(06-11-2016 11:45 PM)Duckster Wrote: Long time CUSA schools USM, Rice, UTEP ought to talk about what is best way forward. Can they coax other CUSA west schools- La Tech, UNT, UTSA and media partner ESPN to join in creating a ten team SWC? Suggest study pulling in NMSU, stAte, UL and a fourth school to round out a SWC Conference. Ten schools in conference is best model at this time for G5.
There won't be a new conference created. First of all, they'd need a waiver to get an at large NCAA basketball bid and a piece of the Playoff money. And why would some combination of some CUSA and some Sun Belt schools be worth more to ESPN than the same schools in different conferences?
Look, there aren't going to be any new conferences created. Nor are we going to split the Belt and CUSA into pieces in order to put them back together in some other way. It doesn't work that way.
Barring some other shakeup, the situation is frozen. CUSA has too many teams so they're not raiding us. What are they going to do? Move to 16 teams to take Ga Southern and App State? Not likely. And there'd still probably be no more TV money from such a deal. The prisoner's dilemma (where any team offered a bid by CUSA has to take it because if they turn it down, CUSA would just go after another Belt team, thus weakening what is left of the conference) is over.
But so long as we don't get better, no CUSA team will defect to the Belt. And by better, I mean much better than CUSA. And for more than one season.
And anyway, this isn't our problem. We're not the conference having to slash our athletic department budgets because we relied too heavily on transitory TV dollars. We're not stuck with a three time zone conference that's extremely far flung. We're not stuck with a line up of bowl games where our teams will lose money in just about every one of them. We don't have 14 teams dividing up the Playoff money. We don't have 14 teams fighting for 1 NCAA basketball bid. Our moveups are largely seasoned and contributing (except Coastal).
CUSA got themselves into this jam themselves. They took the wrong teams. They clung to a failed model of markets. There's no need for us to rush out and figure out a way for them to get out of it.