CaseyOrourke
Active member
Rasin said:
I saw that and I let my feelings known there too
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FBS Conference Realignment
- Thread starter PSUVikings2
- Start date
I saw that and I let my feelings known there too
BroadwayVik
Active member
ParkAvenuVik contributed this on the Mountain West Forum (as he wrote on the Oregonlive forum):
The Big XII will likely tap TCU and, I'm thinking, SMU (a program on the rise) to replace Colorado and Nebraska. That would bring the conference number of teams back down to eight, which will suffice for the time being.
However, the prospect of joining the Mountain West Conference will be sufficiently appealling so as to open up competition among all members of the WAC and even the current I-AA Big Sky Conference.
In terms of risk management, the Mountain West can choose teams for expansion based on large media markets, quality-of-play or both. The quality-of-play level, in order to trump media market considerations, would need to affect BCS fortunes, as in the case of Boise State. The best of both worlds would be a team to favorably affect BCS fortunes that also enjoys a large media market.
Reasonably, better conference affiliation and fit can positively energize a team's performance whereas poor fit can de-energize it. And the media market is a given stable-state whereas team performance can most often be expected to vary postively with greater conference affiliation. Teams from large media markets with reasonable potential for greater quality-of-play would, thus, likely be considered a better risk for added value in conference affiliation.
The best media markets from the pool of expansion prospects thus include:
San Jose State (#6 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose 2,503,400) -- This is a highly desirable market. Will SJSU emerge as consistent?
Fresno State (#55 Fresno-Visalia 579,180) -- Significant market. Heir-apparent to Utah?
Hawaii (#71 Honolulu 433,240) -- Significant market. Great attendance. Time zone issues and considerations of some jet-lag.
Nevada (#108 Reno 270,500) -- Fairly significant market. High scoring offense but crushed by TCU in latest bowl game.
Idaho, New Mexico State, Utah State, Louisiana Tech -- Markets not of significant size. Improving quality-of-play nonetheless.
Montana (#166 Missoula 111,940) -- Fairly significant market. Good quality-of-play. Traditionally caves against Idaho and Boise State.
UC-Davis, Sacramento State (#20 Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto 1,404,580) -- Very significant market. May likely opt for Big West Conference.
Cal Poly-SLO (#120 Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo 241,370) -- Fairly significant market. May likely opt for Big West Conference.
Portland State (#22 Portland 1,188,770) -- Very significant market. Improving quality-of-play. Great new head coach.
There will be room for four more teams in order to establish a 12-team conference. Based on media market size and quality-of-play potential at this point, I would reasonably conclude that the following teams represent the best-risks for close-monitoring of development for eventual conference affiliation and membership into the Mountain West Conference. My bias is in favor of:
San Jose State & Portland State
The Big XII will likely tap TCU and, I'm thinking, SMU (a program on the rise) to replace Colorado and Nebraska. That would bring the conference number of teams back down to eight, which will suffice for the time being.
However, the prospect of joining the Mountain West Conference will be sufficiently appealling so as to open up competition among all members of the WAC and even the current I-AA Big Sky Conference.
In terms of risk management, the Mountain West can choose teams for expansion based on large media markets, quality-of-play or both. The quality-of-play level, in order to trump media market considerations, would need to affect BCS fortunes, as in the case of Boise State. The best of both worlds would be a team to favorably affect BCS fortunes that also enjoys a large media market.
Reasonably, better conference affiliation and fit can positively energize a team's performance whereas poor fit can de-energize it. And the media market is a given stable-state whereas team performance can most often be expected to vary postively with greater conference affiliation. Teams from large media markets with reasonable potential for greater quality-of-play would, thus, likely be considered a better risk for added value in conference affiliation.
The best media markets from the pool of expansion prospects thus include:
San Jose State (#6 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose 2,503,400) -- This is a highly desirable market. Will SJSU emerge as consistent?
Fresno State (#55 Fresno-Visalia 579,180) -- Significant market. Heir-apparent to Utah?
Hawaii (#71 Honolulu 433,240) -- Significant market. Great attendance. Time zone issues and considerations of some jet-lag.
Nevada (#108 Reno 270,500) -- Fairly significant market. High scoring offense but crushed by TCU in latest bowl game.
Idaho, New Mexico State, Utah State, Louisiana Tech -- Markets not of significant size. Improving quality-of-play nonetheless.
Montana (#166 Missoula 111,940) -- Fairly significant market. Good quality-of-play. Traditionally caves against Idaho and Boise State.
UC-Davis, Sacramento State (#20 Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto 1,404,580) -- Very significant market. May likely opt for Big West Conference.
Cal Poly-SLO (#120 Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo 241,370) -- Fairly significant market. May likely opt for Big West Conference.
Portland State (#22 Portland 1,188,770) -- Very significant market. Improving quality-of-play. Great new head coach.
There will be room for four more teams in order to establish a 12-team conference. Based on media market size and quality-of-play potential at this point, I would reasonably conclude that the following teams represent the best-risks for close-monitoring of development for eventual conference affiliation and membership into the Mountain West Conference. My bias is in favor of:
San Jose State & Portland State
BroadwayVik
Active member
If the Big XII does indeed tap TCU (and they accept), then BYU and BSU will be left as the twin-powers of the Mountain West Conference. I used to think that if BYU remained in the MWC after the current expansion dust had settled that their best option might be to go Independent like Notre Dame. But with a worthy conference cohort and rival in Boise State, they may choose instead to build the conference based on their combined strengths.
With Brady Hoke and Al Borges as Aztec coaches now, San Diego State may suddenly emerge as an additional conference power this season or next. BTW, guess who the AD is at SDSU now? None other than Jim Sterk.
With room for four more teams in the MWC, I think the hiring of Nigel Burton says we'll challenge you for that spot, Nevada. We outmatch you in terms of population and infrastructure and we know how to get better--much better. I'm sure the MWC wants to see what evolves in terms of which teams seriouosly desire to get their quality-of-play acts together to make themselves attractive and well-fit for conference membership. It's open-season on competition!
If PSU is able to reinvent itself and thereby make itself worthy of an invitation to the MWC, it has a realistic chance of gaining an invitation. If PSU does gain MWC membership, it will always be in a position to seriously challenge Oregon and Oregon State in football and all other sports, the same way that BYU and Boise State do now. Money follows the entrepreneural spirit and good plan execution.
In addition to establishing a club of enterprising entrepreneurs as influential advisors, PSU might do well to build relationships with blue-collar labor union leadership for political and financial support.
With Brady Hoke and Al Borges as Aztec coaches now, San Diego State may suddenly emerge as an additional conference power this season or next. BTW, guess who the AD is at SDSU now? None other than Jim Sterk.
With room for four more teams in the MWC, I think the hiring of Nigel Burton says we'll challenge you for that spot, Nevada. We outmatch you in terms of population and infrastructure and we know how to get better--much better. I'm sure the MWC wants to see what evolves in terms of which teams seriouosly desire to get their quality-of-play acts together to make themselves attractive and well-fit for conference membership. It's open-season on competition!
If PSU is able to reinvent itself and thereby make itself worthy of an invitation to the MWC, it has a realistic chance of gaining an invitation. If PSU does gain MWC membership, it will always be in a position to seriously challenge Oregon and Oregon State in football and all other sports, the same way that BYU and Boise State do now. Money follows the entrepreneural spirit and good plan execution.
In addition to establishing a club of enterprising entrepreneurs as influential advisors, PSU might do well to build relationships with blue-collar labor union leadership for political and financial support.
No way PSU gets into the MWC as a FCS.
BroadwayVik
Active member
Why? PSU is certainly big enough and, if we play our cards right, we should gain quick WAC membership and then have as good a chance as anyone. Don't you want the state of Oregon to be further enriched?
BroadwayVik
Active member
That's a good point. Whom would you figure? Any takes?
CaseyOrourke
Active member
Wyokie said:IF (and that's a big IF) the Big 12 expands, they will not add TCU. Texas doesn't want another Texas school in the conference due to recruiting.
Sorry I forgot to add a word earlier. Oops!
I don't think TCU or SMU would be of any great concern to UT. Texas is always the first choice for any athlete in the state and A&M is usually the second. There is an unwritten rule amongst the schools that Texas (and A&M) always has the first right of refusal of any high school student athlete within the state. The pool of prospects in Texas is so huge that there are more than enough for UT and A&M to get the athletes they want but still leave enough for the other schools to recruit elite teams of their own.
Also, even if a school is trying really hard to recruit a kid, if Texas were to suddenly express an interest and unless he or his family had an emotional attachment to that school, the kid would choose Texas in a heartbeat.
ManOfVision
Active member
BroadwayVik said:
Why are you assuming that the Big XII will add two teams? I realize that there is the draw of championship game revenue, but they are now able to divide their pie in 10 ways instead of 12, with each remaining school getting more money. This is key because losing Colorado and Nebraska didn't really change the size of their pie. For the conference to add two teams and go back to 12, they would have to be convinced that they could significantly increase the size of their pie, and I don't see two teams out there that would obviously do that.
BroadwayVik
Active member
The only reason to go to a 12-team conference would be in terms of bowl game invitations. When the Pac-10 was not seeking to expand during the era when the Big Ten, SEC, Big XII and others did expand, they alway received one less bowl invitation than those conferences with a full 12-team (or even 11-team) complement. And worse yet, the bowl game pairings had, say, the Pac-10's #3 team versus the 11- or 12-team conference's #4 team. Not nice.
Portland State is "low hanging fruit for the WAC." I like that statement and agree with it. We can improve quite a lot, especially considering we were playing so many freshmen last season.
Vikings still a player in college shuffle
Nick Christensen, The Hillsboro Argus
The Big 12 has 10 teams, the Big Ten has 12 teams, the Pac-16 is a pipe dream and the Mountain West went from being bride to bridesmaid yet again.
We’re done now, right?
Wrong!
There’s still one more player to show its cards in the college football restructuring, one that could have a Fiesta Bowl contender playing at PGE Park.
No, the Ducks won’t be kicking off a Rose Bowl campaign at Portland’s new soccer palace.
The Western Athletic Conference has a void to fill with the loss of Boise State, and to hear some western media outlets tell it, Portland State is a prime candidate for the WAC’s replacement plans.
The Vikings will be playing their home schedule at Hillsboro Stadium this year, before returning to the football-only PGE Park for the 2011 season. And with the Big Sky Conference being the point of origin of many of the WAC’s success stories, including Boise, Nevada-Reno and Idaho, Portland State and its accompanying TV market represent low-hanging fruit.
Torre Chisholm, the Vikings’ director of athletics, said he hasn’t thought about the possibility of making the jump. But the school clearly has plenty at stake in the WAC’s decision.
“You can’t deny the greater exposure, and you can’t deny the overall benefit of competing at the bowl level and the awareness and pageantry,” Chisholm said. “Those pieces are irrefutable, but they all come at a cost, too.”
After all the shenanigans of the last two weeks, nobody’s going to put up a big neon sign saying “Pick me!”
But in a teleconference before Boise bolted for the Mountain West, WAC commissioner Karl Benson, who has been brilliant at keeping his conference somewhat relevant after facing several challenges, said he thinks his member schools will act “much sooner than later.”
That action could include Football Championship Subdivision schools, he said.
Portland State has successfully competed against the WAC in the last few years, with a winning percentage in head-to-head competition with WAC schools highlighted, ironically, by a 21-14 loss at Boise State in 2005, a game that was tied in the fourth quarter against a team that finished the season 9-4.
So the competition is there. What about the facilities?
“With the new PGE Park renovation, we’re going to make that a top-quality facility,” Chisholm said. “We’ve played basketball at the Rose Garden and Coliseum before, so we can always revisit that.”
The biggest question is whether Portland State fits the WAC profile, both academically and financially.
Scrooge McDuck doesn’t have enough money in his vault to fill the void between Portland State’s annual athletics budget of $9 million and the average WAC budget of $20 million — a sea of gold that won’t be immediately filled by television revenue from the conference’s ESPN contract.
When Boise and Idaho made the jump, that gap was much smaller, Chisholm said.
“Part of it is just a leap of faith. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t,” he said. “It comes at a cost. If you look at the institutional investment in conferences like the WAC or Sun Belt or Mid-American, all those athletic programs are subsidized heavily by the general university.”
That could be a similar problem at other public institutions apparently on the short list.
Other candidates include UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Sacramento State. Presumably off the list is Montana, the most obvious choice to make the jump but a school that has, in the past, resisted making the promotion from the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) to the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A).
The Grizzlies reportedly would be reluctant to make the jump without being joined by their rivals from Montana State.
Sacramento State and UC Davis are the other highly attractive candidates, with a new football stadium, a history of playing FBS teams and access to two television markets (Sacramento and the Bay Area).
But WAC members San Jose State, Fresno State and Nevada-Reno might be reluctant to see competition for recruits pop up in their fertile ground, particularly with UC Davis having better facilities and a superior academic reputation to the three longtime WAC competitors.
Fresno State, in particular, has made a point of branding itself as the Central Valley’s football team, an edgy alternative to California’s polished Pac-10 programs.
All this, and more, is what Chisholm is faced with as the game of “Musical Conferences” works its way down to the Big Sky level.
“We have to be aware of everything that’s out there,” he said. “The biggest fear is being caught unaware. If something happens, and the Big Sky is minus two schools, our whole conference and our membership is at risk.”
And that could put Chisholm — and all of his Big Sky peers — into a poker game where you have to play offense, not defense, to win.
The low-hanging fruit is the tastiest.
Portland State is "low hanging fruit for the WAC." I like that statement and agree with it. We can improve quite a lot, especially considering we were playing so many freshmen last season.
Vikings still a player in college shuffle
Nick Christensen, The Hillsboro Argus
The Big 12 has 10 teams, the Big Ten has 12 teams, the Pac-16 is a pipe dream and the Mountain West went from being bride to bridesmaid yet again.
We’re done now, right?
Wrong!
There’s still one more player to show its cards in the college football restructuring, one that could have a Fiesta Bowl contender playing at PGE Park.
No, the Ducks won’t be kicking off a Rose Bowl campaign at Portland’s new soccer palace.
The Western Athletic Conference has a void to fill with the loss of Boise State, and to hear some western media outlets tell it, Portland State is a prime candidate for the WAC’s replacement plans.
The Vikings will be playing their home schedule at Hillsboro Stadium this year, before returning to the football-only PGE Park for the 2011 season. And with the Big Sky Conference being the point of origin of many of the WAC’s success stories, including Boise, Nevada-Reno and Idaho, Portland State and its accompanying TV market represent low-hanging fruit.
Torre Chisholm, the Vikings’ director of athletics, said he hasn’t thought about the possibility of making the jump. But the school clearly has plenty at stake in the WAC’s decision.
“You can’t deny the greater exposure, and you can’t deny the overall benefit of competing at the bowl level and the awareness and pageantry,” Chisholm said. “Those pieces are irrefutable, but they all come at a cost, too.”
After all the shenanigans of the last two weeks, nobody’s going to put up a big neon sign saying “Pick me!”
But in a teleconference before Boise bolted for the Mountain West, WAC commissioner Karl Benson, who has been brilliant at keeping his conference somewhat relevant after facing several challenges, said he thinks his member schools will act “much sooner than later.”
That action could include Football Championship Subdivision schools, he said.
Portland State has successfully competed against the WAC in the last few years, with a winning percentage in head-to-head competition with WAC schools highlighted, ironically, by a 21-14 loss at Boise State in 2005, a game that was tied in the fourth quarter against a team that finished the season 9-4.
So the competition is there. What about the facilities?
“With the new PGE Park renovation, we’re going to make that a top-quality facility,” Chisholm said. “We’ve played basketball at the Rose Garden and Coliseum before, so we can always revisit that.”
The biggest question is whether Portland State fits the WAC profile, both academically and financially.
Scrooge McDuck doesn’t have enough money in his vault to fill the void between Portland State’s annual athletics budget of $9 million and the average WAC budget of $20 million — a sea of gold that won’t be immediately filled by television revenue from the conference’s ESPN contract.
When Boise and Idaho made the jump, that gap was much smaller, Chisholm said.
“Part of it is just a leap of faith. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t,” he said. “It comes at a cost. If you look at the institutional investment in conferences like the WAC or Sun Belt or Mid-American, all those athletic programs are subsidized heavily by the general university.”
That could be a similar problem at other public institutions apparently on the short list.
Other candidates include UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Sacramento State. Presumably off the list is Montana, the most obvious choice to make the jump but a school that has, in the past, resisted making the promotion from the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) to the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A).
The Grizzlies reportedly would be reluctant to make the jump without being joined by their rivals from Montana State.
Sacramento State and UC Davis are the other highly attractive candidates, with a new football stadium, a history of playing FBS teams and access to two television markets (Sacramento and the Bay Area).
But WAC members San Jose State, Fresno State and Nevada-Reno might be reluctant to see competition for recruits pop up in their fertile ground, particularly with UC Davis having better facilities and a superior academic reputation to the three longtime WAC competitors.
Fresno State, in particular, has made a point of branding itself as the Central Valley’s football team, an edgy alternative to California’s polished Pac-10 programs.
All this, and more, is what Chisholm is faced with as the game of “Musical Conferences” works its way down to the Big Sky level.
“We have to be aware of everything that’s out there,” he said. “The biggest fear is being caught unaware. If something happens, and the Big Sky is minus two schools, our whole conference and our membership is at risk.”
And that could put Chisholm — and all of his Big Sky peers — into a poker game where you have to play offense, not defense, to win.
The low-hanging fruit is the tastiest.
BroadwayVik
Active member
Check out the blog at this website! What the Big-12 folks are saying.
http://www.rockchalktalk.com/2010/6/14/1518245/expansion
BroadwayVik said:
This great new coach hasnt even snapped the ball. How can level of play be improving??
PortlandStater
Active member
Because will be really, really hard not to improve from the last years... 
The MWC/WAC dealings are getting interesting.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5479730
"Other schools that have been in contact, such as Montana, Montana State, Sacramento State, Cal Poly and UC Davis, would have to decide if they want to bump up their programs into the Football Bowl Subdivision."
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5479730
"Other schools that have been in contact, such as Montana, Montana State, Sacramento State, Cal Poly and UC Davis, would have to decide if they want to bump up their programs into the Football Bowl Subdivision."
BroadwayVik
Active member
Nobody does. It doesn't follow that a conference upgrade automatically leads to huge deficits. Affiliation may draw greater interest from the university and surrounding community and actually lead to greater profitability. What has to be managed is the risk.
VikThunder1
Active member
Gang Green said:
LOL! Hasn't shapped the ball and has a marginal record at Nevada as assistant coach.
I've got my fingers crossed that he'll somehow figure it out.
CaseyOrourke
Active member
martymoose said:
I noticed that they were also giving a nod to Texas State and UTSA as possibilities. Texas State has a well established program with some success in the playoffs. UTSA is a program that is still in the FCS startup phase, has yet to play a game and is already making plans to move into the FBS in a minimum amount of time.
BroadwayVik
Active member
My feeling also.
Wow, BYU is going independent in football and to the WCC for all other sports.
I know this is sort of a football thread, but the WCC sure got better in men's hoops by adding a strong BYU program.
I know this is sort of a football thread, but the WCC sure got better in men's hoops by adding a strong BYU program.
