Room For Another FBS Conference?

[DFW HOYA]

One of the chief draws for Southern schools like WKU, FIU, etc. to jump to I-A is the the Sun Belt conference, which, outside North Texas (a former Missouri Valley school in the 1960's and 1970's), is comprised almost exclusively of I-A newcomers.

By contrast, schools like UMass, JMU, App, UDel, etc. have very almost no options to join a bowl-eligible conference because there are really no spaces opening up in the Big East.

If an existing Eastern conference was to consider fielding a bowl-eligible conference along the lines of the Sun Belt, how many schools could legitimately be in the mix?

[slycat]

i would think a split of the sun belt and cusa would help open options in the east. as of now the traveling costs of the sun belt are very high and many schools wouldn't mind having more regional conferences. i could see a few FCS teams moving up to fill the gaps but i don't know how many and i'm not sure if a lot of east coast FCS teams would show interest outside UMass.

[AppMan]

Ultimately something has to happen with the Eastern teams of CUSA. Marshall, ECU, and to a lesser extent Central Florida are going broke sending tennis & golf teams to Texas. Some sort of Atlantic Seaboard conference could open the door for people like Delaware, JMU, or ASU. But, there are still many hurdles to overcome, most of which deal with egos. ECU believes they belong in the Big East and Marshall probably does too. However, I don't forsee anything happening to open up a spot for either of them. You could toss Temple, Army, and Navy into that mix and have a solid core to start a league. Although I don't know if Army or Navy has any desire to be associated with Marshall's less than stellar athletic academic reputation.

[Fresno St. Alum]

If the C-USA and Big East split there will be 2 new conferences, then all the dominos fall. I don't know if either will split. The Big East seems more likely with 16 teams.

[*****]

Ultimately something has to happen with ... JMU, or ASU ... egos...xnodx :p

[Fresno St. Alum]

Ralph or AppMan, you saying that JMU & ASU are looking to move to FBS? They think FCS doesn't cut it anymore?

[813Jag]

With UCF building a new football stadium and having George O'Leary rebuilding the program, football wise they'd be a good Big East fit. Especially with their rival 80 miles west on I-4 (USF). But other sports they don't fit just like USF is struggling in the Big East outside of football. Conference USA is the new WAC with too many teams spread too far apart.

[appfan2008]

something will change because of how the current situation in the cusa, sun belt and big east doesnt work... asu, jmu and others have shown interest in moving up but the current situation in fbs would need to be shaken up for something to happen`

[89Hen]

Ralph or AppMan, you saying that JMU & ASU are looking to move to FBS? They think FCS doesn't cut it anymore?
xnodx

[EKU05]

If the C-USA and Big East split there will be 2 new conferences, then all the dominos fall. I don't know if either will split. The Big East seems more likely with 16 teams.


People keep saying that, but the Big East is enjoying unprecendented levels of success right now. No one doubts their basketball prowess, and while some people clinging to an underacheiving ACC wouldn't admit it...the BE has significantly improved in football as well. Let's look at the facts of football in the "new" Big East.

*2-0 in BCS Bowl games having defeated the champions of both the SEC and ACC the past two years.

*Three teams finishing this past season in the top 15...or 37.5% of the conference. To beat that percentage a 12 team league would need to put 5 teams in.

*5-0 in Bowl games for this past season.

*According to a vast majority of reputable computer rankings the BE was the second best league in the country behind the PAC-10.


Anyway...all of this IS relevant to the topic. If you're school is counting on a league breaking up for it's I-A plans then they should think again. C-USA could run into some financial issues, but even they are doing better than expected following the raid by the Big East. Besides, C-USA would be useless to a school such as UMass anyway.

I think the new conference idea is a great one actually, and I've thought about it myself. It's almost flawless from a football standpoint. However, the reason that it probably won't happen is...

If a new conference were formed it likely wouldn't get an auto-bid to the NCAA tournament for five years. Given that most of the teams interested don't really compete for at-large bids then this would essentially create five seasons of basketball with the NIT being the ultimate prize everyone is fighting over (if that). I know most people on here have a football first mentality, but most ADs at smaller schools would cringe at the idea of no NCAA tournament auto-bid.

[jessesd]

Some of the Big East schools are not happy with the current conference layout. Syracuse University has been making issues for quite a while and to make things worse with the local population the snub of SU and WVU at the NCAA’s this year did not help much either.
Here at SU, the student body, some of the alumni and some key parties in the administration (BB Coach Boeheim and some other minor sports coaches) are being rather verbal about the issues with this mega-conference and wish to have a more regionalized conference with less traveling all over the country.
Chances are that these rumors would continue to increase as we get closer to 2010-2011 when the current Big East agreement comes up for renew, who knows what the results are going to be, but the main rumor around here is the creation of an all-sports conference in the East and a Catholic-Basketball conference w/o football based out Chicago may happen in few short years. For all of us here at SU, we can only speculate!!!



We are starting to see this type of articles rather often in the student newspaper.
Some Syracuse athletics teams suffer from the effects of the expansion more than others. SU's softball, volleyball and men's and women's soccer teams have added conference games to their schedules, forcing administrators and coaches to conjure up creative ways to balance their budgets.
Players now have to prepare for longer road trips to locales as far west as Milwaukee and Chicago. Instead of hopping on buses to nearby schools, many endure hours of sitting in airport terminals waiting for connecting flights. Others have missed more classes than before and find themselves exhausted for days after road trips.
http://media.www.dailyorange.com/media/storage/paper522/news/2007/04/27/Sports/Year-In.Sports.Frequent.Flyers-2884416.shtml (http://media.www.dailyorange.com/media/storage/paper522/news/2007/04/27/Sports/Year-In.Sports.Frequent.Flyers-2884416.shtml)

[appfan2008]

some great stuff out of syracuse... would love to see it

[EKU05]

Interesting that it comes from the school with the ONLY football program that has taken a definite down turn since the formation of the new Big East...

That's not a flame, but if you were going to pick a single football playing school that wasn't thrilled with the direction of the BE right now, and you didn't pick the 'cuse...well then you'd just be brain dead.

The thing about it is, if the Big East split into two conferences (football and non-football) as many have speculated, it really wouldn't even help in terms of regionalization. A school like Syracuse would still have to travel to Louisville, Cincinnati, and South Florida...not to mention some of the potential other schools that might be brought in if this were to occur (Memphis, UCF...).

The bottom line is, the split would (maybe) minimally efffective if you had any hope of keeping any kind of a quality conference together. It's not shocking that there are "minor sports" coaches upset. It's not even shocking that and old school guy like Boeheim is joining them, but reality is what it is and the Athletic Directors know that.

It's great fodder for a student paper because it is, more than anything else, a student issue. But if the student papers were dictating the direction things would take then tution would never go up, and the visitation rules for dorms would be more lax.

[UNH_Alum_In_CT]

I guess Coach Boeheim doesn't look at the Big East membership that closely. In addition to Syracuse the BE football schools are:


Connecticut
Rutgers
Pittsburgh
West Virginia
Louisville
Cincinnati
South Florida


Do people at Syracuse think there is a more regional football league than that? Is Syracuse ready to go independent or associate member for football to have less travel for their other sports? What do they think are their options? xconfusedx xconfusedx xconfusedx

I guess we should be watching for Syracuse to be championing Buffalo and Temple for all sports membership in the BE as well as Villanova and Georgetown to upgrade their football programs. xrolleyesx

I doubt the Syracuse hoop team takes a bus to many hoop games against the football schools -- maybe to UConn or Rutgers but I'm not sure of that.

Sorry, Coach Boeheim = xbawlingx xbawlingx xbawlingx

[dbackjon]

I guess Coach Boeheim doesn't look at the Big East membership that closely. In addition to Syracuse the BE football schools are:


Connecticut
Rutgers
Pittsburgh
West Virginia
Louisville
Cincinnati
South Florida


Do people at Syracuse think there is a more regional football league than that? Is Syracuse ready to go independent or associate member for football to have less travel for their other sports? What do they think are their options? xconfusedx xconfusedx xconfusedx

I guess we should be watching for Syracuse to be championing Buffalo and Temple for all sports membership in the BE as well as Villanova and Georgetown to upgrade their football programs. xrolleyesx

I doubt the Syracuse hoop team takes a bus to many hoop games against the football schools -- maybe to UConn or Rutgers but I'm not sure of that.

Sorry, Coach Boeheim = xbawlingx xbawlingx xbawlingx

But all the other sports have to travel to:

Chicago
Milwaukee
South Bend


All combined make for a heck of a lot of travel.

[putter]

But all the other sports have to travel to:

Chicago
Milwaukee
South Bend


All combined make for a heck of a lot of travel.

Sounds like the Big Sky. xrolleyesx

[dbackjon]

Sounds like the Big Sky. xrolleyesx

Actually, probably less than the BIG Sky

[UNH_Alum_In_CT]

Actually, probably less than the BIG Sky

Then it shouldn't be an issue for Syracuse!

[Fresno St. Alum]

EKU05, If there was a conference split, the conference would NOT have to wait 5 years for an auto bid. With the WAC and the MWC they both lost their auto bid for 1 year then got it back the next year. Reason being that it is not a true start up conference. They were members who had played together for a few years and then split.

[jessesd]

The rumors and speculations about the Big East break up are becoming rather abundant lately (the last 6 months). Almost every week there are editorial articles in the local paper as well as the student paper about the possibility that UMASS may get the call up, similar to what happened to UCONN; UCF’s name is mentioned on the article as a travel partner for USF and Memphis name is showing up the Big East boards as a Louisville travel partner.

Marshall’s and ECU names have been thrown around, but the word around here is that ECU and Marshall’s won’t get in this time either.
Remember that all of these are only speculations, since nothing official has come from the conference and of course SU AD’s are being rather tight about commenting, but are not denying the possibilities either!!!
So the questions is how long would it go until the conference breaks? Similar issues caused the old WAC to break.
Either way, they are only speculations.

[jessesd]

EKU05, If there was a conference split, the conference would NOT have to wait 5 years for an auto bid. With the WAC and the MWC they both lost their auto bid for 1 year then got it back the next year. Reason being that it is not a true start up conference. They were members who had played together for a few years and then split.

If the football teams part ways from the BB schools, they won't have to wait, it would be the same conference for football, similar to the change from A-10 football into CAA, same conference, same teams, different name and logo

[Fresno St. Alum]

I'm talking about basketball. There is no real auto bid for football since they have no playoff. Yes they'd still get the bcs but the reference eku made was to basketball with the Tourney and the NIT

[jessesd]

I'm talking about basketball. There is no real auto bid for football since they have no playoff. Yes they'd still get the bcs but the reference eku made was to basketball with the Tourney and the NIT

I'll assume that A one year penalty w/o autobid for the NCAA's won't make much difference for WVU and SU and UConn regardless of their record this time, after all they didn't go already and we are talking at the earliest 5 years from now if this happens. The possibility exist that by that time the field of 65 may have expanded to allow more teams!!! xpeacex xpeacex xpeacex

[Fresno St. Alum]

Wouldn't you know the year that the WAC lost theirs Fresno St. won the Conference tournament and I was worried we wouldn't get in, but we did. It ended our 16 year NCAA tourney drought.

If another conference splits I think it would go to 66, they are big on the 34 at large.

[jessesd]

The last week in FOX sports.com they came with some crazy ideas for the NCAA’s tournament expansion.
They were from the easier to foresee such as having 4 play in games instead of one for a total of 68 teams which seems the direction the tourney is going and other really crazy ones.
My favorite out of the bunch was expanding the field to 96 teams and getting rid of the NIT altogether. The top 32 teams would get a first game bye, the next 64 ranked from top seeded playing the lowest teams would play for the chance to make it to the field of 64 and resume the normal tourney layout. Its kinda crazy, but I like the idea.

[Fresno St. Alum]

I like the 68 idea tues play-in double header and wed play-in double header. tues winners play thurs, wed play again fri.

[EKU05]

EKU05, If there was a conference split, the conference would NOT have to wait 5 years for an auto bid. With the WAC and the MWC they both lost their auto bid for 1 year then got it back the next year. Reason being that it is not a true start up conference. They were members who had played together for a few years and then split.

The five year thing was about if a bunch of teams moved up and formed a completely new conference which is the alternative to waiting out movement in an existing league. I should have been more clear about that.

Even if it did apply, it wouldn't matter in the case of a BE split since the teams involved can earn at large bids. I was obviously talking about teams that essentially need an auto-bid to get into the tournament. To be clear, that's refering to the idea that a bunch of FCS teams move up together and form a completely new conference.