I'll bite. If we are stuck in the AAC for a 5-6 more years, forget 4 leagues we need only two leagues left of the G5 conferences. Teams placed on school brand strength, wins and losses and media markets. All other teams go to FCS Division to increase money payouts. These two only schedule P5 and each other. No more than 12 in each league. 26 total kept of 64 including BYU one east and one west division.
G1
- UConn
- Cincy
- Temple
- UCF
- USF
- Navy
G2
- Boise
- Memphis
- Houston
- BYU
- Colorado St.
- Air Force
- ECU
- Miami Univ
- NIU
- Ohio
- Bowling Green
- Toledo
- Marshall
Drop Down to FCS
- SMU
- Tulsa
- Tulane
- San Diego St.
- Nevada
- UNLV
- Utah St.
- Entire Sunbelt
- Entire Conference USA
- MAC- Akron, Ball State, Buffalo, (Central, Eastern, and Western Michigan)
- MWC- Fresno St., Hawaii, New Mexico, San Jose St., Wyoming
What is the mechanism for getting these dozens of schools to drop down to FCS? Twitter?
What is the mechanism for getting these dozens of schools to drop down to FCS? Twitter?
Can you even imagine what recruiting would look like with relegation? Are the kids stuck giving up a year to transfer after you relegated?
Sorry Jimmy - I knew you were looking forward to playing near your family a few times but we got relegated to the second division Southwest.
Don't have teams drop down to FCS unless they want to.
Relegation would only matter for scheduling the last 3 games of the schedule. Maybe make teams Tier I, Tier II, Tier III. You would expect most Sun Belt teams to be Tier III most of the time, and most AAC and MWC to be Tier I most of the time. If ULL had a good team one year, they could jump to Tier I. In terms of recruiting, it helps the programs that care, and the programs that are just selling their schedule are no worse off than before.
So in the division I identified, UConn and Temple might be Tier 1, and Army and Buffalo could be Tier III. Those 6 teams would still play each other every year, but for the non-division games, they would match up against teams from the same Tier. That could be set up in the preseason, or in the season itself, kind of like the Bracket Buster was set up. Every school would set up its schedule so its last two weekends were open, one road, one home. Those games would be unscheduled until say mid-October, then you would match up UConn's open home date with SMU's open road date if they were in the same Tier, and go from there. Teams would bitch, and TV would get a vote, but it would be a lot better than what we have now.
The problem with the AAC are many-fold, but part of it is travel and part of it is there are no rivalries that anyone cares about.
I think the bigger benefit to pooling the leagues is to break all the stupid conference TV deals. By negotiating as a block for Tier 1, the leagues can't do any worse than they are doing now, and then the programs can have their Tier 3 rights back, and even expanded. Maybe fold the A 10 into this for basketball. Wouldn't UConn better off if it had 4-6 football and 10 basketball games to sell on its own? Wouldn't it be able to prove its value to a P5 league while actually getting paid, rather than give games away like it does now and hope that a P5 league believes that UConn deserves an invitation based on a consultant's study?
I could see them adding Rice as well. Good academic school in Houston.
So get dozens of schools to give up control of their schedule - while somehow getting more money and keeping a bunch of games to sell individually.
At the same time making UMass, Army and Buffalo permanent members of UConn's schedule and if they have a bad year then other bad teams.
This is the recipe to building the program? Do they move to Willowbrook Park in this scenario?
This could wind up being big for New Mexico State also- they just got denied the Sun Belt bid but if UTEP leaves C USA then NMSU would make sense as a replacement for UTEP. Idaho appears to be screwed no matter what.
This is not a terrible idea. I wonder if the G5 would be better merging into a single league with divisions that were similar to soccer in terms of relegation down or advancement up, but also allowed for regional scheduling and better management of travel costs.
From a media standpoint, you could split the content so Tier 3 could be half the content. but Tier 1 and 2, such as they are, would be negotiated centrally by a single entity. This would enable schools like Boise and UConn to sell their content on the open market for better money, but still be under a central conference umbrella for scheduling and overall contract.
So Pod NE could be:
UConn
Temple
Navy
Army
Buffalo
UMass
But then all the teams would have a separate "conference" for the other 3 games based on how good a team was either the prior year, or even that year. UConn would play those 5 games, and then maybe Boise, Houston and USF if they were good, or ECU, SMU and whoever if UConn was just OK. Or maybe Akron, Miami (OH), and Old Dominion if UConn was having a rebuilding year.
That would give each school a solid base to a schedule, but also allow them flexibility. Most importantly, teams would "eat what they kill" from a media rights perspective. UConn could have half their games on SNY, Temple could probably get a decent TV deal. Army, Navy and Air Force would certainly get a decent contract. The schools with some ability to get a decent TV contract would not be dragged down by the others, but the schools without any market appeal probably wouldn't be any worse off.
This would be "thinking outside the box" and better than staying in the AAC.
I do believe that they would get better negotiating power by operating as a single entity, and it might make sense for a grouping that big to form their own network.