Anyone else notice that at least for one season, the WAC is going to have 15 teams? The largest non-Power Conference in America. If CUSA takes Stephen F. Austin in the future, that would bring them back down to a less bloated and to an even 12-team (6 and 6) conference--their remaining Texas 6 in the East and everyone else in the West.

(01-22-2022 10:03 PM)Porcine Wrote:  

(01-22-2022 09:21 PM)jrj84105 Wrote:  

(01-21-2022 08:45 PM)inutech Wrote:  

(01-21-2022 08:38 PM)Porcine Wrote:  

(01-21-2022 08:32 PM)inutech Wrote:  I don't like 9 conference games because I enjoy OOC games. But I also don't like conferences being bigger than 12 teams (or 9 to be honest).

Probably why I'm not an AD.

But if you're going to be that big (and travel costs aren't a factor, as they won't be for the SEC) pods are fun.

Go to 18 teams and each division can be it's own conference.

Sure.

2 conferences negotiating media deals together. Be fine.

Conferences are just media conglomerates. Two independent divisions that play separately, each like an old-school conference with round robin play is IMO just as stable as any 16 team conference trying to placate a whole bunch of competing (and often mutually exclusive) scheduling preferences.

Thank you.

I wasn't being sarcastic. I sincerely think that would be fine.

A beefed up version of the alliance would be fine with me if you ended up with 9 team conference/division/pals that play round robin every year. I don't care who negotiates the media rights or does the branding. It's worked great for someone like the SEC to get people to care about the conference, but it's always been a little bit odd.

(01-23-2022 03:06 PM)inutech Wrote:  

(01-22-2022 10:03 PM)Porcine Wrote:  

(01-22-2022 09:21 PM)jrj84105 Wrote:  

(01-21-2022 08:45 PM)inutech Wrote:  

(01-21-2022 08:38 PM)Porcine Wrote:  Go to 18 teams and each division can be it's own conference.

Sure.

2 conferences negotiating media deals together. Be fine.

Conferences are just media conglomerates. Two independent divisions that play separately, each like an old-school conference with round robin play is IMO just as stable as any 16 team conference trying to placate a whole bunch of competing (and often mutually exclusive) scheduling preferences.

Thank you.

I wasn't being sarcastic. I sincerely think that would be fine.

A beefed up version of the alliance would be fine with me if you ended up with 9 team conference/division/pals that play round robin every year. I don't care who negotiates the media rights or does the branding. It's worked great for someone like the SEC to get people to care about the conference, but it's always been a little bit odd.

I think that if the PAC and ACC maintain the status quo that the B1G and SEC will plunder those two conferences resulting in a P2 and a G3. The SEC and B1G will be the P2 while the G3 will be the BigXII and backfilled PAC and ACC. Any Go5 that isn’t picked up in the BigXII, ACC, and PAC backfill is out of the power structure.

The way the ACC and PAC could retain some semblance of their historic selves would be to trim down and merge with a 9-10 team Eastern division of and a 9-10 team Western division. Would maybe gain some revenue by less dilution of product with fewer mouths to feed.

A backfilled PAC is basically the old WAC, and a backfilled ACC is basically the old Big East. They would be the PAC and ACC in name only at that point.

(01-23-2022 09:15 PM)jrj84105 Wrote:  

(01-23-2022 03:06 PM)inutech Wrote:  

(01-22-2022 10:03 PM)Porcine Wrote:  

(01-22-2022 09:21 PM)jrj84105 Wrote:  

(01-21-2022 08:45 PM)inutech Wrote:  Sure.

2 conferences negotiating media deals together. Be fine.

Conferences are just media conglomerates. Two independent divisions that play separately, each like an old-school conference with round robin play is IMO just as stable as any 16 team conference trying to placate a whole bunch of competing (and often mutually exclusive) scheduling preferences.

Thank you.

I wasn't being sarcastic. I sincerely think that would be fine.

A beefed up version of the alliance would be fine with me if you ended up with 9 team conference/division/pals that play round robin every year. I don't care who negotiates the media rights or does the branding. It's worked great for someone like the SEC to get people to care about the conference, but it's always been a little bit odd.

I think that if the PAC and ACC maintain the status quo that the B1G and SEC will plunder those two conferences resulting in a P2 and a G3. The SEC and B1G will be the P2 while the G3 will be the BigXII and backfilled PAC and ACC. Any Go5 that isn’t picked up in the BigXII, ACC, and PAC backfill is out of the power structure.

The way the ACC and PAC could retain some semblance of their historic selves would be to trim down and merge with a 9-10 team Eastern division of and a 9-10 team Western division. Would maybe gain some revenue by less dilution of product with fewer mouths to feed.

A backfilled PAC is basically the old WAC, and a backfilled ACC is basically the old Big East. They would be the PAC and ACC in name only at that point.

I think the idea of an 18 team "conference" that is really 2 conferences is interesting.

As a fan of a current G5 school, I wouldn't shed many tears if the Pac12 or ACC (or any other P5 conference) lost any level of power. I'm ok with that. I don't know that joining forces would actually "save" them (or even if they really need saving as you predict) but with no skin in the game I'm all for it even if it fails. Be something to watch.

I think if the ACC/PAC were to join and stick around close but not quite at the level of the SEC and B1G that would result in a less sharp divide between the haves and have-nots.
The Coastal Conference: C20C, From C to shining C.
East: Miami, FSU, GT, Clemson, NCSt, UNC, Duke, UVA, VT, Pitt
West: USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, UO, UW, UU, CU, AZ, ASU.
Affiliate: ND

PAC takes 9 from MWC plus BYU.
ACC: takes 7 from BigXII/AAC.
BigXII: refills a few positions from AAC/MWC.

That brings more schools into the power structure and continued relevance, and the Coastal sort of provides a bridge in on-field success somewhere between the SEC/B1G and the rest.

And it would be a fun conference network to subscribe to because you’d have early ACC games until late PAC games, without a lot of bad filler.

(01-21-2022 05:28 PM)schmolik Wrote:  For those of you who don't care about basketball (which according to my pick contest is everyone here), here's a look back.

Way back in 1996 the WAC made a big splash and expanded to 16 teams, picking off three former SWC to its existing members along with others. They were to my knowledge the first 16 team conference. They lasted three seasons in football before the MWC-WAC split.

In football, teams were split into four four team quads. The teams had played three seasons in the WAC, two in the original divisions and one with the quads shifted before the MWC-WAC split.

Did the quads contribute to the WAC failing? Should they have just stuck to a regular set of two divisions of eight teams each? Back then no one was even considering divisionless alignments. Would the WAC still be together today? It's unlikely that Utah would resist a call from the Pac-12 or BYU, TCU, or Houston from the Big 12 but would the Mountain West exist if the WAC "got it right"? Could the WAC have gotten it right? Were the quads a concept doomed to fail or did the WAC just choose them totally wrong?

Certainly the idea of a 16 team football conference is relevant (or will be) soon after Oklahoma and Texas join the SEC. Should they even bother with quads? Is a 16 team SEC doomed for an inevitable split like the WAC and 16 team Big East eventually did?

The problem with the WAC is they expanded without any plan how they would split the Utah/BYU/Wyoming/Colorado State/AF schools into divisions. It was a massive downfall. They would have been better off even going to 20 with 4 quads of 5.

(01-22-2022 09:21 AM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  

(01-22-2022 08:55 AM)Crayton Wrote:  The main cause of demise was being shut out of the Bowl Alliance. They thought they could earn a spot if they amassed enough talented schools and potentially replace the SWC. BYU finished #5 with 14 wins but got no invite. Only after the MWC split did the BCS add a Top 6 rule for mid-major champs.

Not just the top bowls. The WAC had very few bowls at all. Rice went 7-4, 7-4, and 8-4 during the years in the WAC and never sniffed a bowl,

Part of that was the result of the split. The split caused them to lose the Holiday Bowl.

(01-24-2022 06:26 PM)Sactowndog Wrote:  The problem with the WAC is they expanded without any plan how they would split the Utah/BYU/Wyoming/Colorado State/AF schools into divisions. It was a massive downfall. They would have been better off even going to 20 with 4 quads of 5.

This is true. I've looked into alternative schemes in the past, and the only one I could see that 'might' have staved off the Airport Meetings (there were issues beyond alignment) was to put all those teams in one permanent division and the other, more far-flung teams in a different division.

Mountain
BYU, Utah, Wyoming, Air Force, Colorado State, Rice, SMU, TCU
Pacific
SDSU, Fresno, Hawaii, New Mexico, UTEP, SJSU, UNLV, Tulsa

But I don't think the legacy Pacific teams (SDSU, Fresno, Hawaii, UNM, UTEP) would enjoy being cut off from the UT/CO/WY/TX teams, hence the wonky solution. Quads was probably one of those "least bad" options at the time. Muskie's note that Nevada would have been better than Tulsa looks good on the above map.

(01-24-2022 06:59 PM)Crayton Wrote:  

(01-24-2022 06:26 PM)Sactowndog Wrote:  The problem with the WAC is they expanded without any plan how they would split the Utah/BYU/Wyoming/Colorado State/AF schools into divisions. It was a massive downfall. They would have been better off even going to 20 with 4 quads of 5.

This is true. I've looked into alternative schemes in the past, and the only one I could see that 'might' have staved off the Airport Meetings (there were issues beyond alignment) was to put all those teams in one permanent division and the other, more far-flung teams in a different division.

Mountain
BYU, Utah, Wyoming, Air Force, Colorado State, Rice, SMU, TCU
Pacific
SDSU, Fresno, Hawaii, New Mexico, UTEP, SJSU, UNLV, Tulsa

But I don't think the legacy Pacific teams (SDSU, Fresno, Hawaii, UNM, UTEP) would enjoy being cut off from the UT/CO/WY/TX teams, hence the wonky solution. Quads was probably one of those "least bad" options at the time. Muskie's note that Nevada would have been better than Tulsa looks good on the above map.

Another "least bad" option for those (eventual MWC) schools to keep playing each other every year might have been not to expand to begin with. Which they seemingly could have chosen to do (or not do rather).

The merger of the skyline conference and the border conference into the WAC needed one dynamic to occur for it to work- the historic division between the northern (skyline) and southern (border) schools needed to shift to an East-West dynamic. But after the merger the eastern schools struggled relative to the western schools. There was already greater historical success among the western schools, but when the AZ schools reached their peak in football success followed by perennial skyline bottom-feeder BYU taking the reins while the front range schools and New Mexico struggled, that doomed the WAC. It never achieved the East/West parity it needed to align itself on that axis. SDSU and FrSU being better than the Texas additions only made that more clear. The only thing that would have made the WAC work would have been for one of the front range schools or UNM to have hired a Lavell Edwards type coach instead of BYU.

(01-22-2022 11:41 PM)All4One Wrote:  Anyone else notice that at least for one season, the WAC is going to have 15 teams? The largest non-Power Conference in America.

Thanks for calling the A-10 a power conference. Heartwarming.

(01-24-2022 09:02 PM)inutech Wrote:  

(01-24-2022 06:59 PM)Crayton Wrote:  

(01-24-2022 06:26 PM)Sactowndog Wrote:  The problem with the WAC is they expanded without any plan how they would split the Utah/BYU/Wyoming/Colorado State/AF schools into divisions. It was a massive downfall. They would have been better off even going to 20 with 4 quads of 5.

This is true. I've looked into alternative schemes in the past, and the only one I could see that 'might' have staved off the Airport Meetings (there were issues beyond alignment) was to put all those teams in one permanent division and the other, more far-flung teams in a different division.

Mountain
BYU, Utah, Wyoming, Air Force, Colorado State, Rice, SMU, TCU
Pacific
SDSU, Fresno, Hawaii, New Mexico, UTEP, SJSU, UNLV, Tulsa

But I don't think the legacy Pacific teams (SDSU, Fresno, Hawaii, UNM, UTEP) would enjoy being cut off from the UT/CO/WY/TX teams, hence the wonky solution. Quads was probably one of those "least bad" options at the time. Muskie's note that Nevada would have been better than Tulsa looks good on the above map.

Another "least bad" option for those (eventual MWC) schools to keep playing each other every year might have been not to expand to begin with. Which they seemingly could have chosen to do (or not do rather).

It was too late at that point and there was a lot of acrimony between the schools that voted to expand and the ones that said it was a bad idea from the very beginning.