(01-06-2012 09:55 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(01-05-2012 06:13 PM)bluephi1914 Wrote:  Let's be honest, people are moving and jocking for position for one thing and one thing only - money. AQ status is just a little something extra. If CUSA and the merger/combination with MWC goes through the mixture of programs, sports and markets will be quite lucrative. The only bad thing about that is the large number of schools involved will dilute the payouts. But, if the combination can yield television revenue of $4-5m per school in football, I don't see any SBC or WAC school that wouldn't jump in line to be included. And for those that think the payouts will be less, please realize that the very diluted Big East is looking at about $10m per football member with their upcoming deal.

I don't think the money is there.
Take what CUSA and MWC made independent of each other. Now is that figure going up or down with CUSA losing three large markets (basically three because Rice is much less of interest in Houston than the Cougars). Then subtract another large market in San Diego State, then subtract the Salt Lake market and the highest profile school they had in DFW. Subtract national brands BYU, TCU, Utah, and Boise State.

Then tell me how the two combined ends up producing more TV dollars or even enough to keep the per school distribution from falling.

Imagine now you are a financially struggling program like UAB and the league baseball tournament just moved from Hattiesburg or Houston to Fresno. Imagine men's basketball is at Memphis but women's basketball is at Reno.

The losses you mentioned are lessened, not completely, by the far flungness of the conference (meaning adding more markets to offset the key markets that were loss). Add in the additions of Philadelphia with Temple, the Miami area with FIU, New England with UMass and some other rumored additions and the combination is back in business (heck, let's not forget that Northern Illinois may be a wild card that could bring some of the Chicago market into the picture...I mean, at $4M-$5M per football member, the travel to and from there won't look as bad). It won't be back in business at the level it would have been before the losses, but still back in business to sell a network trying to get into the game (NBC) on shelling out $4M-5M per football member. If the losses had not happened and the conferences still combined, you could have reasonably seen a demand for $8M-10M per football member. So, I am going to stand by my argument of $4M-$5M if the combination does happen in its rumored form.