OT-ish: G5 Realignment

It's actually a better fit for the AAC after they swung and missed on those Mountain West Teams. 

You always want markets. Success can be fleeting and at the g5 level it’s also mostly meaningless 

Markets if the rest of your league is going to pull the markets up.

You also need markets because you lost some of your bigger markets.

Last, they're playing the long game that one of the "markets" blows up like UCF did.

If Charlotte or North Texas have a "dominant" stretch, they're going to be the new UCF and Cincinnati. Won't happen in the short-term, but those schools have the potential to be something relatively major.

UTSA football having its best week ever.

• Sitting at 7-0 for the first time.
• Ranked in the AP poll for the first time.
• Upgrading conferences to the AAC.

So happy to see them succeed.

The AAC is already in Dallas so I’d say North Texas probably is out. 
 

UTSA, Charlotte, UAB, and FAU are my picks. Rice just doesn’t care enough about football. 

They are going to expand their way into irrelevance. 

Should go after Coastal Carolina

I like how people think an AAC record should give people access to the playoffs when that conference is looking to resemble a mix of the pre-realignment CUSA and Sun Belt.

Hmmmmm.  A lot to digest here.  I always like talking about "conference realignment." 

I'm not big on this idea of chasing after markets.  That's what C-USA did, focusing on markets vs. program strength, while the Sun Belt generally did the opposite.  And now the Sun Belt has become the better conference of the two.

Yes, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston were successes for the AAC, teams in markets.  But looking more closely at them, they did have some unique circumstances:

• Orlando was an underserved market (only 1 pro-sports team), there was an opportunity there.  I think that's a reason they've succeeded whereas USF in Tampa languishes.
• Houston is absolutely huge.  Top 5 MSA in America.  Chasing markets means more when it's a market THIS big.
• Cincinnati benefitted from being the clear #2 University in a big state with a lot of talent.  As discussed here before, the city of Cincinnati has a bit of an anti-OSU tilt, which helps the Bearcats.

Looking more specifically at the 6 schools the AAC is supposedly targeting:

• FAU --- I mean, they're more popular in the Miami/FLL market than FIU.  But that's it!  Seriously, they rank about 10th in the market.
• Charlotte --- They'll forever rank behind the NC ACC 4, Clemson, and the 2 pro sports teams.  Tough for them to break through.
• North Texas --- Huge market and technically in the Metroplex but Denton is closer to the Oklahoma border than Downtown Dallas.  This isn't like Houston where the campus is actually in Houston.
• Rice --- SMU, Tulane and Tulsa will like this add, it's a peer school.  Navy likes it too because it further increases Texas exposure.  But Rice does have an athletic cap, they're simply never going to really have high resonance in Houston as a whole.
• UAB --- 3rd place in the state but it's a football-crazy state and I do think this is a good add.  New stadium.  A bit under-rated as an academic school: they won't be in the AAU any time soon but their medical school and medical research will be looked on favorably by other AAC Presidents.  In the long-run, they actually benefitted from Tuscaloosa trying to torpedo the program back in 2014.
• UTSA --- Definitely a good add.

I guess if it was me, I'd add UAB and UTSA --- then add Rice too if it would keep a number of the other AAC schools happy.   I'm not high at all on the other 3.

Just thought about basketball too.  Wichita State can't really be happy with these proposed adds.

Not sure why they didn't go to 12 rather than 14. Even with the large markets added, there's a cost to diluting the potential for existing rivalries.

I don't see all three of the MAC/Conference USA/Sun Belt surviving, though the MAC seems quite stable with more of a long-term connection between the schools.

Though what we haven't seen is a long-term reckoning over the COVID situation and other changes in the academic world (a huge drop, nationally, in total student numbers over the last decade or so). Will schools start dropping varsity sports at some point soon? There are some schools, like Akron, that are in very serious financial trouble. They dropped three sports, fired about 100 professors and another 100 full-time staffers last year.

Akron studied this issue with an eye toward dropping football, and their conclusion was that it couldn't be considered based on the costs of leaving the conference (MAC schools must field a football team, by rule).

This is interesting reading: https://www.uakron.edu/president/docs/athletics-review-working-group-recommendations.pdf

It shows how athletics are funded in the MAC. When you see how this all works, the bigger picture comes into better focus.

Curious that they wouldn't have pursued Old Dominion.  They're in a Top 40 market (1.8 million people) and in an area that has no professional teams (one of the most populated areas in the country without one) and have no FBS schools to compete with.   The football program is still relatively new and the men's and women's basketball programs have at times been quite successful.

As well as liberty and James Madison.

James Madison is an FCS program and I don't recall hearing that they would be moving up to FBS. That would pretty much exclude their inclusion. As for Liberty, despite their success on the field, I don't think any conference invites will be forthcoming for the foreseeable future.

Not much to add except that I had a buddy that went to Marshall and have been to two games their. Really great time in Huntington. They feel like a MAC school.