BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

Notre Dame in talks with the Orange Bowl and ACC to secure a berth when it is not in four-team playoff.


http://www.southbendtribune.com/sports/collegesports/notredame/sbt-notre-dame-football-irish-acc-talk-orange-20120710,0,7472688.story

 

On the opposite side of the FBS spectrum, we have this: http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/sports/college/fau/blog/2012/07/emails_show_sun_belt_had_grand.html

God bless Karl Benson for aiming high, but some of these ideas are rather, shall we say, unlikely. St. Louis leaving the A-10? East Carolina and Marshall stepping down from CUSA? A 33-team Sun Belt/CUSA/MWC/WAC orgy conference? And all that got them Georgia State, Texas State and UT-Arlington.

 

He gave us the 16-team WAC. Are you really surprised?

 

He was trying everything possible to make the Sun Belt a more attractive destination than Conference USA.

Saint Louis is such a weird outlier ... the only place it makes sense is the Missouri Valley. I bet they love those road trips to St. Bonaventure and Rhody in the winter.

 

Looking at that list of schools I'm thinking they should have called Southern Illinois. They'd sure as shit bring more to the table than Jacksonville State and all of the non-football schools.

They've been good in football and basketball in the past, have decent facilities and they're within a four-hour drive of three SBC schools- Arkansas State, Western Kentucky & MTSU.

 

They, more than anyone else, must be crossing their fingers for the long-prophecized Big East schism so they can latch on with the Catholic schools.

 

This team is so sorry-ass in recent years....it's amazing they can tout themselves as a major bowl team with a straight face. No doubt, the Orange Bowl will get a horde of 7-5 and 6-6 teams to play the mighty ACC champ.

 

QUADRANTS!!!

 

And yet it will still be better than the Big East champ

 

I don't think SIU has the budget to move up. They just blew their wad on upgrading their facilities and over-paying Chris Lowery to suck for three years. There's a nice new stadium in Carbondale, but it's not as if SIU football draws well. The finances of most of the Illinois public universities are a mess and SIU might be chief among them.

Maybe. But with the amount of schools that could be available for such a conference, SLU could get the shaft again.

I think the MVC would have SLU and Rick Majerus made a public to-do about wanting in the MVC a few years ago, but SLU president Fr. Lawrence Biondi wants no part of the MVC. SLU is less likely to bail now anyway with Butler joining the A-10, though SLU is still very isolated geographically.

 

Hard to believe this is the same Karl Benson that basically stood around with his thumb up his ass as WAC football slowly sank into oblivion.