Who'sYourData?

Lol. "P" was not a thing yet. Ok, we can pretend the Big East was not a power conference. Whatever.

Before the birth of this thread our football program was in a P5 conference and there were discussions of an OCS.

But the ACC didn't meet.

Now we know why we were not invited to the Big 12. Either the B10 or SEC wants to invite us soon.

For the lifer of this thread and possibly longer, I have been given life by the misinformation posted by MHVver3 and the great Greg Swaim. This summer I have added OSbeaver23 or something or another. If I can follow someone from the MWC, I believe I will have a well rounded view of all unfounded rumors.

Fascinating side conversation here about "failing business". ESPN is still making boatloads of money. Their problem is they are running out of ways to *grow* the business, so that impacts stock prices. Investors don't like companies that merely are profitable. There is something fundamentally wrong with some of our economic models. They also have to transition from assuming linear and streaming services will carry the networks and pay them X money per subscriber. If they stream on their own they need to charge more to make up for those paying that don't use the network. While challenging, that is hardly insurmountable and they will figure that out. In all, they really just need to figure out the international market gold mine to allow for future growth and investors will be happy again.

If you are a university, you are in the academics and research business. If you are a pro athletic team you are in the athletics business. My degree is worth far more with the former than the latter. Arguing athletics is more important to a university than academics is like saying the Bucs need to apply for AAU status.

The new 12 would have a better team strength factors than last year's ACC. So, yeah, there are some dollars there to be had and it would be a step up. Facts matter.

The decision makers have seen renderings, no doubt.

This would be a better conference then what would be left of the AAC, period. A road exists to the playoffs. Also likely would double TV revenue. You have to take it. Would not be wise to stay behind in a conference that would move down in the pecking order, because other schools would jump.

Yes, obviously. We should have just said "No, we refuse to let the Big East be taken apart" and everything would have magically worked out. And we were not alone when that happened.

They have done interesting things for MLB and MLS. Some good, some bad. But they are not afraid to experiment.

For Apple, 8 teams in the east and 8 in the west gives you an entire day/night of football each Saturday. I don't know.what happens, but it has reasons why it would work.

You could always have a home and home with the closest conference mate. It is unusual but not against any rule I am aware of. I believe it has been done a few times in similar situations.

@os_beaver and @mhver3 need to pick up the pace of rumors if we are going to hit 4000 pages this week. They are really slacking today.

That is the beauty of rumors. You never know until you know. That is why this thread is not titled "Conference Realignment Facts".

Need 11 schools to dissolve the AAC.

And UConn isn't joining either. Would not be good for their basketball program. But as long as we are dreaming...

If we could get UConn for all sports, I'd kick out FAU, ECU or UAB in a heartbeat.

If this is what happens, its an upgrade for us. TV not only is an improved group of schools, but has games in every time zone. More attractive for someone, even if it is AppleTV.

I have to say, all these years later and different social media apps, and half of what I read is either coming from MHVer and Greg Swaim. A disturbing kind of deja vu.

Every list I have seen is some variation of this top 5: USF Tulane SMU Rice Memphis

Yes! You tell 'em! Strip out the $300B Elon Musk has in assets and I made more money than he did last year!

You can never see enough Roy Kent.

It is easy to get to 6 or 7. I can see a couple of reasons to bring in 8. 1. More teams means more stability. 2. Seems like it will be tough to pull other west schools for 2024, easier in 2025. So you add 8 AAC schools now, bonus if you can dissolve the AAC at the same time. But then you turn around in 2025 and add four more schools in the west and scheduling becomes much easier and much less expensive. For example, for football you schedule 7 games in your division (east or west). You get some cool cross country matchups, but not brutal. Then with the non-football sports you do the same and save a ton on travel fees.