(10-15-2022 11:27 AM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  At any rate I think the pairings could be a good system, FIU and Liberty are just the only two that don't really benefit, but with both on relative islands, there's not much that can be done. It's not like Tech and SHSU would benefit nearly as much as MT/WKU and UTEP/NMSU.

They don't benefit in football but they're not losing anything. The rest of us still have to play them both almost all the time, too.

And for basketball, it doesn't hurt them as much as it hurts the rest of us. Travel partners is about everyone other than the partners.

For baseball it's going to be farther for that extra road trip every year than for the rest of us.

(10-15-2022 11:32 AM)inutech Wrote:  

(10-15-2022 11:27 AM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  At any rate I think the pairings could be a good system, FIU and Liberty are just the only two that don't really benefit, but with both on relative islands, there's not much that can be done. It's not like Tech and SHSU would benefit nearly as much as MT/WKU and UTEP/NMSU.

They don't benefit in football but they're not losing anything. The rest of us still have to play them both almost all the time, too.

And for basketball, it doesn't hurt them as much as it hurts the rest of us. Travel partners is about everyone other than the partners.

It's a fair point and fully agreed on them not losing out on anything, though those travel partners will exist regardless of if pairings in football are implemented.

In football, UTEP vs NMSU every year. The rest can do whatever. I would imagine the 100 miles of hate folks feel the same about their rivalry.

(10-14-2022 06:03 PM)roundsound Wrote:  

(10-14-2022 05:47 PM)TOPSTRAIGHT Wrote:  Some BIG quotes in today's news are about the 10 vs 12 teams debate.

Vannini-- " Multiple sources throughout the conference said the league DOESN'T expect to get back to fourteen teams, and it may NOT rush to twelve either".

C-USA Board chair Caboni-- "We think and our new media partners think 10 is a good place to be. There is a possibility of 12, but it has to be the right 12. Institutional strength and geography matter there".

Almost sounds like the media contract is a done deal.

Why should anyone even give a **** what “media partners” think. First of all, we can earn six times more playing one guarantee than anyone is willing to give us annually. Second, it’s not like any of them are really delivering exposure. It would be one thing if we were getting some occasional prime exposure in exchange for the peanuts we have and will be getting (if anything) but that’s not a reality either.

“Media partners” shouldn’t have an ounce of say in who or how many we have. Zero. This Kennesaw thing is a ******* joke. Ask me how I really feel.

C-USA doesn’t really have to go the same route the SBC did since the deregulation of the CCG. Just protect UTEP-NMSU, WKU-MTSU, and JSU-KSU each season and you’re good to do whatever.

(10-15-2022 11:54 AM)ThreeifbyLightning Wrote:  

(10-14-2022 06:03 PM)roundsound Wrote:  

(10-14-2022 05:47 PM)TOPSTRAIGHT Wrote:  Some BIG quotes in today's news are about the 10 vs 12 teams debate.

Vannini-- " Multiple sources throughout the conference said the league DOESN'T expect to get back to fourteen teams, and it may NOT rush to twelve either".

C-USA Board chair Caboni-- "We think and our new media partners think 10 is a good place to be. There is a possibility of 12, but it has to be the right 12. Institutional strength and geography matter there".

Almost sounds like the media contract is a done deal.

Why should anyone even give a **** what “media partners” think. First of all, we can earn six times more playing one guarantee than anyone is willing to give us annually. Second, it’s not like any of them are really delivering exposure. It would be one thing if we were getting some occasional prime exposure in exchange for the peanuts we have and will be getting (if anything) but that’s not a reality either.

“Media partners” shouldn’t have an ounce of say in who or how many we have. Zero. This Kennesaw thing is a ******* joke. Ask me how I really feel.

So, no exposure plus no money? Not saying you're wrong but I want to see what the contract looks like first.

(10-15-2022 12:04 PM)Troy_Fan_15 Wrote:  C-USA doesn’t really have to go the same route the SBC did since the deregulation of the CCG. Just protect UTEP-NMSU, WKU-MTSU, and JSU-KSU each season and you’re good to do whatever.

That’s a good point. Maybe LT and SHSU will be a protected “rivalry” game as well. That leaves Liberty and FIU as the odd men out and who knows, it might become a rivalry game.

This is the first time UTEP has a real rival in a conference since 1999 when New Mexico left for the MWC. The WAC after 1999 did not offer UTEP a rival. Same for C-USA 2.0 and 3.0. At least 4.0 has that true rival feel most UTEP fans haven’t had for almost a quarter of a century.

(10-15-2022 02:21 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(10-15-2022 12:04 PM)Troy_Fan_15 Wrote:  C-USA doesn’t really have to go the same route the SBC did since the deregulation of the CCG. Just protect UTEP-NMSU, WKU-MTSU, and JSU-KSU each season and you’re good to do whatever.

That’s a good point. Maybe LT and SHSU will be a protected “rivalry” game as well. That leaves Liberty and FIU as the odd men out and who knows, it might become a rivalry game.

They can start by saying nasty things about each other!

(10-16-2022 09:14 AM)Tech80 Wrote:  

(10-15-2022 02:21 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(10-15-2022 12:04 PM)Troy_Fan_15 Wrote:  C-USA doesn’t really have to go the same route the SBC did since the deregulation of the CCG. Just protect UTEP-NMSU, WKU-MTSU, and JSU-KSU each season and you’re good to do whatever.

That’s a good point. Maybe LT and SHSU will be a protected “rivalry” game as well. That leaves Liberty and FIU as the odd men out and who knows, it might become a rivalry game.

They can start by saying nasty things about each other!

I feel like FIU should do what UMASS did and make every home game against Liberty a “Pride” game. Classic trolling job by UMASS lol.

With 10 teams, you don't really need divisions (for football, at least). You can either play a 9-game round-robin conference schedule, a la the Big 12, or you can skip a team each season.

As others have said, for CUSA, skipping a team would probably be the best route. You'd lose potential revenue by adding a conference game, since that could come at the expense of a potential P5 guarantee game or, for some, a regional G5 rivalry game. It would also cost the conference in exposure by limiting opportunities to collect wins against other FBS conferences.

So skipping a team is the way to go. The only complicating factor here is, you'd need a tie-breaker for cases where two teams are tied for 2nd place and they didn't play each other head-to-head. No big deal... whether you chose the highest ranked team, the team with the toughest SoS, or some complicated metric comparing games against common opponents, there are plenty of ways to do this. Most years, you wouldn't even need it at all.

Since the whole point of divisions, really, is controlling travel costs, your team-skipping formula can weight teams by distance. Basically, the "problem children" are your matchups of fringe schools -- Liberty vs FIU, Liberty vs NMSU/UTEP, and FIU vs NMSU/UTEP. So those games would either be eliminated completely in the regular season, or drastically reduced so that they only happen once every few seasons.

There's no benefit for nearby schools to skip each other, so you make those games permanent to semi-permanent. As someone else noted, it's doubtful the conference would run through the entire rotation before another round of realignment hits, so if necessary, faraway games could be weighted toward the back end of the rotation.

It's not a perfect system -- teams in the middle of the footprint would realize less travel savings than those on the fringes -- and it would be kind of a bear to work out the finer details, but it would achieve a fairly effective compromise between round-robin and divisional scheduling. And as long as the tie breakers were well thought out, you'd always have your two best teams meet in the CCG.

(10-17-2022 12:28 PM)whupemall Wrote:  Since the whole point of divisions, really, is controlling travel costs, your team-skipping formula can weight teams by distance. Basically, the "problem children" are your matchups of fringe schools -- Liberty vs FIU, Liberty vs NMSU/UTEP, and FIU vs NMSU/UTEP. So those games would either be eliminated completely in the regular season, or drastically reduced so that they only happen once every few seasons.

The scheduling math doesn't really work skipping a particular matchup(let alone multiple) altogether or even frequently, especially when you consider FIU and Liberty are the only two that don't have a natural nearby rival to play every single year.

(10-17-2022 01:03 PM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  

(10-17-2022 12:28 PM)whupemall Wrote:  Since the whole point of divisions, really, is controlling travel costs, your team-skipping formula can weight teams by distance. Basically, the "problem children" are your matchups of fringe schools -- Liberty vs FIU, Liberty vs NMSU/UTEP, and FIU vs NMSU/UTEP. So those games would either be eliminated completely in the regular season, or drastically reduced so that they only happen once every few seasons.

The scheduling math doesn't really work skipping a particular matchup(let alone multiple) altogether or even frequently, especially when you consider FIU and Liberty are the only two that don't have a natural nearby rival to play every single year.

I don't think you would want to schedule permanent "non-rivals" although I guess the only reason to avoid that would be fairness.

More likely is a general grouping where you don't ever miss the 4 other schools in your "half" of the conference, except that the dividing line isn't really where you'd want it (east-west would split actual rivals). So the best option is just one protected team for everyone and a big rotation through the rest of the conference.

Like I said earlier, all Liberty is giving up by playing in Miami every other year is the chance to travel to another CUSA team instead, and why would they care about that? Same thing the other direction. In a given year, Liberty might rather play outside Atlanta or Nashville or whatever - but we're talking about a 16 year rotation (instead of 18), so how much are they really losing out on? No way we have the same teams in 16 years anyway.

So you "protect" the rivalries for the optics (so you can announce it to fans when you release the scheduling plan) but it really doesn't matter. As long as you set it so the actual rivals weren't going to miss each other until the end of the cycle, there is almost no chance you'd actually get there before you have to rethink things.

(10-14-2022 06:03 PM)roundsound Wrote:  

(10-14-2022 05:47 PM)TOPSTRAIGHT Wrote:  Some BIG quotes in today's news are about the 10 vs 12 teams debate.

Vannini-- " Multiple sources throughout the conference said the league DOESN'T expect to get back to fourteen teams, and it may NOT rush to twelve either".

C-USA Board chair Caboni-- "We think and our new media partners think 10 is a good place to be. There is a possibility of 12, but it has to be the right 12. Institutional strength and geography matter there".

Almost sounds like the media contract is a done deal.

I'm hearing from sources media contract could be announced extremely soon.

I find it rather interesting that Liberty/FIU are the only odd balls in this 10-team set-up. I know for a fact that Liberty would not mind being a travel partner for FIU.

It should be noted that Liberty was in the East division of the very Florida centric ASun by choice for basketball. Meaning that Liberty shared a division with KSU and 4 Florida teams. We recruit Florida heavily, so we do not care about that.

Lastly, the Liberty-FIU game in 2020 was a close game (LU 36-34) where Liberty needed a 4th down stop to win the game. FIU was really bad that year. They were 0-5 and one of the losses came from FCS Jacksonville State who won 19-10.

CUSA will want to get to 12, they know half the league members looking to get out...

(10-17-2022 02:19 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  CUSA will want to get to 12, they know half the league members looking to get out...

I don't think those two things are related.

One is almost certainly true. The other may or may not be.

(10-17-2022 02:14 PM)LUcanesfan Wrote:  I find it rather interesting that Liberty/FIU are the only odd balls in this 10-team set-up. I know for a fact that Liberty would not mind being a travel partner for FIU.

It should be noted that Liberty was in the East division of the very Florida centric ASun by choice for basketball. Meaning that Liberty shared a division with KSU and 4 Florida teams. We recruit Florida heavily, so we do not care about that.

Lastly, the Liberty-FIU game in 2020 was a close game (LU 36-34) where Liberty needed a 4th down stop to win the game. FIU was really bad that year. They were 0-5 and one of the losses came from FCS Jacksonville State who won 19-10.

Las Cruces to El Paso is fewer than 50 miles and they've played one another 99 times, neither of them have another conference member within 700 miles.

Middle and Western are 100 miles apart and have played 72 times.

Any arrangement in which MT/WKU or NMSU/UTEP miss each other at any point should be a non starter.

Jacksonville to Kennesaw is 80 miles and they've played four times(including once in the playoffs) which is a lot considering Kennesaw is just in their eighth season of football.

La Tech and Sam Houston have only played three times with two of those being three quarters of a century ago or longer, but they're 260 miles apart in a conference where neither of them have another member with 450 miles.

The reason Liberty and FIU are the oddballs as you say should be clear, there's not another conference member within 500 miles of Lynchburg and it's nearly 700 miles to the next CUSA member from Miami.

(10-17-2022 02:19 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  CUSA will want to get to 12, they know half the league members looking to get out...

Agree. But IMO they already have some on "speed dial" AND they are not going anywhere-- plus according to the quotes last Friday they are in no hurry and may decide to "hold" at ten for a good while.

Everybody (obviously) is waiting around to see what the BIG10 and to a lesser extent the BIG12 decide.

I really think C-USA will WAIT till dominoes break loose. One week?, Three years? Who knows???

500 miles is a hop, skip and a jump on an airplane, it's no big deal. From El Paso to Dallas would take us 1 hr. and about 20 minutes when I was in the Navy Reserve. Not even enough to take a nap. It's not like they have to take a train like in Knute Rockne's days. I think fans make too much of a deal with distance and it's not really a problem. Now trying going to Thailand from SF where it took us 12 hours to get there, and that's not counting the hours from El Paso to SF.