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_sturt_ · 05-20-2013 11:38 AM

Someone made my point earlier... that, as fans, there's not much we can control. We don't make recruiting visits, we don't organize practice, we don't coach, we don't get guys in a weight room or in a video room and push them. We don't do the things that are directly meaningful to ultimately winning games.

We are on the periphery. We can buy tickets and support our school financially.

Notably, there isn't anything that our players and coaches at each of our schools are doing that is that much different than what is going on at our competitors' schools. Notably, our competitors' fans are also buying tickets and supporting their schools financially to some level.

But I would add that, in fact, there is one more thing we can do that is different... which is to brainstorm, wrestle with, troubleshoot, and eventually settle upon and unite behind good ideas that potentially could, if pursued, improve our position. Ideally, those ideas would be unique enough to our situation that they could not be replicated with an expectation of success elsewhere.

You might know where I'm going with that, but you don't actually have to agree with my destination (ideas) to agree with my direction... which is that doing the same thing that others have done historically isn't going to get us where some, if not many, of us (i.e., the ambitious among us) want to go... we have to be pro-ingenuity.

Think of it another way. If we were talking the job market instead of the sports market, if we had no other advantage over other nations... ie, if they had a similar size and education-level labor base, similar natural resources and all that... then it comes down to conceptually analyzing and reducing the mousetrap to its basic elements in order to envision and build a better mousetrap.

We spend too much time in these discussion boards quibbling about things that don't really matter a hill of beans... we (as does virtually every other fan on every other board) overlook the likelihood that there is a huge consortium of intelligence visiting this site, and capable of generating ideas that, with development, could engineer advantage(s).

Am I wrong? Tell me, how so?

b0ndsj0ns · 05-20-2013 11:44 AM

(05-20-2013 11:29 AM)ODUDrunkard13 Wrote:
(05-20-2013 10:13 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote: There is a lot of merit to having a geographically sensible non-AQ league. In a lot of ways the MAC has it right. The reason why it won't happen everywhere else though is that the groupings that would make sense geographically have little history together and little desire to be together. Just looking at the east coast you could make an extremely reasonable league from a geography standpoint of something like

ECU
App
Charlotte
ODU
JMU
Georgia Southern
Georgia State
Marshall
WKU
MTSU

but it's never going to happen.

That would be a good conference and has enough balance in basketball and football to remain relevant in both. Throw in Memphis and UAB to get to 12 and it gets even better. While I'm apprehensive to believe it will happen (our leaders better fight it tooth and nail), I'd imagine a split between the BCS and GO5 would give school presidents and ADs enough incentive to return to a regional conference. The financial implications alone should be enough to scare schools away from widespread conferences like CUSA and the AAC.

Yeah the only way I could ever see anything like this happen is if the P5 were able to split, and even then I still don't think it would be likely. Unlike the MAC where all the regional schools want to be together in this you have a group of schools who want nothing to do with the others in their region and would probably still continue the current groupings or something similar.

_sturt_ · 05-20-2013 12:10 PM

(05-18-2013 10:57 PM)banker Wrote: What was said about Kent State is true, but that highlights the issue with the MAC - it's a geographically clustered league that severely limits its exposure outside of a few states. Kent is like Ohio, which is like Akron, which is like Miami, which is like Bowling Green, which is like Toledo.

When you have six schools from the same state, in the same conference, you are always going to have something that feels more like a high school conference. Especially in a state like Ohio that is dominated by Ohio State. You are always going to have limited opportunity to grow your fan base because everybody is the same.

The advantage CUSA has had over the MAC is that we generally have had schools that have a little more unique position within their state and we have a larger geographic span. It gets our name out over a larger area. There are people in WV, VA, NC, TN, MS, AL, FL, LA, and TX that care what happens in the conference. We tend to have had schools that are the 2nd, 3rd or 4th best teams in a state. In the case of Ohio and Michigan the Mac has schools that are as low as 5th thru 9th best in their state. That's an issue we have to deal with in TX and FL with the latest realignment but we'll handle it better because we still have the span advantage.

Good points.

Yet, I also hear some Marshall posters say "Good riddance to Tulsa... I'd rather have Western any day." Some people see the span as being too great to be advantageous.

Credible?

_sturt_ · 05-21-2013 01:12 PM

(05-20-2013 11:44 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:
(05-20-2013 11:29 AM)ODUDrunkard13 Wrote:
(05-20-2013 10:13 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote: There is a lot of merit to having a geographically sensible non-AQ league. In a lot of ways the MAC has it right. The reason why it won't happen everywhere else though is that the groupings that would make sense geographically have little history together and little desire to be together. Just looking at the east coast you could make an extremely reasonable league from a geography standpoint of something like

ECU
App
Charlotte
ODU
JMU
Georgia Southern
Georgia State
Marshall
WKU
MTSU

but it's never going to happen.

That would be a good conference and has enough balance in basketball and football to remain relevant in both. Throw in Memphis and UAB to get to 12 and it gets even better. While I'm apprehensive to believe it will happen (our leaders better fight it tooth and nail), I'd imagine a split between the BCS and GO5 would give school presidents and ADs enough incentive to return to a regional conference. The financial implications alone should be enough to scare schools away from widespread conferences like CUSA and the AAC.

Yeah the only way I could ever see anything like this happen is if the P5 were able to split, and even then I still don't think it would be likely. Unlike the MAC where all the regional schools want to be together in this you have a group of schools who want nothing to do with the others in their region and would probably still continue the current groupings or something similar.

Geography matters, but there is a danger of becoming so provincial that (a) few outside of your boundaries care, and (b) once the people inside the boundaries perceive that few outside of the boundaries care, they begin to care a whole lot less... and all the more so as a given school isn't winning consistently anyhow.

So ultimately, too tight a geography is inherently going to corrode a conference's ability to excel.

The counterbalance to that is that there is only so much talent to go around, and if you're going to have that as an obstacle, you sure better be geographically-centered in a recruiting hotbed... and you could be centered in much worse places than Ohio.

Needless to say, too... the Orange Bowl berth was huge... the MAC could conceivably live off of that success for most of the next 5-10 years, imo.

But if you have a choice, you don't want to have such a tight geography. Best thing MAC could do at this point is to expand to include Army, Delaware and James Madison, seriously spreading the footprint eastward.

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