(12-06-2017 05:27 PM)Green Menace Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 02:08 PM)Fanof49ASU Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 12:07 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 10:55 AM)AppManDG Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 01:18 AM)Fanof49ASU Wrote:  Being much more regional conference won’t magically fix our attendance. It will bump it some, but I doubt more than 10%. The average fan might gain one game in a drivable distance.

MapQuest mileage from Boone
Troy 8 hrs vs Charlotte 2 hrs
A State 10 hrs vs Marshall 5 hrs
USA 10 hrs vs MTSU 6 hrs
ULM 12 hrs vs ODU 6 hrs
Louisiana 14 hrs vs WKU 6 1/2 hrs
Texas State 19 hrs vs UAB 7 hrs
Coastal 5 hrs
Ga St 5 hrs
Ga So 6 hrs

All schools within a 7 hour drive. Yea, that would help attendance.

I'm not sure it would really. How many of those schools have large traveling fan bases to begin with?

Maybe in a good year a decent group makes the trip, but at 7 hours you're still knocking out a lot of fans. There are a few that have the money and time to travel long distances for away games, but most, unless its a day trip, save their travel for one game a year. (In most SBC cases, the bowl)

I’m not seeing it either. Like I said, I’ll give you one short trip, but 5-7 hrs is still hard on a lot of fans. The newness wears off quickly.

Wait a minute! On another thread, discussing Troy bringing more fans to the NO Bowl by a troy fan, I mentioned it was an 8+ hour drive from Denton to New Orleans. Troy fan said that was just an excuse(not to have as many UNT fans as Troy fans).

Now a 5-7 trip in this thread is hard on SBC fans talking about conference realignment???

He was talking about week in, week out normal conference games. Everyone makes exceptions for a big out of conference(P5) game or bowl game.

Outside of a championship game hosted at App State, Ark State...maybe Georgia Southern or Troy, would it really be any different with the Sunbelt? How many fans would a championship game at Georgia State vs Texas State draw? Just sayin.

(12-06-2017 05:55 PM)AlwaysSunny Wrote:  Outside of a championship game hosted at App State, Ark State...maybe Georgia Southern or Troy, would it really be any different with the Sunbelt? How many fans would a championship game at Georgia State vs Texas State draw? Just sayin.

Don’t bring logic and common sense to this board now!

Plus, the game at Arkansas State had months in advance to plan. The CUSA championship game (or any championship game) had a couple weeks at most of planning. Totally different scenarios.

Having no dogs in this fight, why in the world would the SBC want to help the CUSA? To me Southern Miss and ODU wanting to move to the SB makes sense. But the SB splits the pie 10 ways in football while CUSA splits 14 ways. I think CUSA spitting into West or East into a new conference makes the most sense. West could easily bring in NMSU or the East bring in Liberty and/or UMASS.

(12-06-2017 02:08 PM)Fanof49ASU Wrote:  I’m not seeing it either. Like I said, I’ll give you one short trip, but 5-7 hrs is still hard on a lot of fans. The newness wears off quickly.

Wait, I thought fans don't travel to Sunbelt away games BECAUSE everybody in the league is so new. FAU proves winning builds fan interest. 8,000 more fans showed up this year because they won. I can't name more than 25 or 30 fan bases in all of college football (guess what 0 are in the G5) who travel "long distance" week in and week out to see their teams play. For almost every program it's friends, family, and a few diehards. The number of diehards depends on how much their program historically wins.

(12-06-2017 12:47 PM)ericsaid Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 01:18 AM)Fanof49ASU Wrote:  Being much more regional conference won’t magically fix our attendance. It will bump it some, but I doubt more than 10%. The average fan might gain one game in a drivable distance.

So you don't think you would get more fans playing App and Georgia Southern than UTSA and North Texas? App would likely have more fans there than Charlotte, and Southern would likely bring a large contingent. I'm sure Marshall and ODU travels fairly well to Charlotte as well, when compared to other less regional schools.

AState is 300 Miles from any football playing Sun Belt or CUSA team.
Most people don’t realize we are closer to UAB and USM than UNT


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(12-06-2017 01:51 PM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  Here's my view

1) I think it would have been simpler to say "Having 10 bowl eligible teams really doesn't solve CUSA's problems"
2) I think that CUSA probably had a better year than the Belt did in football
3) I don't think that any team is going to get everything the want in the case of a split up and reconstitution of the Belt and CUSA
4) FAU getting 18k butts in the seats this year is absolutely miraculous.
5) Any conference 4 garbage teams at the bottom is going to generate higher than average bowl eligibility in the rest of the conference.

CUSA had some real garbage in their league. UTEP, Charlotte, and Rice and ODU won exactly 2 games outside of games between themselves.

So lets just throw out FCA and garbage wins and see where CUSA lands without the bottom feeders

So, now lets look at CUSA's top 10 when you remove FCS wins, wins against their bottom 4, and wins versus very bad (2 wins or less) FBS teams

FAU 7-3 -
FIU 5-3
Marshall 4-5 (Kent State was thrown out)
WKU 1-6 (Ball State was thrown out)
MTSU 2-6 (BGSU was thrown out)

CUSA West

UNT - 6-4
UAB - 5-3
USM- 4-4
LTU - 3-6
UTSA 1-5 (Baylor and Texas State thrown out).

I once did some research on bowl eligibility having more than the normal number of 0, 1, and 2 win teams increases the number of eligible teams.


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patrick magee is one of ours. we've been ignoring him for a decade or so. our suggestion is for you to ignore him, as well.

I suspect he's writing intentionally provocative **** in order to farm clicks, and it appears to be working. I see this story in every college sports forum I know of.

(12-06-2017 05:55 PM)AlwaysSunny Wrote:  Outside of a championship game hosted at App State, Ark State...maybe Georgia Southern or Troy, would it really be any different with the Sunbelt? How many fans would a championship game at Georgia State vs Texas State draw? Just sayin.

Yes, but odds are, those first 4 teams are probably going to host the title game more often than not.

(12-07-2017 12:34 AM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 05:55 PM)AlwaysSunny Wrote:  Outside of a championship game hosted at App State, Ark State...maybe Georgia Southern or Troy, would it really be any different with the Sunbelt? How many fans would a championship game at Georgia State vs Texas State draw? Just sayin.

Yes, but odds are, those first 4 teams are probably going to host the title game more often than not.

If priced fairly, I think A-State, App, GaSo, Louisiana, and Troy are going 20k plus barring really bad weather. Would not be surprised if USA or Texas State did well. We have not seen what their crowds look like in a year where they went undefeated or had only one or two league losses. ULM jury is out but if they keep having a crazy effective offense and add a defense maybe people start watching again. Coastal ought to be able to fill or near fill their stadium since it is so small. A


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(12-05-2017 10:10 PM)trojanbrutha Wrote:  Conference USA proves again that it’s a failing model

By Patrick Magee
pmagee@sunherald.com

Conference USA football can celebrate placing a record nine teams in bowl games this season, but there’s little joy for the league when you consider fan interest.

The disappointing crowd in Boca Raton for Saturday’s C-USA title game reinforces a worrying trend. The conference announced 14,258 at FAU Stadium, but the actual figure appeared to be significantly lower.

When the title game was played at WKU in Bowling Green a year ago, C-USA announced a crowd of 13,213. The actual attendance may have been half that figure.

Lane Kiffin’s successful first season at FAU provided national buzz for the program and conference, but that didn’t deliver big crowds. A year after averaging 10,073 fans, FAU jumped to 18,568.
...
...
...

More 100 year old schools stirring the pot. FAU football is fairly new, in fact the entire University has just recently become more than a small University catered to grad students. Our attendance will increase over time, especially with an athletic department that is dedicated to football.

Any random beat writer can whip up an opinionated article. All G5 conferences have thier share of issues. Let’s toss the “grass is greener” attitudes and allow our conferences to have some kind of stability. After a major shuffle such as the last of course there will be side effects.

(12-07-2017 02:31 AM)Seminowl Wrote:  

(12-05-2017 10:10 PM)trojanbrutha Wrote:  Conference USA proves again that it’s a failing model

By Patrick Magee
pmagee@sunherald.com

Conference USA football can celebrate placing a record nine teams in bowl games this season, but there’s little joy for the league when you consider fan interest.

The disappointing crowd in Boca Raton for Saturday’s C-USA title game reinforces a worrying trend. The conference announced 14,258 at FAU Stadium, but the actual figure appeared to be significantly lower.

When the title game was played at WKU in Bowling Green a year ago, C-USA announced a crowd of 13,213. The actual attendance may have been half that figure.

Lane Kiffin’s successful first season at FAU provided national buzz for the program and conference, but that didn’t deliver big crowds. A year after averaging 10,073 fans, FAU jumped to 18,568.
...
...
...

More 100 year old schools stirring the pot. FAU football is fairly new, in fact the entire University has just recently become more than a small University catered to grad students. Our attendance will increase over time, especially with an athletic department that is dedicated to football.

Any random beat writer can whip up an opinionated article. All G5 conferences have thier share of issues. Let’s toss the “grass is greener” attitudes and allow our conferences to have some kind of stability. After a major shuffle such as the last of course there will be side effects.

neutral site games between two g5 teams just dont draw many fans. g5 teams dont have national following or much brand recognition. they always look bad on tv because there is usually a small crowd in a cheesey stadium and it just reinforces the "small timeness" of our level of play. these championship games give one more loss to a non-ranked team to one of the schools playing so that would hurt one teams bowl chances IMHO. If I was marketing this game I would hold it the highest seeded team's home field. that way maybe a good crowd and gameday atmosphere could be ginned up.

(12-06-2017 11:13 AM)trueeagle98 Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 10:55 AM)AppManDG Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 01:18 AM)Fanof49ASU Wrote:  Being much more regional conference won’t magically fix our attendance. It will bump it some, but I doubt more than 10%. The average fan might gain one game in a drivable distance.

MapQuest mileage from Boone
Troy 8 hrs vs Charlotte 2 hrs
A State 10 hrs vs Marshall 5 hrs
USA 10 hrs vs MTSU 6 hrs
ULM 12 hrs vs ODU 6 hrs
Louisiana 14 hrs vs WKU 6 1/2 hrs
Texas State 19 hrs vs UAB 7 hrs
Coastal 5 hrs
Ga St 5 hrs
Ga So 6 hrs

All schools within a 7 hour drive. Yea, that would help attendance.

your model assumes fans would even travel to those schools. App has never really traveled well to Statesboro so what will magically change? Regional (east vs west) conferences help the Texas and Virginia/NC schools the the most. GA, FL, AL, MS, etc... will still have a ton of travel.

My preferred conference is based more on athletic and fan support. Heck even reorganizing conferences into more like minded (as GaSt fans like to put it) with an urban vs rural make up. Just because a school is closer doesn't mean I would want to go see them. App fans have been pushing for this regional model the hardest. I can understand why because for them it works. They get quality opponents within a few hours drive. Not only will it boost ticket sales it will save them money. But other schools will have to routinely travel be plane to Florida, Arkansas, etc...

Not a fan of being in a conference (and division) with FIU. Maybe FAU, but not FIU.

There are numerous reasons App fans don't travel to Statesboro. I've never had any issues, but many of our fans have. I'll be the first to admit once you get over 5 hours a lot of App fans don't travel well, but we've only had games in Atlanta & Statesboro that even come close to that parameter. Gotta remember we too 10,000 to ECU.

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(12-06-2017 01:51 PM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  Here's my view

1) I think it would have been simpler to say "Having 10 bowl eligible teams really doesn't solve CUSA's problems"
2) I think that CUSA probably had a better year than the Belt did in football
3) I don't think that any team is going to get everything the want in the case of a split up and reconstitution of the Belt and CUSA
4) FAU getting 18k butts in the seats this year is absolutely miraculous.
5) Any conference 4 garbage teams at the bottom is going to generate higher than average bowl eligibility in the rest of the conference.

CUSA had some real garbage in their league. UTEP, Charlotte, and Rice and ODU won exactly 2 games outside of games between themselves.

So lets just throw out FCA and garbage wins and see where CUSA lands without the bottom feeders

So, now lets look at CUSA's top 10 when you remove FCS wins, wins against their bottom 4, and wins versus very bad (2 wins or less) FBS teams

FAU 7-3 -
FIU 5-3
Marshall 4-5 (Kent State was thrown out)
WKU 1-6 (Ball State was thrown out)
MTSU 2-6 (BGSU was thrown out)

CUSA West

UNT - 6-4
UAB - 5-3
USM- 4-4
LTU - 3-6
UTSA 1-5 (Baylor and Texas State thrown out).

We were bad this year but not garbage. We finished 5-7. Won our FCS game and beat UMASS. Half of the SB's bowl eligible teams can't say that much. If you're throwing out wins then there were 3 terrible teams in CUSA.

edit: I just looked. Half of your conference has three or less wins and you're saying we're carrying anchors?

(12-06-2017 11:28 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 10:55 AM)AppManDG Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 01:18 AM)Fanof49ASU Wrote:  Being much more regional conference won’t magically fix our attendance. It will bump it some, but I doubt more than 10%. The average fan might gain one game in a drivable distance.

MapQuest mileage from Boone
Troy 8 hrs vs Charlotte 2 hrs
A State 10 hrs vs Marshall 5 hrs
USA 10 hrs vs MTSU 6 hrs
ULM 12 hrs vs ODU 6 hrs
Louisiana 14 hrs vs WKU 6 1/2 hrs
Texas State 19 hrs vs UAB 7 hrs
Coastal 5 hrs
Ga St 5 hrs
Ga So 6 hrs

All schools within a 7 hour drive. Yea, that would help attendance.

I would never trade Troy for UNCC. Keep UNCC a semi-regular OOC game. Drop FCS games each year and open up the opportunity for a rotation of UNCC and MTSU.

All these assumptions are made based on football. There are a lot of other factors to consider in joining a conference.

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(12-06-2017 11:39 AM)Blazerstadium Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 11:28 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 10:55 AM)AppManDG Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 01:18 AM)Fanof49ASU Wrote:  Being much more regional conference won’t magically fix our attendance. It will bump it some, but I doubt more than 10%. The average fan might gain one game in a drivable distance.

MapQuest mileage from Boone
Troy 8 hrs vs Charlotte 2 hrs
A State 10 hrs vs Marshall 5 hrs
USA 10 hrs vs MTSU 6 hrs
ULM 12 hrs vs ODU 6 hrs
Louisiana 14 hrs vs WKU 6 1/2 hrs
Texas State 19 hrs vs UAB 7 hrs
Coastal 5 hrs
Ga St 5 hrs
Ga So 6 hrs

All schools within a 7 hour drive. Yea, that would help attendance.

I would never trade Troy for UNCC. Keep UNCC a semi-regular OOC game. Drop FCS games each year and open up the opportunity for a rotation of UNCC and MTSU.

That works for App, because an App fan designed it. It doesn't work for the other schools. It works for App because it puts App in the middle. There will always be outliers in every conference, someone has to be on the boarder and some will be in the middle of whatever the conference makeup is.

It works because the geography works. Once again, there are far more sports to consider than football. App vs, Charlotte, Coastal, GA So, GA St, Marshall, MTSU, ODU and WKU will draw bigger crowds - home & away - than the Louisiana schools, AState, Texas St, Troy and USA.

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(12-07-2017 01:03 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(12-07-2017 12:34 AM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 05:55 PM)AlwaysSunny Wrote:  Outside of a championship game hosted at App State, Ark State...maybe Georgia Southern or Troy, would it really be any different with the Sunbelt? How many fans would a championship game at Georgia State vs Texas State draw? Just sayin.

Yes, but odds are, those first 4 teams are probably going to host the title game more often than not.

If priced fairly, I think A-State, App, GaSo, Louisiana, and Troy are going 20k plus barring really bad weather. Would not be surprised if USA or Texas State did well. We have not seen what their crowds look like in a year where they went undefeated or had only one or two league losses. ULM jury is out but if they keep having a crazy effective offense and add a defense maybe people start watching again. Coastal ought to be able to fill or near fill their stadium since it is so small. A


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Troy would have atleast what you guys had.

Hell we had over 27k for Akron lol

(12-06-2017 06:10 PM)msm96wolf Wrote:  Having no dogs in this fight, why in the world would the SBC want to help the CUSA? To me Southern Miss and ODU wanting to move to the SB makes sense. But the SB splits the pie 10 ways in football while CUSA splits 14 ways. I think CUSA spitting into West or East into a new conference makes the most sense. West could easily bring in NMSU or the East bring in Liberty and/or UMASS.

I don't look at as helping either conference, but helping your school to be as fiscally responsible as possible in the declining TV revenue era.

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(12-06-2017 10:49 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 10:16 AM)JCGSU Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 01:18 AM)Fanof49ASU Wrote:  Being much more regional conference won’t magically fix our attendance. It will bump it some, but I doubt more than 10%. The average fan might gain one game in a drivable distance.

I was never driving to NMSU or Idaho that is for sure. I will go to CCU when the kids get a little older without a doubt.

What will fix attendance is winning OOC games more than anything. Winning is nice but when you are the lowest rated conference and only winning conference games mainly it loses its luster quite a bit. This is why I even cheer for GagStat and the Appholes OOC.

The CUSA marketzzzz experiment failed miserably but credit to them they were better than us this year. Now with the capped playoff payout having all those teams hedging against realignment hurts even worse. The Sun Belt is what it is right now but we only have to split money with ten teams and became more regional. We have much more scheduling flexibility with lower revenue sharing as well. GS might not be going to the one P5 money game if we had 12, 14 or 16 teams in this conference. CCU, GSU, GS, App, TXST, USA, have all been in the FBS for less than a decade and have a ton of growth ahead of them and were chosen mainly on merit and potential over marketzzzz.

We all know FAU is going back in the trash can when the Lane train departs the station.

It is mathematically impossible for every member of a conference to solve their problems by winning.

There has to be a plan B.

OOC games, can you read? You win two of four OOC games or better you only have to win two to four conf games to make a bowl game!..MATH YO!! SEC did this for the last few decades fallen off a bit lately.