Lets look at a few numbers to see why any move to the SBC is a foolish thing to even think about
Here are donations and you can throw Ark St numbers out the window. Schools dont have swings like this in donations. They just dont. Ark St added in naming rights to their stadium and building funds money as "donations". Other schools dont do this and no school is going from $84,237 in 2012 to $6,281,980 three years later.
Conference pay out and while the SBC is paying more over the last few years. We are still talking about are talking about 11% of Marshall's 30 million budget difference between these SBC members. Marshall's conference pay out is higher than any CUSA school so I think (not a fact) they are counting money in this part of the budget different. I will show why I think this next.
Either Marshall is not selling in this area as much as their fans believe they are and not the "brand" they think they are or they are counting this money in on media/conference pay out.
But once again we see Ark St fudging on numbers...no one else goes from making 5x what they made in a short span. As a matter of fact Its very clear what Ark St is doing by when they started having huge swings. They starting with this fuzzy math the last time colleges started moving to make them look better. No team is going to have a drop across the board in ticket sells and see their donations go fro 1/2 million to 6 million dollars. Its not happening.
Money spent on football and Marshall is middle of the road. Once again I will point out Ark St and the unnatural fluctuation in their spending. My belief as I said before they throw everything and the kitchen sink into this...building cost. No other schools that I found do this. Its to make their budget look higher and revenue to look higher to be more attractive to other conferences
Travel cost and as you can see Marshall is not going to save on traveling not when you compare Ark St to Marshall and both schools without a major hub to travel out of. The one thing the jumps out to me on the travel is why did Marshall's traveling expense jump 25% in one year when it had been level the previous 3 years? This has nothing to do with CUSA and everything to do with Marshall. The other thing to notice is Ga St and their traveling cost is fairly level and the lowest...
Once again fly into or from cities with major hubs cost less. I did not research this its just an opinion based off what should be common sense. So prove me wrong, if I am. It's also why I believe traveling cost would rise for Marshall playing in the SBC. Other than Ga St which city has major hubs? New Orleans for ULL and still a 2 hour bus ride.