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If You Could Make a New Conference...Moderators: PonyPride, SmooPower
53 posts
• Page 4 of 4 • 1, 2, 3, 4
Fairly close? BC and Miami may be the northernmost and southernmost schools in the country, and throwing in Rice and Northwestern ensures fully half the country is covered by this conference.
Private schools don't draw jack on the Road-and have you priced travel expenses for flights and hotels for a party of 120 or so for trips to some of those private schools. How about multiplying by 16-18 teams fielded. Its so far out there in the world of lunacy that its ridiculous to even discuss. no national TV for a bunch of privates spread thin across the Nation and few bowls willing to risk a private school traveling party of 2,000. CUSA West makes this idea look like shrewd genuis. There will never be a national private school conference with teams spread out across the country. You can make a great argument that it doesn't make economic sense for SMU to even play Tulane or Vanderbilt which are reasonably close but have proven to draw in the low teens.
We may never get there, but I'd sure like to be surrounded by people hoping to play and compete with local big state schools, instead of accepting mediocracy and hoping to compete with Rice and Tulane and talking about joining silly private school conferences.
Why play, if we don't want to play to win one day?
I believe there will be some major realignments in the BCS conferences in the near future. If SMU were to get it's football and basketball programs going, it would be attractive in some ways to a BCS conference because of being in the Dallas area. Perhaps the SEC, Pac 10 or Big Ten. Having said that, big time college football is one sick piece of mess. Maybe SMU might be better off in an Ivy League type of setup.
Fortunately (unlike most ponyfans) the people in power understand this. That's why when Tulane pushed for it in the 50's it was shot down - even before the money we're talking about today was in play.
Don't get me wrong, I would not like to see SMU in an "Ivy " league either. However, I question how much longer the school will continue to subsidize the athletic programs to the extent they do now. I am not privy to the figures but the deficit has to be huge. And SMU can't borrow from China! LOL By the way, saw an article in the WSJ that stated that some teams in the Ivy League want to emphasize athletics more. Back when Cavan became head coach, I was hoping that the football program could get back to the level of UT or A&M. A few years later, I was hoping we could get up to the level of TCU. Now I hope we can get even with Rice. The fact is that major college football, (UT, OU, USC, OSU, etc,) is crazy when you look at the dollars. I question today if even a school like Miami can compete against the state schools. The problem at SMU is, and has been for a long time, that their gate receipts are puny. EVen in the late 70s and early 80s, they had trouble drawing good crowds unless the team they were playing brought a lot of fans. Add to that that they have small amounts of TV money and I can't see how, the way major college football is constituted today, that SMU can ever be competitive with the "big boys." Baylor has the advantage of being in the Big 12, so gets a lot of revenue from that affiliation but I seriously doubt that they will ever compete for the Big 12 title in football. The hurdles are just too high in terms of facilities, alumni support, public relations, etc. Actually, SMU might be where they ought to be, in a so called mid major where, if they can bring the Mustangs up to the TCU level, they can gradually start drawing well at Ford Stadium and go to a little bowl every year or so and make a little money or break even. The bowl deal is a problem also because SMU has so few hard core fans that few will travel to a bowl.
53 posts
• Page 4 of 4 • 1, 2, 3, 4
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