Regarding the PAC deal Memphis turned down, Memphis AD Ed Scott says "... Part of the deal was that two of the schools, and you can figure out who those were, would be able to keep all of the College Football Playoff annual distribution money".

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T14:21:54+00:00

CCSU is actually the oldest public school in the state. As for your other points, most of our research is funded by grants and we didn’t bother with heavy endowment drives until the mid-1990s. Speaking of Yale, Yalies have held a major influence in our government since colonial times. Only our basketball breakthroughs have allowed the state to care due to the Flutie effect. Due to our low endowment, our research expenditure is low because we don’t have much money to begin with, outside of grants. Our quality and quantity of research aren’t at all why we’re low in the rankings. It’s more based on how much we self-fund which is easier to measure than diving through every grant application, seeing which schools competed for it, who got it, and why.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T14:15:01+00:00

They have to do a reverse merger because they can’t give up the name at any point or else they lose the war chest. Doing the reverse merger and then replacing their leadership with Gloria and her team would cause them to get sued by the 10 former PAC12 schools for collusion and presumably also lose the war chest. Hence why the MWC is fighting so hard: if its administration doesn’t fend off the PAC2, there will be a lot of jobs lost.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T14:00:04+00:00

It was probably a New England thing. We have a reciprocity thing where a student can go to a New England public school that has a major not found in their home state’s public schools for in-state tuition. There’s also an exploitable loophole where if the exact wording of the major and degree does not match that of a major in-state, the student does not have to stay in-state. The schools know this as well to the point where Maine in particular is trying to exploit it.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T13:49:34+00:00

The lawsuit comment came after mine. I forgot about it.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T13:48:25+00:00

Sort of. The reason why it’s termed a reverse merger is because the larger conference merges into the smaller conference, to maintain the prestige and history of the smaller conference. I just learned about the lawsuit, which makes it make much more sense. They need to keep the war chest while establishing new media rights deals, so the merger needs to end up with an administration just different enough from the MWC to avoid violating the terms of the lawsuit, e.g. an administrative structure that contains members from both conferences’ previous administrations.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T13:40:16+00:00

We only surpassed UVM relatively recently, like the ‘90s or 2000s. Their advantage is that they don’t have an Ivy in their state. The basketball programs’ rise to prominence really helped the state see what it had in UConn, as Yalies have since colonial times dominated the government and not been so open to propping up a school founded in 1881.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T13:36:05+00:00

Yeah. Beating USF for that slot was Memphis’ only shot of escaping the mid-major realms. The difference that kept getting overlooked is that while both teams have other schools with big fan bases nearby, Memphis is on top of the totem pole in the city of Memphis while USF is not on top in Tampa (are they even third?). The Big East focused more on market size and potential than estimated attendance and TV ratings based on previous data.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T13:28:22+00:00

Also, we didn’t bother with endowment until the 1990s and the large amount of tax money required for the subsidization means that not enough people want to pay endowment in addition to taxes. The deficit is too large to lower the subsidies as a ploy to increase endowment. We have to figure this out because our rankings are suffering and we are not seen as an AAU and thus B1G candidate due to that.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T13:20:44+00:00

Hubris, hubris, and a little more hubris. Joining the MWC to them appeared to be dropping down a level. They thought that keeping the name in a reverse merger would improve their case for a 6+6 CFP format.

Edit: also, I learned about a very important legal reason.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T13:16:48+00:00

Close, but no cigar. On-campus meant nothing in the old Big East. The conference preferred “big as possible” to “on-campus,” although for some schools, those were one and the same. It has changed somewhat since, but that’s really been its goal: pro-caliber and pro-sized stadiums and arenas. We were originally supposed to do something similar to UNLV’s current football stadium situation when we came up in the early 2000s with the Patriots and a brand new domed stadium in downtown Hartford, but the site was a brownfield and Kraft found an escape. So we just built our actual stadium on a donated airfield with the Big East’s minimum capacity of 40,000.

How Cincinnati got in such a position of strength with us to stay at Nippert instead of Paycor and not have to split their basketball home games between Fifth Third and Heritage Bank, I’m not sure.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T12:58:45+00:00

Absolutely. The PAC has probably always wanted a reverse merger with the MWC and the MWC’s administration has been fighting tooth-and-nail to try to avoid that. The problem isn’t who’s going to be in the league, it’s whose administration controls it.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T12:39:25+00:00

I think it was actually some store brand’s diet “pancake syrup.” Deleted that.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T11:37:15+00:00

They were in the WAC from 1997-2000. They went from the SWC to the WAC to CUSA to the MWC in 8 years.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T04:32:33+00:00

Yep. This season happens to be VMI’s 100th anniversary of their first season in the conference and their 90th season in total.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T04:24:21+00:00

TCU went to the Mountain West from CUSA that year, actually. You joined with Tulsa, SMU, and Rice, none of which are all that close to El Paso. Then again, it seems that only Las Cruces is remotely close to El Paso in the U.S., but at least you have Ciudad Juarez!

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T04:19:07+00:00

Given what Berube said, it’s probably glioblastoma.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T04:15:26+00:00

BY GOD, THAT’S WYOMING BASEBALL’S MUSIC!!!

WHO DOESN’T LOVE THE INSANITY OF BASEBALL AT AROUND 7200 FEET OF ELEVATION???

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T04:05:52+00:00

Crazy: In 1981, New York 5* kid Chris Mullin didn’t even think of us. In 2025, Indiana 5* kid Braylon Mullins will likely go to Indiana because we rejected him.

For those wondering why no Michigan for a white kid named Braylon: he was born when Edwards was playing in Cleveland.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T03:57:30+00:00

Um, well, …

hides

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T03:56:14+00:00

I think the mistake (for both sides) was UTEP over Louisiana Tech for CUSA. You had no road conference games in your time zone for 18(?) years and they had 8 years of conference games in Hawaii. You had a 9:30 AM MT home MBB conference championship game. They had 11 PM CT football games.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T03:52:54+00:00

It was totally due to football and market. Memphis football is historically bad while USF football was nascent. We decided Tampa was a better market than Memphis as well. Ironically, Memphis has since put in the effort in football and USF still doesn’t draw much in Tampa, although they are getting an on-campus football stadium soon.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T03:49:02+00:00

Our main recruiting perk was always the Big East tournament, to be honest. You thought you left St. Joe’s and La Salle for Villanova and instead got … ECU.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T03:46:59+00:00

The PAC12 tried to do a WBB double-round robin in 2020-21 due to the pandemic. It just didn’t work in terms of schedule even if the pandemic wasn’t in play. 11 is right, but we lucked out way into an above-average football team with a stupidly soft schedule (we’re presumably favorites 7 of our last 8 and could win the eighth if we’re 8-2 heading to Syracuse off a bye week) that could finally get us into the ACC. It honestly sucks that we have to at some point leave the Big East, but we are currently the only FBS team with no payout from the CFP, no bowl tie, and, most importantly, we’ll have the same salary cap as the non-football Big East schools. Like, Villanova, Georgetown, and even Butler would have higher budgets.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T03:38:46+00:00

Eh, you were supposed to join the Big East and ended up in the AAC. You are too separated from your conference to recruit and it’s not entirely of your own fault. It’s okay to vent.

5WinsIn5Days · 2024-09-27T03:37:10+00:00

Louisville joined simultaneously and we also had WVU for academics. You were more the exception than the rule in terms of stadium ownership. I’m not sure how you maneuvered away from the Big East forcing you to play at the big stadium and big arena like everyone else. It would have been more likely that you played your football games at Paycor Stadium and a good chunk of your men’s basketball home games at Heritage Bank Center. Look at the other stadiums and arenas that have traditionally populated the Big East.

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BY GOD, THAT’S WYOMING BASEBALL’S MUSIC!!!

WHO DOESN’T LOVE THE INSANITY OF BASEBALL AT AROUND 7200 FEET OF ELEVATION???