American Athletic Conference

[DUShock]

Is anybody talking about this besides some offseason message board clowns?

BOBB with this thread.

[BOBB]

What if we put together a league that consists of every school that's offered HCGM a job? Alabama, NC State, Missouri, UCLA, etc.

Damn, completely jealous I didn't think of this. Could we include College of Charleston, Randolph Macon, etal

[BOBB]

BOBB with this thread.

Lol!

[RoyalShock]

Damn, completely jealous I didn't think of this. Could we include College of Charleston, Randolph Macon, etal

Randolph Macon?

Whoopee.

[SHOCKvalue]

By all means talk away. It is the offseason. Just trying to determine if it was more than conjecture.

I looked at a map and here's my conference idea. Huge geographic footprint=big dollarzzz

If message boards across the interweb universe have to exclude conjecture, then they are all totally fooked. Might as well make them all look like a DOS code line mated with Ken Pomeroy.

[DUShock]

Randolph Macon?

Whoopee.

HCGM's alma mater. Throwing them a bone I guess.

[shock]

****, if we are adding RMU, we need to add Newman too.

[ripemupshocks]

The AAC Commissioner has publicly stated that he opposes adding non-football schools to the conference.

Everybody in the AAC, from their commissioner on down, seems to be convinced they're a football conference. I'm sure it's just me, but there isn't a single university in the AAC, when I hear their name, I think football. On the other hand, when I hear Memphis, UConn, Cincy or Temple, I definitely think basketball. I'd think with those four programs, it would be easier to build a basketball first conference. With a 70 (football) 30 (basketball) split of tv revenue, I guess they've cast their lot. They probably dream of being like the P5, but I don't see it happening. No, they don't want WSU. So fug'em!

[Topshock]

Everybody in the AAC, from their commissioner on down, seems to be convinced they're a football conference. I'm sure it's just me, but there isn't a single university in the AAC, when I hear their name, I think football. On the other hand, when I hear Memphis, UConn, Cincy or Temple, I definitely think basketball. I'd think with those four programs, it would be easier to build a basketball first conference. With a 70 (football) 30 (basketball) split of tv revenue, I guess they've cast their lot. They probably dream of being like the P5, but I don't see it happening. No, they don't want WSU. So fug'em!

You are right the AAC commissioner did make a commit a couple of years ago that he didn't want another old Big East situation, but I have not seen anything from the individual schools that opposed adding one Olympic sports only school, if fact there is a recent thread on the AAC message board over 19 pages long about adding WSU to the AAC with mostly positive opinion on doing that.

[RoyalShock]

HCGM's alma mater. Throwing them a bone I guess.

Randolph Macon. Whoopee.

Randolph Macon whoopee.

Makin' whoopee.

Yeah, it was a stretch.

[ripemupshocks]

Everybody in the AAC, from their commissioner on down, seems to be convinced they're a football conference. I'm sure it's just me, but there isn't a single university in the AAC, when I hear their name, I think football. On the other hand, when I hear Memphis, UConn, Cincy or Temple, I definitely think basketball. I'd think with those four programs, it would be easier to build a basketball first conference. With a 70 (football) 30 (basketball) split of tv revenue, I guess they've cast their lot. They probably dream of being like the P5, but I don't see it happening. No, they don't want WSU. So fug'em!

You are right the AAC commissioner did make a commit a couple of years ago that he didn't want another old Big East situation, but I have not seen anything from the individual schools that opposed adding one Olympic sports only school, if fact there is a recent thread on the AAC message board over 19 pages long about adding WSU to the AAC with mostly positive opinion on doing that.

I've spent a little time reading the CSN message board, and yes there seems to be a majority of AAC fans posting there that would be in favor of a non-football WSU joining. Unfortunately, or not, depending on a persons position, the fans do not decide which universities are invited to join. That is a choice reserved for the university Presidents and Athletic Directors.


Here are a few quotes from an interview with AAC commissioner Mike Aresco last June:

As home to both the reigning men's and women's national basketball champions in UConn, basketball will continue to be a top-line item for the AAC. But it is prowess on the gridiron the league will be looking for, Aresco said, as it strives for "Big Five" equivalence.
"We consider basketball extremely important. But we have to brand ourselves as a powerful football conference because football drives so much of the revenue and the perception," he said. "We think both are important and we think basketball's going to be, obviously, a real staple of our conference. But you've got to be good in football these days in order to get the kind of attention and TV deals that you need to enter that other echelon."

"Could we take on, potentially, a few schools that would only play football in our conference? It's something our ADs and presidents would certainly think about," he said. "But the last thing we want to do is end up with another mix of football- and basketball-only schools."

http://www.masslive.com/umassfootball/index.ssf/2014/06/aac_commissioner_mike_aresco_s.html

[ShockTalk]

Aresco's comments = Pipedream. There is a very distinct dividing line between the Power-5 and Weaker-5. The AAC, as a conference wasn't even the best of the lower 5 and barely ahead of their former self, C-USA.

[Rlh04d]

Aresco's comments = Pipedream. There is a very distinct dividing line between the Power-5 and Weaker-5. The AAC, as a conference wasn't even the best of the lower 5 and barely ahead of their former self, C-USA.

Yep. I've never understood this fascination with mediocre football. It's never sold. It's never going to sell. It's not what the consumer wants to watch.

It's perpetually entertaining to me how the fans and admins of the conference that essentially is Conference USA think doing the same thing they did as Conference USA is going to somehow create a different animal than Conference USA. You take the teams that were in that conference, you operate under the same mindset, and yet the result is supposed to be different?

Repeat the mistakes of C-USA, and reject the success of the Big East, the only conference that has been able to break into the upper tier. And these people don't even understand how laughably illogical that is.

Low level FBS football is good for middle-of-the-week filler programming on ESPN and that's about it. Football is a different animal than basketball, in that all of the programming is essentially on Saturday. There's already tremendous competition on Saturday, and a football product that's clearly inferior is never going to be valuable against that lineup. Which means their true value is Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday night programming, which is never going to be valuable, either.

[shox1989]

Yep. I've never understood this fascination with mediocre football. It's never sold. It's never going to sell. It's not what the consumer wants to watch.

It's perpetually entertaining to me how the fans and admins of the conference that essentially is Conference USA think doing the same thing they did as Conference USA is going to somehow create a different animal than Conference USA. You take the teams that were in that conference, you operate under the same mindset, and yet the result is supposed to be different?

Repeat the mistakes of C-USA, and reject the success of the Big East, the only conference that has been able to break into the upper tier. And these people don't even understand how laughably illogical that is.

Low level FBS football is good for middle-of-the-week filler programming on ESPN and that's about it. Football is a different animal than basketball, in that all of the programming is essentially on Saturday. There's already tremendous competition on Saturday, and a football product that's clearly inferior is never going to be valuable against that lineup. Which means their true value is Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday night programming, which is never going to be valuable, either.

Unfortunately those mediocre football games draw bigger tv ratings than good basketball games do. Even those run of the mill, meaningless 38 bowl games on espn draw better tv ratings than most ncaa basketball tournament games. It is sad. But college football draws better tv ratings than college basketball so that is where the money is and that is why a conference like the American continues to pursue it. There are some exceptions though, the WSU-Ku basketball game did draw better tv ratings than many of those meaningless lower tier bowl games: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/27/sp...ship.html?_r=1

[Topshock]

[QUOTE=ripemupshocks;570033]I've spent a little time reading the CSN message board, and yes there seems to be a majority of AAC fans posting there that would be in favor of a non-football WSU joining. Unfortunately, or not, depending on a persons position, the fans do not decide which universities are invited to join. That is a choice reserved for the university Presidents and Athletic Directors.

With all that being said the fact remains the AAC still has 11 basketball playing members and it would make perfect sense both geographically and competitively to add WSU. That is the point that most of the fans see. It will be ashame if the Presidents and Athletic Directors don't adopt that viewpoint.