BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

Marshall would be happier in the Sun Belt. They had some hellacious rivalries with App State and Georgia Southern back in the SoCon. And Huntington regularly tops the list of dying metro areas, so their market is never going to be attractive to even a diminished AAC.

 

The AAC will be at eight for both football (Navy as the eighth) and all sports (Wichita) after this ... I assume they look to add four. There are plenty of candidates that make sense.

North Texas is close to the league offices and has decent football and basketball, would give the league a second Texas team.

I hate to shill for them, but Liberty makes too much sense across the board. The school has power-5 facilities in all of the important sports -- football, basketball, baseball, and even softball. They've fallen out of the news a bit as political poison since Falwell disappeared. I don't believe TV markets are really that important anymore, which plays in LU's favor since Lynchburg-Roanoke is a medium-sized market at best.

UAB does make a lot of sense. Growing football program, has had some solid success in basketball. New football stadium. Good academics, for whatever that's worth anymore.

UTSA is another one I think they look hard at, much more growth potential than say Louisiana Tech and Southern Miss.

Have seen some rumblings of Western Kentucky too.

EDIT TO ADD:

Say you go with the first four. You could have divisions (for football) of:
EAST - UCF, ECU, UAB, Liberty, Temple, Navy
WEST - Memphis, SMU, Tulane, Tulsa, North Texas, UTSA

It's not terrible.

 

SMU will veto North Texas. Substitute Southern Miss.

 

There are only two questions worth considering when expanding a conference, and these are probably in the wrong order:

Are you any good at football?
Will people watch your games on TV?

If you can’t say yes to at least one and hopefully both, you probably don’t get to move up the pecking order.

What I wonder is if the Mountain West makes a play for SMU and Memphis.

 

When the Big 12 expanded it seemed to take the largest television markets in the AAC, SMU excepted. I think television markets matter a lot, it is just something that is not openly discussed as much. Instead conferences publically talk about the academic credentials of a school, which actually matter very little in most cases.

 

It matters if people watch. Otherwise Temple would be looking up flight schedules to Lubbock and Stillwater.

 

Strong "my wife dumping me for a famous dude with more money proves I had a great wife" vibes.

 

In Liberty's case, they have their own in-house sports network that produces broadcasts and shows on all sports. They have the infrastructure to join in any conference streaming package. I guess that's more of what I was getting it. They're bigger than the Lynchburg market. (And Lynchburg mostly despises LU anyway, even if the city grudgingly acknowledges what the school brings to the city's economy.)

 

Where do Liberty’s actual butts-in-seats fans come from? Is it strictly alumni? Are there mega churches buying up ticket blocks? Are there some locals who go just because it’s D-1 sports there in town?

 

They have 15,000 students on campus, and they fill the student section regularly. There are plenty of in-town alums as well. Stadium seats about 30K now and has been expanded twice in the last decade. The move to FBS has drawn in some bystanders in town as well. Easier to sell Syracuse or Army or Virginia Tech coming to town than Presbyterian and Charleston Southern.

 

Not entirely sure how those two questions were answered in such a way that Rutgers and Maryland got invited to the Big Ten.

 

No. 2
Didn’t matter if people went to games
Delaney wanted NYC and DC markets