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Has this been discussed here?

JJ told me he heard about that merger of the MWC and Conference USA to form three divisions. The three winners and a wildcard would then have a four-team playoff.
Sounds intriguing, no?

http://warriorbeat.honadvblogs.com/2010/08/19/independence-day/comment-page-9/#comment-465340

good catch-isn't Stephen Tai the Sports writer for the Honolulu paper?

yes...

Stallion wrote:good catch-isn't Stephen Tai the Sports writer for the Honolulu paper?

Hmmm

From the Orlando Sentinel (my favorite newspaper which ranked SMU 24)

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/c ... 4695.story

This is the only thing to make sense out of all of this mess

Stallion wrote:good catch-isn't Stephen Tai the Sports writer for the Honolulu paper?

Stephen Tsai has been the lead beat writer for the UH football program for decades now. He's always been the first with the interviews with JJ and they talk regularly.

I had seen the Orlando Sentinel and FW Star-Telegram articles, among dozens of others, but hadn't seen this twist to the MWC/C-USA combo before. JJ always thinks of the marketing angle and a 4-team non-AQ playoff could probably be sold to TV.

I've also heard a rumor about 4 six team divisions with a playoff which makes a lot of sense as well. Give up one regular season game and add the conference playoff semi-final game. This would maintain the current CUSA divisions and allow the MWC to divide itself into divisions with perhaps UTEP and TCU swapping places and allowing the Airport 5 (minus Utah) to stay together in a division with say Boise and Fresno. Thus, you would end up with a very competitive central division with SMU/TCU/UH/Tulsa and northwest division with BYU, Boise, AFA, Fresno, and the others, and a decent eastern division with ECU, UCF, USM and Marshall and a very weak western division with SDS, UNLV, UN, UTEP, UNM, and one other team or not. Perhaps you could entice a central team or a NW team to move into that division with the liklihood of an almost permanent visit to the playoff.

Love it.

This would require an NCAA rule change. Odds of that happening? Slim.

Yes and no as to it happening with NCAA approval. If ESPN wants it, it will happen. Its sort of the second step toward a playoff system in that it has a play-in game for the BCS auto bid between two conferences non-AQ conferences. Don't know how MAC, WAC, and SBC will live with this, but except for Boise and Fresno (now with MWC) none of those teams has ever sniffed BCS status.

How about simply twelve, ditch the east and west and merge the remaining two...add Rice, let the west save the WAC and the East continue to feed defections in the Big East.