Has the Sun Belt given App State and Gaga Suthern an offer yet? Doesn't sound like they have. Hard for them to accept without an offer.
Benson may be talking to Liberty and Jacksonville State right now. Who knows.

(11-30-2012 09:11 PM)KingKong Wrote:  Has the Sun Belt given App State and Gaga Suthern an offer yet? Doesn't sound like they have. Hard for them to accept without an offer.
Benson may be talking to Liberty and Jacksonville State right now. Who knows.

OMG.

Jax State would make a great travel partner for GSU, Troy, and USA

(11-30-2012 09:17 PM)BeliefBlazer Wrote:  Jax State would make a great travel partner for GSU, Troy, and USA

Let me know how the FIU and FAU games go in Birmingham. Im sure there will be 10s of fans in the stands.

TROY...28,612....Most of those are TROY fans lets get real

Tulsa... 13,196

SE Louisiana...16,212

East Carolina...12,403

Marshall...11,981

Memphis...9,219

If you can only get 9k for Memphis and 11k for Marshall. Whats FIU, FIU, and UNT going to look like?

(11-30-2012 08:06 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  

(11-30-2012 07:55 AM)Wild Bill Kelso Wrote:  I want to see App in FBS as badly as anyone, but the numbers have to work and not wreck the program financially. What makes the most financial sense for App State and JMU is bring them in as football only members and the Mountaineers move all other sports to the CAA, which is a separate entity from CAA Football. Bring GSU on as a full member which would give the SB 10 BB schools.

The Sun Belt uses pod scheduling for its Oly sports. Here's how it works. Road games are grouped together to save money.

USA/Troy
WKU/stAte/UALR
Ga State/ probably Ga Southern
UTA/Texas State
ULL/ULM

So the expenses wouldn't be as much as one might think. I think the real issue for Appy and JMU would be in moving its recruiting areas to new areas.

With the departure of FAU, there are no "one off" plane trips in the Belt. Appy could drive to two and possibly three of the pods reasonably well.

Given the behavior of the CAA towards exiting members (banning even a team they wanted to get rid of, Georgia State, from the conference tournament), its highly unlikely that they'll allow JMU to remain in the CAA without football. Or add Appy without football.

That pod system would make the travel more palatable.

CAA football is separate entity from the CAA and there is no legislation barring a school that does not play CAA football, esp if they are FBS. ECU did it once before and it appears they may be headed back again.

(11-30-2012 04:25 PM)slycat Wrote:  

(11-30-2012 04:20 PM)GSU Eagles Wrote:  

(11-30-2012 04:14 PM)AtlantaJag Wrote:  

(11-30-2012 12:35 PM)GSU Eagles Wrote:  

(11-30-2012 12:19 PM)jdcurran235 Wrote:  I bet they are ready but would like to go through everything and make sure all the presidents are on the same page. That is why I think we could see at least 1 or 2 invites next week. Or the week after at the latest.

The waiting around is killing the Sun Belt. The pendulum has shifted to where is probably makes more sense for Ga Southern and App State to wait and see how the realignment shakes out. If CUSA has to raid SB again and takes Ark St., Louisiana, WKU, Ga Southern and App State may choose to remain FCS if it appears the conference is at risk of folding.

Why would waiting kill the Sun Belt? Even if they invited Ga Sou and App St and they accepted, either/or could blow off the SBC if they got a better offer later, just like TCU did with the Big East. It's not like an invite and its acceptance lock a program to a conference.
A premature SBC move might put a chain of events in motion that are not in the SBC's favor. For instance, I believe that if they hadn't jumped on Ga St so quickly, CUSA would not have offered Charlotte, UTSA or maybe even ODU and there would be more FCS programs to discuss bringing up right now.
I think you guys just want the uncertainty of if you're going FBS or not settled. I don't blame you, but that's no reason for the SBC to jump.

If SB loses a few more, App won't accept and Ga Southern may balk at that point. Liberty, Jax St would accept.

If you invite now with a stronger conference, App and Ga Southern will accept and be stuck with whatever occurs later. The pendulum has swung where App State and Ga Southern hold the cards as the Sun Belt's remaining choices after that are much worse.

The WAC did that under Benson, so yeah invite now.

Perhaps its just me, but I don't have a ton of confidence in Benson. His track record isn't exactly what I'd label as sterling. He presided over the demise of the WAC watching 10 members flee and now he has lost 4, possibly 5 SB members.

At the non-BCS level, the approach of using TV markets to determine who gets invited will eventually bite these conferences. Games with few people in the stands just for TV sake is far more damaging to the bottom line than a loss of some minor TV bucks. At this level there aren't enough TV dollars, so ticket sales are crucial to the bottom line and that means providing your fans games they will pay to see.

When ECU rescheduled ASU for this year some Pirate fans were unhappy saying they should have gone after a higher profile FBS team for a better TV time slot. Terry Holland said ASU bought out their initial allotment and requested more. App fans gobbled 7500 tickets up and still bought more from stub hub and Pirate fans selling their tickets. In all Holland estimated more than 10,000 ASU fans bought tickets for that game. With a price of $50 and a game guarantee of $350,000 ECU made far more money off ASU than the check they sent to Boone. A whole lot more considering the game guarantee for a FBS team would have been more than double what they paid ASU. Even when you figure in the $100,000 more from TV for a "better" opponent ECU made out like a .... well Pirate.

Holland also said the combined number of tickets sold to all visiting CUSA fans in 2011 was just over 600.

There are only so many TV dollars to go around and once this playoff gets rolling the big boys will leverage the interest against the networks. When TV revenues for the lower level conferences begin to dry up, and they ARE going to dry up, the only revenue pproducer for non BCS level programs will come from fan interest in regional rivalries. These conferences better not lose sight of that.

(11-30-2012 10:25 PM)Wild Bill Kelso Wrote:  

(11-30-2012 08:06 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  

(11-30-2012 07:55 AM)Wild Bill Kelso Wrote:  I want to see App in FBS as badly as anyone, but the numbers have to work and not wreck the program financially. What makes the most financial sense for App State and JMU is bring them in as football only members and the Mountaineers move all other sports to the CAA, which is a separate entity from CAA Football. Bring GSU on as a full member which would give the SB 10 BB schools.

The Sun Belt uses pod scheduling for its Oly sports. Here's how it works. Road games are grouped together to save money.

USA/Troy
WKU/stAte/UALR
Ga State/ probably Ga Southern
UTA/Texas State
ULL/ULM

So the expenses wouldn't be as much as one might think. I think the real issue for Appy and JMU would be in moving its recruiting areas to new areas.

With the departure of FAU, there are no "one off" plane trips in the Belt. Appy could drive to two and possibly three of the pods reasonably well.

Given the behavior of the CAA towards exiting members (banning even a team they wanted to get rid of, Georgia State, from the conference tournament), its highly unlikely that they'll allow JMU to remain in the CAA without football. Or add Appy without football.

That pod system would make the travel more palatable.

CAA football is separate entity from the CAA and there is no legislation barring a school that does not play CAA football, esp if they are FBS. ECU did it once before and it appears they may be headed back again.

Correct, CAA Football is totally separate. Let's say JMU gets a football only invite. They will be able to move out of the CAAF without incurring any kind of exit fee. However, they will more than likely be ineligible for a conference title. If JMU moved all sports, then they would have to pay a $1,000,000 exit fee. So inviting JMU for football only will give a conference a bigger chance in landing them. I am not sure what the rules are for membership in the SBC, but certainly a league that consist JMU, AppST, and GaSouth will produce some great rivalry games and attendance will never be a problem with those games.

(11-30-2012 09:14 PM)Atlanta Trojan Wrote:  

(11-30-2012 09:11 PM)KingKong Wrote:  Has the Sun Belt given App State and Gaga Suthern an offer yet? Doesn't sound like they have. Hard for them to accept without an offer.
Benson may be talking to Liberty and Jacksonville State right now. Who knows.

OMG.

(11-30-2012 09:11 PM)KingKong Wrote:  Has the Sun Belt given App State and Gaga Suthern an offer yet? Doesn't sound like they have. Hard for them to accept without an offer.
Benson may be talking to Liberty and Jacksonville State right now. Who knows.

Its hard to tell. Its not as simple to move from FCS to FBS, as you have to apply with the NCAA and go through a transition period. We're not going to make an official offer until it is clear a school will accept.