(12-22-2012 03:07 PM)CoachMaclid Wrote: I agree that Banowsky screwed up big time and the remaining schools should honestly look to fire him. I do not blame his reaction to the defectors - he should be helping member institutions better themselves. However, overreacting to ECU and Tulane's departures and inviting FAU and MTSU will probably prevent UCF, Memphis, and likely ECU's return. Just like Tulane was a fatal error for the Big East, I think the impulse to immediate replace ECU and Tulane will significantly cost the conference millions and the future it could have had.
From the outside looking in, I think that Banowsky has been the worst commish in the last two years. Unlike Benson at the WAC or Sun Belt, he had something to work with. Here's where he screwed up.
1) He expanded by taking too many schools, thus reducing the ability of CUSA to get teams to return if the Big East doesn't work out.
2) He freaked out after Benson invited Georgia State, and then took a bunch of moveups (3 of them, no less) as he was afraid that the Belt was going to take UNCC, ODU, and UTSA. Even if the Belt had done so, it would have solidified the Belts reputation as a moveup conference and would have left CUSA with a better product reputation. Regardless of how those newbie invites turn out, it was a dumb move for CUSA and dramatically weakened the reputation of the conference. You know, if UNCC and UTSA were in the Belt, you could have taken them when you wanted to. And let the Belt take the reputational hit as those schools migrate.
3) Instead of recognizing that the MWC was a competitor of CUSA, and that CUSA had the upper hand last year, he dithered and let the MWC regroup. Now the MWC may be the preferred destination of three of the existing CUSA teams. And part of the angst on the part of the Western CUSA teams was fed in by issue number 2.
4) With every Sun Belt team looking to jump, due to the fact that you have a better TV contract and bowl access, he picked two teams with virtually no fan support, a team that hasn't had a winning Sun Belt record in 7 years, and finally a team that actually has a winning pedigree. There is something worse than basically living in the ESPN bottom ten. Its repeatedly being in the ESPN bottom ten and being lumped in with another school repeatedly (F_U) as if the school doesn't even have its own identity.
5) He didn't think ahead when it came to expansion strategy. If ECU was demanding adding UNCC and ODU, he should have demanded ECU come up with an extra exit fee in case they leave as a condition of taking UNCC and ODU. Now ECU left (as everyone knew they would be) and CUSA is left with two newbie schools near no one else. The Belt learned that lesson the hard way, when we took Denver to provide NMSU with a travel partner and they then left, leaving us with an outlier team.
Banowsky has been played by just about every other conference in the last year or so. I think he even got played by Benson. And unlike the MWC and the Belt (which both had serious problems), the CUSA was operating from a position of relative strength. They are still stronger than at least the Belt as far as money and bowl slots go, but Banowsky isn't helping you guys.