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Huntington WVa Article: The Group of Five conferences need to face reality.

Not sooner .... Not later .... Now.

The reality is the G5 leagues and their 60 members can't compete in an arms race with the Power Five conferences. That has become increasingly obvious during both groups' first year of existence.

Except, it seems, to the G5 conferences.

http://www.herald-dispatch.com/sports/x ... ce-reality

Kicker: "The G5 is trying to live a champagne lifestyle on a beer budget."

Spring league?

That article was nothing but a bunch of whining about stuff we already know. Where are the solutions?

Schools like Marshall might be [deleted]. SMU will continue to foot the bill to keep up appearances

Hey, as the AAC, we're the dwarf among midgets! Huzzahs are in order.

East Coast Mustang wrote:Schools like Marshall might be [deleted]. SMU will continue to foot the bill to keep up appearances

Yup. Can't have foreclosures in the Park Cities

I have posted for the past year variations of my concerns as expressed in this article. My question is what can SMU do about the realities of the G5 dilemma? Do you come to grips with the situation ( UAB-football ) and drop the football program and put your resources into other sports and compete for national titles ( U of Denver-lacross/ice hockey )? Do you follow a pipe dream? With the current 4 team play off national title; how can you compete with no ability to have a sufficient schedule to even be considered for a play off game? If you chose to fight on with huge athletic department deficits due mainly to football; how long do you fight before being force to throw in the towel? If you fight on, how many P5 openings will there be in the next 10 years to change your conference? Will we be ready or even be a candidate for a P5 invite in the future recognizing that there are only 6 or 7 private schools in the P5 conferences and all struggling to compete. Yea, I know Baylor and TCU have had some short term recent success along with Stanford, but it ends with these 3. The P5 want large public universities with big stadiums and large alumni groups. SMU does not profile what the P5 seeks.

I give HCCM our last chance and hope for an opportunity to be invited into a P5 during his tenure. If he fails and/or no opportunity arises; we must get real with regard to football and transition to a different philosophy and athletic department focus.

MWC has already said some schools will not participate. Might cause the best of the rest conference to form.

smupony94 wrote:MWC has already said some schools will not participate. Might cause the best of the rest conference to form.

Yep. I have long maintained that SMU's entry into a true P5 conference is unlikely. Possible? Absolutely. I just think there are a lot of dominos that have to fall perfectly for us to get a seat at the table. That said, we are certainly one of the handful of G5 programs that have the financial resources to keep up the fight. The question will be how many of these programs genuinely want to align themselves to do it. I think there are at least 10-16 G5 programs that could do it. We are certainly one of them. The dregs of CUSA, MWC, American, MAC, etc. will either drop football or go down to D1AA or D2. The other question is what sort of TV deal such a conference could command on the open market. Certainly not P5 caliber, but significantly better than any existing G5 TV deal.

I'm drawn to this topic like a moth to a flame. I know it's pointless to speculate. But I wonder if the P5 might want a few more private schools to give the group more academic respectability. the more the P5 become big state schools the more semi pro things become.

I know grasping at straws but I certainly can see consolidation among the G5 at a minimum over the next few years.

I think the American could survive matching the P5 expenditures with only a few schools dropping down at most. Even if that happens, we could just backfill with big media markets like SDSU, UNLV, etc. You can't really say the same about the teams/markets in the other G5 conferences.

This is a Chuck Landon article. If you aren't familiar with him, he's very lucky to still have a job. The gist may be right, but chances are that the facts are way off.

Here's a Chuck Landon article that you may find interesting: http://www.herald-dispatch.com/sports/m ... c&show=all

GreenbeltPony wrote:I think the American could survive matching the P5 expenditures with only a few schools dropping down at most. Even if that happens, we could just backfill with big media markets like SDSU, UNLV, etc. You can't really say the same about the teams/markets in the other G5 conferences.

SDSU and UNLV don't have any discretionary financial resources. Because of this, it was very difficult to work with them on strategic conference alignment issues while TCU was in the MWC. Interests weren't aligned.

FroggieFever wrote:

GreenbeltPony wrote:I think the American could survive matching the P5 expenditures with only a few schools dropping down at most. Even if that happens, we could just backfill with big media markets like SDSU, UNLV, etc. You can't really say the same about the teams/markets in the other G5 conferences.

SDSU and UNLV don't have any discretionary financial resources. Because of this, it was very difficult to work with them on strategic conference alignment issues while TCU was in the MWC.

True. My hope would be that the AAC, if presented with such a situation, would be throwing a life-line to said schools and other "survivors" for their potential value while simultaneously pitching a rebranded "best of the rest" AAC to ESPN, Fox, etc in the wake of a severely shrunken FBS.

: http://youtu.be/R-W2rTj1bsY