Charleston Pony wrote:DC-Pony wrote:Aside from all the thoughts about the Dallas Morning News...back to the article and SMU...
I think The Athletic article does an excellent job at:
- Profiling how strong of a coach, program builder, and leader Coach Dykes is. We are so fortunate to have him!
- Illustrating the mounting strengths of the program and the value proposition for recruits.
- Discussing the strategy Coach Dykes has to be Dallas’s team and getting some of the best local talent (achieving that part with Stone already).
I think being Dallas’s Team, as we more fully achieve this, positions us really well - on top of continuing to win, of course - for P5 inclusion at some point. Some say UT thinks they already own Dallas, so why add SMU to the Big12? Well, guess what, they already don’t own Dallas...we just got their QB target. And, if I were the AD I’d be aggressively courting the Pac12. As much as UT might think they already “own” Dallas, they couldn’t afford another power 5 conference setting up shop in their backyard. I’d partner with Houston and together court the Pac12 to either: a) legitimately join that conference or b) use as leverage to join the Big 12. That would afford the Pac12 some continued symmetry in division alignment and really give the Big12 something to think about as it would rob them of natural expansion targets, further cementing them as a sub-class relative to the SEC and Big Ten.
No thanks on any PAC-12 talk. Don't want to be part of the left coast (where we would not even be playing football yet and would have no fans allowed when we were allowed to play). I don't see any division symmetry as SMU and Houston would be outliers and I hated the Pacific time zone games when we played in the WAC. Easy to get lost to the all important east coast media. The American is a good fit for SMU as long as it's members continue building on what we have. We have a better shot at P-6 status than ever joining the P-5 group...unless the Big XII some day decides they really should have 12 members as the name suggests.
We would be idiots to not inquire with the PAC-12. There’s a ton more $$ to be made there than we’ll ever get in the American. Yes, they’re in a down spot right now relative to the rest of the P5 but USC and Oregon will always be major players in CFB and schools like Utah and Washington have either played in the CFP recently or been knocking on its door. The PAC-12 is in a rough spot now because its leadership is a mess and they can’t get the $$$ from their TV contracts like other Power conferences do because they’re stuck in the MST and PST time zones. We could help them out there and give them access to the Dallas and Houston markets not only for TV slots but also to help them in recruiting Texas which virtually every PAC-12 team currently does a lot of. Imagine a conference like this, playing nine conference games per year:
South: USC, UCLA, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, SMU, Houston
North: Utah, Stanford, Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State