketball as a form of addition by subtraction. Since rejoining D1 in the early 90s, Sac State has only posted one 20+ win season, and their "arena" is a glorified high school gym that only seats a thousand people. And they're far away from everyone. Any other school in the conference will be a better matchup than them.I still expect Gonzaga to dominate the conference much like they currently do in the West Coast Conference, but at least now, their travel schedule won't be quite as brutal. And I would expect Weber State and Idaho to give them some competition. I considered putting Gonzaga in the Mountain West or WAC, but I'd like to try at least to see if this could help things before pulling that trigger.
Missouri Valley
Basketball Football Bradley Indiana State Butler Missouri State Creighton North Dakota DePaul North Dakota State Drake Northern Iowa Illinois State South Dakota Loyola (IL) South Dakota State Marquette Southern Illinois Missouri State Western Illinois Saint Louis Southern Illinois Adds: Butler, Creighton, DePaul, Loyola (IL), Marquette, Saint Louis
Subtractions: Belmont, Evansville, Indiana State (non-football), Murray State, Northern Iowa, UIC, Valparaiso (non-football), Youngstown State (football only)
SpoilerOf every conference, nobody improves more at basketball than the Missouri Valley Conference. I'm not even sure you could consider them a mid-major. They get all of the Big East westward expansion teams minus Xavier, plus Saint Louis from the A10, and lose hardly anything to get there.
With holdovers Bradley, Drake, and Southern Illinois all sporting solid basketball histories in their own right to round out the conference, at least three teams coming out of this conference going March Madness would be all but a given every year.
West CoastCalifornia Baptist
Loyola Marymount
Pacific
Pepperdine
Saint Mary's
San Diego
San Francisco
Santa Clara
Adds: California BaptistSubtractions: Gonzaga, Portland
SpoilerThis conference has it right in terms of its image, geographical footprint, and how well the schools tie into each other.
Losing Gonzaga means they take a hit in basketball, but they still have some strong schools in Saint Mary's, Pacific, and San Francisco. The only significant change is that the conference is now California-exclusive.
I expect the Cal Baptist Lancers to do little out of the gate in the conference, but they do have a 6k-seat arena, and the school fits in with the religious theme of the conference. They will likely end up here in a few years anyway. This is fast-forwarding the clock.Small Conferences
America East
Albany
Binghamton
Bryant
Hofstra
MaineUMass Lowell
New Hampshire
NJIT
Northeastern
Stony Brook
VermontAdds: Hofstra, Northeastern, Stony Brook
Subtractions: UMBC
SpoilerWith the America East, MAAC, and Northeast Conferences, if you pick the schools out of a hat, whatever geographic alignment you came up with would work.
Added three schools and dropped UMBC to further turn this conference into the effective New England Conference, but there's not much to report on here.
Atlantic Sun
Belmont
FIU (non-football)
Florida Gulf Coast
Jacksonville
Jacksonville State
Kennesaw State
Lipscomb
Mercer
North Alabama
North Florida
Queens
StetsonAdds: Belmont, FIU (non-football), Jacksonville State, Mercer
Subtractions: Austin Peay, Bellarmine, Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky
SpoilerI feel like the Atlantic Sun Conference is the answer to the question, "What do we do with all these Florida-based schools that no other conference wants?"
Like the Sun Belt, this conference has been a revolving door of schools almost since day one. By my count, 42 different schools have called this conference home at one point, and it doesn't even predate disco music. It's just a mess.
I brought back FIU to limit the damage. Despite their best efforts, they haven't done much to improve their standing, and I think sending them to the new CUSA would be like sending a lamb to slaughter. They can remain in the Sun Belt for football.
Jacksonville State also gets sent back down to FCS. At a tad under $60 million, their endowment ranks dead last amongst FBS teams. And they play in what's already the most oversaturated region in the country when it comes to FBS football. Currently, 14 FBS teams are playing in Alabama, Louisiana, or Mississippi, and less than 13 million people live in those three states combined. No other state with three or more FBS teams has an FBS-to-population ratio lower than one FBS team per million.I managed to shed a few outlying schools, but I consider this conference a necessary evil. A non-Florida school would only be in this conference because they have nowhere else to go.
Big South/Ohio Valley Big South Football Campbell Austin Peay Charleston Southern Campbell Gardner-Webb Charleston Southern High Point Eastern Illinois Liberty Eastern Kentucky Longwood Gardner-Webb Morehead State Lindenwood Presbyterian Murray State Radford Southeast Missouri State UNC Asheville Tennessee State USC Upstate Tennessee Tech Winthrop UT Martin Ohio Valley Austin Peay Bellarmine Eastern Illinois Eastern Kentucky Lindenwood Morehead State Murray State SIU Edwardsville Southeast Missouri State Southern Indiana Tennessee State Tennessee Tech UT Martin Adds:
Big South: Campbell, Liberty (non-football), Morehead State
Ohio Valley: Austin Peavy, Bellarmine, Eastern Kentucky, Murray State
Subtractions
Ohio Valley: Morehead State, Little Rock, Western Illinois
SpoilerThese two conferences share an FCS football conference, which makes sense, considering they're right next door.
Four schools get added across both conferences to a loss of just two, which turns these two conferences into behemoths of small mid-Atlantic and southern Midwest-based programs.
I don't expect a lot out of schools not named Murray State, but no school should have more than a six-hour drive for any in-conference game in either conference.
Big West
Cal Poly
Cal State Bakersfield
Cal State Fullerton
Cal State Northridge
Long Beach State
Sacramento State
UC Davis
UC Irvine
UC Riverside
UC San Diego
UC Santa BarbaraAdds: Sacramento State
Subtractions: Hawaii
SpoilerAt one time, the Big West was the second-most powerful conference in the West after the Pac-10. They're still one of the most strongest baseball conferences in the country but leave little to be desired when it comes to other sports, having lost bigger-name programs like UNLV, San Diego State, and Boise State over the years.
Currently, every school in the conference besides Hawaii is a member of either the University of California or California State school systems, and the one addition of Sacramento State doesn't change that.
CAA
Basketball Football Delaware Delaware Drexel Duquesne George Mason UMass James Madison Monmouth Richmond Rhode Island Robert Morris Richmond Saint Francis (PA) Robert Morris Towson Saint Francis (PA) UNC Wilmington Towson William & Mary William & Mary Youngstown State Youngstown State Adds: Duquesne (football only), George Mason, James Madison, UMass (football only), Richmond (football only), Robert Morris, Saint Francis (PA), Youngstown State
Subtractions: Albany (football only), Campbell, Charleston, Elon, Hampton, Hofstra, Maine (football only), Monmouth (non-football), New Hampshire (football only), North Carolina A&T, Northeastern, Richmond (football only), Stony Brook, Villanova (football only)
SpoilerAlthough they share the same name, the CAA conference and the CAA football conference are technically separate entities. But both have gone through a ton of upheaval in recent years, and I would place both on the conference equivalent of the endangered species list.
What once was a heavily concentrated mid-Atlantic conference of some solid non-major schools has become a bloated mess of small schools spread out throughout the northeastern coast. There are currently 14 teams in the conference, but the last year the CAA got more than one team in the tournament was 2011. That's exhibit A of a conference that's gotten too big for its own good.
Like the Big East and A10, this isn't so much a realignment as it's a total reset for the conference. Instead of the conference being spread out across nine states, it's six, and you can practically walk from Youngstown State to Pennsylvania, so it's more like five.
I'm keeping the theme alive with football, where many schools are sent to the Northeast, but the most glaring change is UMass being sent back down to FCS, something I'm all for happening as a UMass alum. That school has no business playing at the FBS level for various reasons.
A bad stadium, a lack of similarly matched regional rivals, but the number one reason is that the school, the alums, and the surrounding area aren't that big into football. But the school's administration seems dead set on allowing UMass to go and get destroyed week in, week out, so the school can make money on being a punching bag.I much prefer the days of my freshman year when they got to the FCS title game and had competitive games against schools like New Hampshire and Towson. Not wondering if an unranked Auburn team will put up 60+ points on their defense, but I digress. Enjoy your easy money is all I can say to the administrators there.
Horizon League
Cleveland State
Detroit Mercy
Evansville
Indiana State
IUPUI
Northern Kentucky
Oakland
Purdue Fort Wayne
UIC
Valparaiso
Wright StateAdds: Evansville, Indiana State, UIC, Valparaiso
Subtractions: Robert Morris, Youngstown State
SpoilerCan you hear me now? Sorry, that's the Verizon League. Bad jokes aside, there's not a lot going on here. The conference shares almost the same geographical footprint as the Missouri Valley and Summit Conferences, and plenty of schools have spent time in two if not all three, conferences.
This is pretty much all the schools east of Chicago that weren't good enough to make the cut of the new and much-improved Missouri Valley Conference. Youngstown State could have stayed, but I moved them out to the CAA mainly for football purposes. I'd rather them go to Wilmington, NC, for a game than Grand Folks, ND, especially if it's FCS we're talking about.
It will probably weaken the Missouri Valley a little bit at football, but their loss is the CAA's gain.Ivy League
Brown
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Harvard
Penn
Princeton
Yale
Adds/subtractions: NoneSpoilerIt's basically the perfect conference. All schools are geographically close to each other, share similar endowments campus sizes, and are pretty equal to each other regarding sports—no reason to fix what isn't broken.
MAAC
Canisius
Fairfield
Iona
Manhattan
Marist
Monmouth
Niagara
Rider
Saint Peter's
SienaAdds: Monmouth
Subtractions: Mount St. Mary's, Quinnipiac
SpoilerThe MAAC is what every small conference should aspire to be like. There's no need ever to travel that far, and there's near-perfect competitive parity. Some minor geographical tweaks here, but I think the conference is fine as is.
MEAC
Bethune-Cookman
Coppin State (non-football)
Delaware State
Hampton
Howard
Maryland Eastern Shore (non-football)
Morgan State
Norfolk State
North Carolina A&T
North Carolina Central
South Carolina StateAdds: Bethune-Cookman, Hampton, North Carolina A&T
Subtractions: None
SpoilerOne of the two HBCU-exclusive conferences in D1, although they have fallen on some hard times in recent years.
Historically, this has been the worst conference for college basketball. They've never gotten more than a single team in the NCAA tournament in any season, and that one team has been a 16-seed eight years in a row now. Since the NCAA expanded the tournament to 64 teams, no MEAC team has ever gotten anything higher than a 14 seed.Here's to hoping that traditional "powerhouse" North Carolina A&T can help improve this otherwise dreadful conference.
Northeast
Basketball Football Central Connecticut Albany Fairleigh Dickinson Bryant Le Moyne Central Connecticut LIU LIU Loyola (MD) Maine Merrimack Merrimack Mount St. Mary's New Hampshire Quinnipiac Sacred Heart Sacred Heart Stonehill Stonehill Stony Brook UMBC Wagner Wagner Adds: Albany (football only), Bryant (football only), Loyola (MD), Maine (football only), Mount St. Mary's, New Hampshire (football only), Quinnipiac, Stony Brook (football only), UMBC
Subtractions: Duquesne (football only), Saint Francis (PA)
SpoilerThere's not much to write home about on the basketball side of things in terms of changes, but the football conference is completely different. A lot of the changes stem from wanting to condense the CAA and not have them all up and down the East Coast, which I feel like, for the most part, I was able to accomplish as Wagner is both the furthest south and furthest western football school.
Patriot League
Basketball Football American Bucknell Army Colgate Boston University Fordham Bucknell Georgetown Colgate Holy Cross Fordham Lafayette Holy Cross Lehigh Lafayette Villanova Lehigh Navy Adds: Fordham, Villanova (football only)
Subtractions: Loyola (MD)
SpoilerAfter the Ivy League, this is probably the next most academically prestigious conference at the D1 level. Most of the schools listed here have an acceptance rate below 40% with an endowment of around $1 billion despite being home to less than 5k students.
The only school that doesn't fit this pattern is Loyola, which leaves me dumbfounded as to why they were included in the first place, but that's another topic altogether.
It's been 30 years since the Rams reached the NCAA tournament, and they play in the smallest and oldest arena in the A10. I think the Patriot League is more their speed, especially considering that they're already in the conference for football, and they have the endowment and educational background to fit in with the other schools.
Swapping Villanova out of CAA football is also a natural fit. Villanova fits the typical academic profile of a Patriot League school, and there aren't 15 schools in the conference to compete with. Fifteen teams is ridiculous for an FBS conference, IMO. At the FCS level, it's drunken insanity.
Pioneer Football League
Butler
Davidson
Dayton
Drake
Marist
Morehead State
Presbyterian
San Diego
St. Thomas (MN)
Stetson
Valparaiso
Adds/subtractions: None
SpoilerNone of the schools in this football-only conference offer competitive athletic scholarships despite being FCS programs, so I left this conference as is.
SoCon
Appalachian State (non-football)
Charleston (non-football)
Chattanooga
East Tennessee State
Elon
Furman
Samford
The Citadel
UNC Greensboro (non-football)
VMI
Western Carolina
WoffordAdds: Appalachian State (non-football), Charleston, Elon
Subtractions: Mercer
SpoilerThe first victim of conference realignment was the predominant conference in the southeast until the SEC's formation in 1932. Nevertheless, the conference has enjoyed a fair amount of stability in its 100+ years of existence. Furham, The Citadel, and VMI have all been members for over 60 years, and I didn't want to change that. Even though the conference could be better aligned geographically, I feel tradition wins out here, so I kept things mostly as is. Plus, the conference is already in good shape, being centered around western North Carolina. Like the Ivy League, I'm not messing with something that isn't broken.
Even the three schools I brought back are all former SoCon members. I also considered bringing back Davidson, who is still tied for the most all-time conference titles despite having left in 2014. But I think the arrival of Steph Curry and their continued subsequent pretty much made it impossible for them to ever return to being a small conference team.
But much like they have now with the A10, there are a lot of good teams in that retooled Conference USA. At least 2-3 teams coming out of that conference to the tourney would be a given each year. That's more their level now.
Southland
Central Arkansas
Houston Christian
Incarnate Word
Lamar
McNeese State
Nicholls
Northwestern State
Sam Houston
Southeastern Louisiana
Stephen F. Austin
Texas A&M-Commerce
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (non-football)
Adds: Central Arkansas, Sam Houston, Stephen F. AustinSubtractions: New Orleans
SpoilerThey could call themselves the Yee-haw Conference with no loss of information. Texas and Louisiana are the only two states the conference currently covers. Former member Central Arkansas returns being a much better geographic fit here than the Atlantic Sun Conference, especially with the return of FIU to further bolster its Florida roster.
Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin also return to fill the Texas schools named after famous Texans quota. I move Sam Houston back down to FCS for a lot of the same reasons I moved UMass back down. Small stadium, and why do you want to compete with these elite, long-established Texas schools with 10x your money and stadium capacity? I kept Texas State in FBS; that's enough for new FBS Texas schools.
Summit League
Chicago State
Green Bay
Kansas City
Milwaukee
North Dakota
North Dakota State
Northern Iowa
Omaha
South Dakota
South Dakota State
St. Thomas (MN)
Western IllinoisAdds: Chicago State, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Northern Iowa, Western Illinois
Subtractions: Denver, Oral Roberts
SpoilerPretty much the Missouri Valley Conference west. Currently, the Summit is one of the worst conferences in college basketball, but with Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Northern Iowa coming in, I think you would see a much-improved conference despite losing Oral Roberts, who has proven themselves to be one of the best small conference teams in basketball in recent years.
SWAC
Alabama A&M
Alabama State
Alcorn State
Arkansas-Pine Bluff
Florida A&M
Grambling State
Jackson State
Mississippi Valley State
Prairie View A&M
Southern
Texas Southern
Adds: None
Subtractions: Bethune-Cookman
SpoilerThe other HBCU conference in division 1. Better known for football than basketball, I see no reason to do anything here. Bethune-Cookman returns to the MEAC to move the geographic split back to Florida, but that's it.
United Athletic
Basketball Football Abilene Christian Abilene Christian Denver Jacksonville State Grand Canyon Kennesaw State Northern Arizona Mercer Northern Colorado North Alabama Oral Roberts Northern Arizona Southern Utah Northern Colorado Tarleton State Southern Utah UT Arlington Tarleton State UT Rio Grande Valley Utah Tech Utah Tech Utah Valley Adds: Denver, Jacksonville State (football only), Kennesaw State (football only), Mercer (football only), Northern Arizona, Northern Colorado, Oral Roberts
Subtractions: Austin Peay (football only), California Baptist, Central Arkansas (football only), Eastern Kentucky (football only), Seattle, Stephen F. Austin
SpoilerFrom the ashes of the WAC conference arises the newly minted United Athletic, Young, and dumb geographic alignment, but I think there's some potential here with a few tweaks.
Try as they might, there's never been a Rocky Mountain conference that's representative of every major school in the area. There's always been some division, and what I have here is no different. Colorado is in the Big 12, Utah is in the Mountain West, UNLV is in the WAC, and Arizona is in the Pac-10. Everyone is still spread out, and you would need all of them to come together to create a real Rocky Mountain super conference.
I think this could happen one day, but they need more quality teams to make it come to fruition, or this divide will never stop, and that effort to make more quality teams can start with a conference like this. Denver's a decent-sized school with a large endowment and a nearby NBA arena they could play in.
Flagstaff has roughly doubled its population over the last 30 years, and that's where longtime Big Sky member Northern Arizona has been. You're only a day's drive from Denver to get to Tulsa, so Oral Roberts can be an outlying fit. Grand Canyon has stepped up in establishing itself as a dominating small conference school. This could potentially be a mid-major I feel, in a few years, but it only works with the additions of all the teams I've added in here.
Otherwise, it becomes a tangled mess of hodgepodge teams in another doomed Western-based conference.
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4 hours ago, Cujo said:
Going back 35 years... Would the White Sox have been better off/could they have renovated Old Comiskey into a landmark-type relic, ala Fenway or Wrigley?
The baseball fan in me would love it if Comiskey, Tiger, and Old Yankee Stadium were all still standing, but I don't think that's the main issue with the White Sox. The main issue is their owner.
Before Reinsdorf took over the team, there wasn't much of a difference in terms of popularity between the Cubs and White Sox. The dynamic of the Cubs being the clear-cut #1 team in Chicago and the White Sox being the #2 doesn't start until the late 90s. The last year the White Sox outdrew the Cubs was 1994, and there were several years in the 90s and 80s when the Sox outdrew the Cubs for the year as well. But we're coming up on 30 years since that last happened. And what's been the only consistent during that time span? It's Jerry Reinsdorf owning the White Sox.
Do you know how I know Jerry Reinsdorf sucks as an owner? Because he makes the Cubs ownership group look good by comparison. His greatest accomplishment as a sports owner was lucking into Michael Jordan in the draft.
If he owned the Cubs, I have no doubt they would be playing in Rosemont right now, drawing around 20k a game, and probably doing the same fiddling with .500 act the White Sox have been doing for the past 30 years. Just competitive enough to maintain fan interest but not so good that you have to start paying big bucks for star players.
They've only gotten to the LCS round three times in the 40+ years Reinsdorf has owned the club and hasn't gotten that far in nearly 20 years. And that's because for the White Sox to make the playoffs in any given year, everything has to break just right for them because when it comes to spending money in free agency or making a big deadline deal, Reisndorf doesn't go for spit. They've only had one player (James Shields) have a season where they made at least $20 million a year. Do you know how many players the Milwaukee Brewers have had? Two.
And the fans know it because they've been watching this act play out for over 40 years now. What have the Bulls done since Jordan left? Aside from their little run when Derrick Rose was healthy, the answer is notta.
I feel for White Sox fans. They say only the good die young, and by my count, Reinsdorf is one of only four owners in MLB history to own a club for at least 40 years. The other three are Horace Stoneham, Tom Yawkey, and Phillip K. Wrigley. Between the four of them, it's over 170 years of ownership experience and two World Series rings.
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9 minutes ago, infrared41 said:
Speaking as someone who has been on TV a lot, that's a well executed humble brag.
Good for you. Keep doing the sunglasses emoji. You look so cool every time you do it. What do they say about the cry-face laugh emoji? Every time you see, it means the person is madder than they've ever been in their life.
I must have really done something to tick you off at some point.
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Part of me is hoping this sticks around just for the online clips. It's one thing to call something the dumbest sport you've ever seen, but this might actually be it.
It's not just because it's dangerous as hell but also because it only pays a few grand. How desperate are you for money? Go sell drugs if it's that bad. Consider robbing a cash-friendly business at gunpoint. Both of those options have to be less dangerous than this if done correctly.
Is being on TV really that big of a deal to people? I've been on TV before. It's alright, but nowhere near worth it for that.
This thing makes those Barstool Rough N'Rowdy events look like a night at the opera. Is there anyone out there at all watching for any reason other than morbid curiosity? I'm trying to understand what other appeal there could be besides that for anyone either watching or participating, and I'm drawing a blank.
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21 minutes ago, Germanshepherd said:
I remember this being a niche online thing in Russia that would go viral every now and then, and the reception was positive.
Of course, it was big in Russia. It's Russia. At any given time, at least 1/4th of the country is drunk.
What this sport needs to succeed here is for celebrities to get involved. Nobody here wants to watch two jacked-up guys give each other brain damage. But if it's Chaz Bono and Ted Nugent slapping the taste out of each other's mouth, people will tune in.-
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Proposed Hartford, CT-Springfield, MA NBA team
in Sports In General
Posted
Take out that giant atrium and/or the parking garage and you have all the room you need. Compare what that added footprint space gives you versus the TD Garden. It's about the same.
It would cause issues, but every plan will have issues. You either deal with the inconvenience for a few years, stick with an arena that's outlived its prime by at least 20 years, or move to a less desirable location. No replacement or renovation plan is going to check all of those boxes off.