Yeah but I almost wonder a bit if it's just kind of time to break a lot of the traditional rules. Because playing by those rules has gotten these teams almost nowhere.
The prospective merger to me - or at least going full blown rogue and adding all of the nation's misfit toys... reminds me in a way a lot of the original Big East's mentality minus the more regional appeal, obviously. You have a lot of different schools with different structures, who are all competitive but considered second tier. I think you can maintain the 'markets' approach if you're selective and as long as you're willing to have a few tomato cans in each of your big sports, I feel like it'd be do-able.
-Boise State is obviously the lynch pin. We're a ferocious football conference with them added.
-San Diego State and UNLV make sense on both the football and hoops fronts.
-Colorado State makes sense for football, but there really isn't a hoops compliment that makes much sense...
...unless you allow a VCU type to take up hoops-only membership.. I'm getting into STUPID fantasy land here, but you're looking at a pretty good hoops conference with:
UConn
Houston
Memphis
Cincinnati
UNLV
San Diego State
Temple
VCU
....All within the conference.. and a really good collection of coaches to go with some of your less competitive programs looking to move the ball forward a bit.
With football you're looking at
Air Force, UConn, Boise State, Houston, Memphis, Cincinnati, SDSU, UNLV, UCF, USF, Temple, East Carolina..
To me it's a mess of interests, scheduling and some other things... but that's a pretty good conference on both ends of the spectrum. Maybe even Wichita State has some interest as a hoops member..
I'm totally off the rails on a range of fronts, but I think if the American is going to have a fighting chance, then they need to kind of shake the approach up and break a lot of stuff to do it..