Super Conferences Emerge

[ponyscott]

I understand, that but its not necessarily us the country will turn on to watch, its the teams we will play, which hopefully will be bigger name teams and schools who would like access to our TV AND recruiting market. We wouldn't even be in the conversation if SMU were located in Midland or Wichita Falls, Texas. We actually have a chance to get into a major conference because of where we are, not just beacuse of SMU.
But yes we do need to be relevant in the major sports to get that shot. And the crowds will be bigger by the nature of the beast because of the draw of who we may play. If we played bigger teams with bigger fan bases, we WILL naturally have bigger crowds, but unfortunatly it just won't be a majority of SMU fans. Just as we recently played Texas Tech or A & M here in basketball or football, the stadium was full, just not our fans.
Even when we played in the SWC we never could get the big fan base unless it was the big schools visiting here in Dallas. When the games were against the Wichita States or Rice etc the crowds weren't there. We really can't kid ourselves into a big fan base as we have too much competition for entertainment in Dallas and a smaller graduate family, so why frustrate ourselves?

[GoRedGoBlue]

Stallion, if what you say happened, wouldn't the players organize into a Union and demand being paid performance fees and bonuses? Say, as semi-pro Farm Teams?

Then you'd have to pay all athletes, including women's crew at SMU. Title IX baby

[Stallion]

that's pretty speculative-they might. The importance of losing the IRS 503(c)(3) non-profit exemption is that all those donations to Texas athletic department would no longer be tax deductable. And the IRS has made noises about that in recent years. They obviously would lose a lot of political support by further cutting the number of top programs which might cause a closer investigation of whether Big Time College Football is more business than educational. Institutions which are predominately charitable, educational, religious, scientific, civic etc that meet 503(c)(3) non-profit requirements get automatic tax deductability