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If attendance were the basis for conference affiliation.

5

5thAvenueVik

Active member
Based on average game attendance for the 2006 season, the conference affiliations for the west would look like this:

Pacific-10

1. 91,480 USC
2. 64,955 UCLA
3. 64,318 California
4. 60,524 BYU
5. 58,378 Oregon
6. 57,483 Washington
7. 55,798 Arizona
8. 54,562 Arizona State
9. 43,279 Utah
10. 41,742 Stanford

Mountain West (9)

1. 40,830 Oregon State
2. 38,551 Fresno State
3. 38,034 Air Force Academy
4. 36,589 Hawaii
5. 34,670 Washington State
6. 31,926 TCU
7. 30,453 Boise State
8. 29,227 San Diego State
9. 28,633 New Mexico

Western Athletic (9)

1. 24,183 Colorado State
2. 22,600 Montana
3. 19,240 UNLV
4. 19,101 Wyoming
5. 18,854 San Jose State
6. 17,596 New Mexico State
7. 16,728 Nevada
8. 14,586 Louisiana Tech
9. 14,453 Idaho

Big Sky (9) + Great West (3)

1. 12,785 Montana State
2. 11,360 Utah State
3. 7,847 Cal Poly
4. 7,435 Idaho State
5. 7,296 Portland State
6. 7,116 Eastern Washington
7. 7,111 UC-Davis
8. 6,608 NAU
9. 5,996 Weber State
10. 5,821 Sac State
11. 5,222 Southern Utah
12. 4,331 Northern Colorado

By this yardstick, Montana does belong in the WAC (and is vying for membership in the Mountain West). This, along with their well-known game day atmosphere, must be the bases on which they are looking to move up in the college football ranks.

The Mountain West has declared that future expansion in their conference will include only venues with large populations (and airport facilities). Montana would be out of that conference on that basis alone.

I believe for us that game-day attendance and atmosphere will be important factors for us and our fortunes. In these respects, we can learn a lot from Montana. Getting into the WAC represents the most meaningful hurdle for us because the sooner we can do it, the sooner we can become competitive in that conference, and then our city demographics will then make us attractive to the Mountain West (along with frontrunners San Jose State, Hawaii, and Boise State).
 
Montana will never go to the WAC without Montana State tagging along, NEVER!

As for your chart, very interesting, USC sure does over shadow everyone. Some schools in the BSC may belong in the WAC but to compete on a regular basis is a whole different story.
 
Four years ago, USC had never, NEVER averaged over 80,000 for a season. Shocking, no?

Stanford, IIRC, benefitted from the rebuilt Stanford Stadium and from a USC home game in 2006. They were struggling with about half that the year before.

This does kind of pique the promotion/relegation idea, no? If so, 4 equal 10s would work, eh?

Anyway, ANY FCS school moving up has to deal with a transition period, because schools in FBS cannot recruit more than 25 players in a season, which means it takes a few years to go from 63 scholarship players to 85. The NCAA does not grant waivers for transitional schools, I suspect because they want to mandate that the school moving up "eases" into the financial requirements.
 
I love these listings. Looking at the results, it seems there is a distinct correlation between attendance and the relative strength of the football team.
 
Definitely interesting but attendance isn't really a criteria for the Pac 10. Institutional/academic match with other schools are the criteria. Pac 10 Presidents only want to associate with schools who have similar academic missions. BYU does not meet that match.
 
Stanford's actual butts-in-the-seat average would probably be closer to 25k for last year. It doesn't really mean anything - when they're back to their traditional level of mediocrity they'll have no problem selling out 50k a game
 
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