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Message: [QUOTE="don356, post: 3290567, member: 5634"] That's an entirely different issue between the money conferences wanting more spots and picking the lowest hanging fruit in terms of being able to pry it away. The amount of p5 wins the AAC gets in the out of conference clearly supports it's not different football than the p5. Where the difference is in the top 5 or 6 teams who clearly are pulling the top, top talent each year in the new era. The top tier of the SEC, Osu and the Oklahoma's and Texas of the world are the Duke's and Kentuckys(bball analogy) of the football world. The rest of the p5 are not much different than the AAC. However, i'm not real sure that the current configuration with the last auto bid is really any harder than getting there before, as the guaranteed bid for the BEast was likely going away whatever happened with the league. The bigger issue is it will be very hard to play in that Nati game, but it was an awful steep climb even with the old configuration as well. It's not a fluke that the Smu's, Cincys and Ucf's of the world climb back into very good fball teams fairly quickly given they are getting really good players out of fertile recruiting regions even with repeated coaching changes and some down years. I've said it for many years because it's a fact, football rankings at the high school level are highly regionalized. I don't believe a west coast 4 is better than a midwest or texas 3, etc. etc. There's a lot of underrated talent in these big high school football regions and these schools are getting in on it. If you're going to compete, whether you're Uconn, Rutgers or Bc, you have to find a way to bring more really good players to your program from out of state. That Cincy/Ucf game Friday night was a perfect example. I was blown away Cincy played 23 kids in their defensive rotation, and someone said 28 overall throughout the night. That's crazy depth. You many not have the 5 stars, but when you've got fresh legs and minds out there, you'll win most of your games. Ucf has P5 talent, they've gone from 0 and 12 3 years ago to what they've done the past several years which has included a host of "p5" wins. The bottom line is if you are really going to try and compete as a D1 program(even independent), you have have to get a coaching(staff) who can bring kids to Ct. Otherwise just go to a lower division as it's a waste of time and money. The road is not any easier as an independent. [/QUOTE]

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