T.C.U.

[50's PONY]

following was posted by Deep Purple on the TCU message board:

Advantages to MWC:

1) Slightly better conference revenue, once the departing C-USA basketball powers take their undistributed units with them. But, compared to BCS money, we’re still talking a relative difference of peanuts. So moving to the MWC simply gets us a slightly better share of scraps from the BCS table.

2) Slightly better SOS. Not decisively better. Just marginally better.

3) Possibly (just possibly) better conference stability. Assuming the Pac 10 doesn’t in the future cherry-pick MWC teams the way many think the Big East will do to C-USA. But both issues are based on rather large assumptions, and nobody knows for sure what will happen in either case.

Disadvantages to the MWC:

1) Largely ignored by the eastward-focused sports media. Certainly more so than the Pac 10, which spends $2 million per year on PR just to get what little press it gets in the East, which is where the media largely lives.

2) Road games at altitude. We get to take a Frog team acclimated to playing at 50-1,500 feet altitude to play at 5,000-7,000 feet against teams acclimated to playing at that altitude.

Look, in terms of level of exertion, high-altitude football is not like skiing (which is mostly just riding the skis), it is more like mountain-climbing. If you’ve ever done any high-altitude climbing, you know what a big factor altitude is. If you're acclimated to Texas or Eastern altitudes, at 5,000 feet you can climb 200-300 yards and you're winded like you just ran a sprint. At 7,000-8,000 feet, a mere 20-30 yards will have you huffing and puffing, unable to breathe. The lungs just don't deliver enough oxygen to the blood, which in turn doesn't deliver enough to the body tissues. The result is altitude exhaustion. To prevent it, you have to pace your climb carefully. Problem is, you don't have that luxury in a football game. You have to at least match whatever pace the opponent brings to the table.

So count the MWC road factor as an additional 1-2 TCU losses per year because, at altitude, our team will always wear out quicker than the home team. In my book, that easily offsets any marginal SOS increase we gain in the MWC. A somewhat better SOS doesn’t do anything for you if you don’t win.

3) Degraded “political” status in-conference. Most Frog fans (including those who favor remaining in C-USA, such as me) are royally pissed at the totally dishonest and shabby treatment TCU received at the hands of C-USA in the recent GMAC Mobile Bowl controversy. Expect worse in the MWC.

The “Gang of 5” front-range schools who created the MWC (Colorado State, Utah, Air Force, BYU, Wyoming) are a very tight-knit group with many common interests. As a bloc, they currently rule the MWC, with New Mexico, San Diego State, and UNLV totally cowed and acting as their lackeys. TCU would be expected to serve as just another lackey to “Gang of 5” interests. And what if TCU stood up in opposition to them on some point? They have stabbed TCU in the back before, and would not hesitate to do so again.

At least in C-USA, the conference commissioner, after consulting legal counsel on C-USA/GMAC contract requirements, was eventually forced to side with us against that Mobile charade. We would get no similar consideration in the MWC. Regardless of the venom spewed against us by many C-USA fans, with senior members Louisville and Cincinnati departing, TCU is about to gain a larger voice in the conference. But our voice in the MWC would be almost entirely stifled by “Gang of 5” interests and influence.

4) More expensive travel costs. Traditionally, TCU has never regarded travel costs as a major factor if a conference move brings decisive advantages. But the MWC doesn’t, so travel costs are relevant here. As anyone who does a lot of traveling across the country knows, traveling West (with the exception of California) is almost always more expensive than traveling East. The major reason is not travel distance. The primary reason is the West has far fewer destination airports with much less traffic. The lower level of carriers and scheduled flights means far less competition to force prices down. Ergo, the average non-stop flight to Colorado Springs costs about $50 more per passenger than a comparable flight to Birmingham – even though they are roughly the same distance from DFW. Then the MWC has destinations like Las Vegas and San Diego that are quite a bit farther than ANY C-USA destination, and the travel cost differential becomes even more pronounced.

Bottom line is, the MWC is simply not a good conference for TCU.

[MizterTea]

good post !!

this suckas must have done his graduate work at SMU!

[Cheesesteak]

Excellent, thoughtful, objective analysis by Deep Purple.

SMU and CUSA will be better off short-term and long-term if TCU rejects the MWC.

"TCU would be expected to serve as just another lackey..."

I'd like to turn TCU into SMU's lackey.

[HorsePower]

I wonder if that's the same Deep Purple who used to rant on our site. If so, he's come a long way. That was a clear, thoughtful, well-presented post. Good stuff, DP.

[SMUstang]

1) Has the MWC made TCU an offer yet?

2) If not, when will that come?

3) When will TCU make their decision?

There is no hurry, but I am sure that Louisiana Tech and the Western Athletic Conference and Conference USA would like to know so that they could firm up their schedules and plans for the 2005 season. So please don't drag it out ad infinitum.

[Hoop Fan]

Just cuz he's against going to the MWC doesn't mean that he doesn't do all he can to disparage SMU on the internet. Deep Purple is far from dumb, but he has a definite axe to grind with SMU.

[Charleston Pony]

Well, as the name suggests, Deep Purple is a frog loyalist and why would would you therefore expect him to do anything but antagonize his school's only true rival?

Let's hope for both our sakes that TCU stays in CUSA. Surely they learned fom this year's experience that strength of schedule means a lot when you are a non-BCS school and on the outside looking in at the big party. Assuming our two schools will continue the only true rivalry either of us has, we can't afford to waste non-conference opportunities playing each other. We both need to be playing BCS programs in order to gain any credibility outside our conference play.

Deep offers some good reasons why NOT to go to the MWC and he touches on the strength of schedule issue, but doesn't state the obvious. For the Miami-Ohios, TCUs & Boises of the world, the question the rest of the world wants to know is "who did you beat that we can all agree is a quality program?" If Boise had beaten Oregon State on the road and Miami-Ohio had won at Iowa, we'd really be having a "let's bash the BCS" party!

<small>[ 12-08-2003, 03:02 PM: Message edited by: Charleston Pony ]</small>