Conference realignment "Rumors" "tweets" "etc"

[NewEnglandBull]

42 minutes ago, puc86 said:

Why do you come up with two? We are currently limited because we have less games to trade in order to occasionally get a team people want here because we need to waste 8 games on teams no one cares if they happen or not and most of the time can only negatively impact attendance.

If it requires inventing the 3 for one go for it and have three games at home that are sold out and the only payments made on a stadium and win some of those, then say hey Louisville and WVU remember us, well florida played us for 3-1 as well as Fsu and Miami so since we are old friends and you don’t have quite that market appeal we are going to offer a very special 2-1, which then brings us to four home games on average that still attract more attendance and sold seats than the 6 or even 7 current slate. Then you keep transitioning to better deals as you leverage others against one another.

We aren’t originally competing with Alabama, LSU, PSU and the like for a spot on the schedule for we are competing against G5 and FCS teams for one of the bottom spots on the schedule while having greater flexibility to negotiate, a better spot for a home and home, and not having a stadium that needs a game to be played to pay for it. 

No one makes it big from the middle in life by keeping their nose down and just following the easy path, if you want to change your course you have to reinvent your path and do something earth shattering. I know you like the idea of an AAC championship and this doesn’t allow that to happen but more people would care about beating someone they have heard of every once and a while and since there is no such thing as a home game for you I’m not sure why you would care if we just played 12 away games for pay every year.

I’m sure there are people that wouldn’t like being a road warrior and may not pick that path but I’m pretty sure some kids would gravitate towards playing a p5 slate when they got their P5 scholarship pulled last minute to make room for a surprise signing, or maybe felt they wasted a way on the bench and want to show them they could play. 
 

Dare to be different 

Dare to be wrong…

Financially your idea is a loser. We would not have enough $ to support olympic sports and would have challenges with Title 9 regulations. Although AAC membership only gives us $9 mil a year (with NCAA credits) it’s still enough for right now. A greater flaw in your support for independence is that the soon to be Power Four (or Three) will most likely only have one or two out of conference to available. Thus, our odds of landing a better schedule is significantly diminished. Further, these conferences will soon be breaking up leaving the NCAA altogether forming their own governing body. In terms of road warrior status no one likes a loser who doesn’t even have the respect to play in front of their home fans. 

[puc86]

1 hour ago, NewEnglandBull said:

Dare to be wrong…

Financially your idea is a loser. We would not have enough $ to support olympic sports and would have challenges with Title 9 regulations. Although AAC membership only gives us $9 mil a year (with NCAA credits) it’s still enough for right now. A greater flaw in your support for independence is that the soon to be Power Four (or Three) will most likely only have one or two out of conference to available. Thus, our odds of landing a better schedule is significantly diminished. Further, these conferences will soon be breaking up leaving the NCAA altogether forming their own governing body. In terms of road warrior status no one likes a loser who doesn’t even have the respect to play in front of their home fans. 

As far as Olympic sports go they can either be Wichita State or if not as far as the mens teams go the fewer of them that exist (outside of basketball) the closer our budget is to being able to be balanced and the fewer Title nine women’s teams we have to waste money on and (outside of basketball )can simply play scrimmages while on scholarship or play UT on loop for as far as most people would know or care.
 

I fail to understand how we can’t get 12 of the 120 or so games that in your new model would be available but I’m guessing if that happens the AAC will circle the wagons and follow suit just to show how P6 they actually are creating a greater market deficit for us to capitalize on.

As for your doomsday scenario if the P5 breaks off entirely from the rest of the world than yes being in the AAC is probably better than being in the rest of the G5 but I’m not sure that’s a world in which very many of our fans are going to want to live and I do not think hedging your plan on failure is an extremely solid one. 
 

Fortuna is a young mistress and she favors the bold. Being risk adverse I guess makes for a simple moderate life but it doesn’t create greatness and sounds a bit bland for my taste. We are losing market share on a steady decline and even if the idea becomes our “New Coke” that “blunder” allowed them to stop losing their customers to Pepsi, rebrand and create excitement for the return of something they were previously losing interest in. 

[UCF_rustbucket]

4 hours ago, puc86 said:

You think we are better situated than either Liberty and Army? From a results perspective both will obviously be better this season than we could dream. Liberty is seeming to be building a pretty impressive athletics program and I believe finished in the top 25 last season and from a solvency standpoint our athletics in the AAC with a perpetual upside down budget certainly seems less stable than their independence.  So who faired better? Historically pretty much anyone that’s ever tried it including ourselves and currently pretty much the majority of people that are independent.

You're comparing teams in vastly different situations though. I know this post specifically didn't mention ND and BYU but we'll get those out of the way by mentioning they've been around a long time and have historical success. That builds a large following. USF is still very young in football. 

 

Now for Army and Liberty. Army loads up on easier schedules. They tried the conference thing and left because it's tough to consistently compete with schools that don't have the same restrictions on players that military academies have. They just want a winnable schedule to advertise for their military branch. Liberty is a private school that makes bank on online students. As a private school, they can really sort of do what they want with money so they've just been throwing down on athletics. As opposed to what the rest of us have to do in having some success to attract more donors to have greater success to then attract even more donors and on and on. Liberty didn't have a successful season last year because of some great freedom or windfall that independence provided them. It's just dividends from being loaded and able to flaunt it.

[Triple B]

2 hours ago, puc86 said:

Why do you come up with two? We are currently limited because we have less games to trade in order to occasionally get a team people want here because we need to waste 8 games on teams no one cares if they happen or not and most of the time can only negatively impact attendance.

If it requires inventing the 3 for one go for it and have three games at home that are sold out and the only payments made on a stadium and win some of those, then say hey Louisville and WVU remember us, well florida played us for 3-1 as well as Fsu and Miami so since we are old friends and you don’t have quite that market appeal we are going to offer a very special 2-1, which then brings us to four home games on average that still attract more attendance and sold seats than the 6 or even 7 current slate. Then you keep transitioning to better deals as you leverage others against one another.

We aren’t originally competing with Alabama, LSU, PSU and the like for a spot on the schedule for we are competing against G5 and FCS teams for one of the bottom spots on the schedule while having greater flexibility to negotiate, a better spot for a home and home, and not having a stadium that needs a game to be played to pay for it. 

No one makes it big from the middle in life by keeping their nose down and just following the easy path, if you want to change your course you have to reinvent your path and do something earth shattering. I know you like the idea of an AAC championship and this doesn’t allow that to happen but more people would care about beating someone they have heard of every once and a while and since there is no such thing as a home game for you I’m not sure why you would care if we just played 12 away games for pay every year.

I’m sure there are people that wouldn’t like being a road warrior and may not pick that path but I’m pretty sure some kids would gravitate towards playing a p5 slate when they got their P5 scholarship pulled last minute to make room for a surprise signing, or maybe felt they wasted a way on the bench and want to show them they could play. 
 

Dare to be different 

Okay, puc, time to come clean. You are way smarter than this. How long ago did you come to the conclusion that this is a totally untenable path to take but keep regurgitating it because ............. well, just because you can.

[SANJAY]

10 hours ago, puc86 said:

If my options are slowly being driven off a cliff surrounded by present company or navigating traffic on my own unicycle I would definitely start pedaling, at least when I die people would notice and I would die in better company here we are dying a slow and miserable death surrounded by the worst grouping we have ever had the misfortune of surrounding ourselves with. It makes me sad.

It’s not the worst grouping we’ve ever been with.

We’re not back with Southern Miss.

Yet.

[NewEnglandBull]

25 minutes ago, puc86 said:

As far as Olympic sports go they can either be Wichita State or if not as far as the mens teams go the fewer of them that exist (outside of basketball) the closer our budget is to being able to be balanced and the fewer Title nine women’s teams we have to waste money on and (outside of basketball )can simply play scrimmages while on scholarship or play UT on loop for as far as most people would know or care.
 

I fail to understand how we can’t get 12 of the 120 or so games that in your new model would be available but I’m guessing if that happens the AAC will circle the wagons and follow suit just to show how P6 they actually are creating a greater market deficit for us to capitalize on.

As for your doomsday scenario if the P5 breaks off entirely from the rest of the world than yes being in the AAC is probably better than being in the rest of the G5 but I’m not sure that’s a world in which very many of our fans are going to want to live and I do not think hedging your plan on failure is an extremely solid one. 
 

Fortuna is a young mistress and she favors the bold. Being risk adverse I guess makes for a simple moderate life but it doesn’t create greatness and sounds a bit bland for my taste. We are losing market share on a steady decline and even if the idea becomes our “New Coke” that “blunder” allowed them to stop losing their customers to Pepsi, rebrand and create excitement for the return of something they were previously losing interest in. 

It’s not much of a risk to go it alone. Metaphorically, there is no risk in jumping off a tall building if one knows what the end game is. Going independent is the same as shutting down the athletic department. It simply cannot be done successfully in both the short and long term. There will not be enough quality games and the financials do not add up. Perhaps it is already too late to escape the death spiral for football but it will be accelerated as an independent. We are never going to be in a top three (or four) conference. If that’s not good enough or upsetting, for you or others, then perhaps it is time to move along and find something else to do in your domestic time. 

Edited August 20, 2021 by NewEnglandBull

[puc86]

12 minutes ago, Triple B said:

Okay, puc, time to come clean. You are way smarter than this. How long ago did you come to the conclusion that this is a totally untenable path to take but keep regurgitating it because ............. well, just because you can.

There are many layers to why anyone does anything that they do but anything that I say on here is at worst an exaggerated truth. I hate to see people follow a continuous path of failure and at some point there has to be a recognition that this isn’t working and the failure is systemic and can’t be solved by an endless sea of coaching changes and lack of continuity.

When you are on a continuously failing path almost any idea is worth exploring because even if it fails too it at least creates a new data point and eliminates another possibility. Do I honestly believe going independent is a necessary and proper step? The actual answer is actually going to sound more like trolling than anything I’ve said so far but I think I would have a feasibility study on it.

Something drastic needs to happen if CJS fails and this may or not be it; but the best next step is in fact out there and we need to do something beyond what we have been. This is quite obviously not working out well by any objective measurable and has been going on long enough that it should have long come together if it is ever going to happen.

I do not think fear should drive decisions and I certainly don’t believe that any arguments against changes can rely on loss because we are already losing fans, games, money, the community and respect so what’s really left to lose? The one positive in life of having a short stack is it’s much easier to go all in and at some point before we get down to our last chip we are going to have to pick a spot and go for it. Life will eventually take our last ante and make our decision for us, Id prefer we pick a spot and take our shot over leaving it up to chance.

[puc86]

26 minutes ago, SANJAY said:

It’s not the worst grouping we’ve ever been with.

We’re not back with Southern Miss.

Yet.

We had teams that are now P5 in every other conference we were a part of until this very moment, for me that makes every other conference better 

[puc86]

27 minutes ago, NewEnglandBull said:

It’s not much of a risk to go it alone. Metaphorically, there is no risk in jumping off a tall building if one knows what the end game is. Going independent is the same as shutting down the athletic department. It simply cannot be done successfully in both the short and long term. There will not be enough quality games and the financials do not add up. Perhaps it is already too late to escape the death spiral for football but it will be accelerated as an independent. We are never going to be in a top three (or four) conference. If that’s not good enough or upsetting, for you or others, then perhaps it is time to move along and find something else to do in your domestic time. 

Except historically independents have in fact fared better than our current situation and most present independents are doing better than we are.  That doesn’t sound exactly like a guaranteed death march as you predict. What seems to be becoming guaranteed is the negative impact being in the AAC has had on our program do you honestly believe in staying the course if we get to 100 years of this result? 50? 40? 30? 20? We are getting close to 10 and something has to give. Plenty of people decide to move on every passing season and it is getting down to the point where we can count each other rather easily while sitting in the quiet confines of Ray Jay. I believe we can’t simply be flippant about the Exodus and rely on trying to bucket the water from the boat when we would be best served by finding the hole and plugging it. For me the AAC has been the hole in our hull and if it’s actually something else I’m more than open to trying a different plug.

[puc86]

57 minutes ago, UCF_rustbucket said:

You're comparing teams in vastly different situations though. I know this post specifically didn't mention ND and BYU but we'll get those out of the way by mentioning they've been around a long time and have historical success. That builds a large following. USF is still very young in football. 

 

Now for Army and Liberty. Army loads up on easier schedules. They tried the conference thing and left because it's tough to consistently compete with schools that don't have the same restrictions on players that military academies have. They just want a winnable schedule to advertise for their military branch. Liberty is a private school that makes bank on online students. As a private school, they can really sort of do what they want with money so they've just been throwing down on athletics. As opposed to what the rest of us have to do in having some success to attract more donors to have greater success to then attract even more donors and on and on. Liberty didn't have a successful season last year because of some great freedom or windfall that independence provided them. It's just dividends from being loaded and able to flaunt it.

It’s possible to dismiss every example as being different if you are requiring all schools of the handful of that exist currently  be exactly named Usf if they win and conveniently label anyone that isn’t winning as being the ones Usf will inevitably follow. What is more important than predicting what would theoretically happen in a different scenario based on the predictive model you select and the work backwards from is that we know what happens to us in the environment we are actually in and that it does not seem to work for us. You can’t get it because you are used to being steps behind, that’s your way, but we want to fly higher than an eagle and that’s not happening even when we win in the aac because it never lets sunshine on our face.