![]() Putting Louisiana, Tulane, Southern Miss and Louisiana Tech in the same league makes sense.īut as we’ve learned long ago, college sports rarely make sense. Putting Appalachian State, ECU, Coastal Carolina and Charlotte in the same league makes sense. Will it happen? Who knows? But it’s better for fans, players and eases the travel strain on players. This is what a new Group of Five could look like: But consider this a haymaker for common sense and a better future for athletes and schools. So the determination of value would ultimately come down to the details and the consultants. And a tangle of TV contracts make this more ideal in theory than reality. And it can be done without Old Dominion and UTEP or SMU and East Carolina being in the same league but nearly 2,000 miles apart.Īgain, TV money dictates everything in college sports. And the collective power of the 60 or so schools could end up yielding a decent-sized television contract that could end up being weighted to the teams that command the most streams and eyeballs. If there’s a way to cut our travel costs by millions, let our student-athletes spend more time in class and sell more tickets because fans actually know the teams, know alums from the universities and can travel to games, we should at least spend a few weeks to discuss the thought that maybe there’s a better solution.”Ĭonsider this a back-of-the-napkin idea for how to re-organize the Group of Five. ![]() “TV has made it obvious they’re only paying for the big brands moving forward. ![]() “We really should hit pause before we start poaching each other’s teams and explore what this would look like if we started over today,” said an athletic director in the Group of Five. By chasing TV dollars, many schools have alienated fans through non-sensible league affiliation with teams that fans don’t care about.ĭo the leaders in college athletics have enough vision and smarts to build a more sensible and tenable Group of Five for the future? We’ll have a chance to find out. Then the trickle-down would go from there.īut there’s an increasing buzz among athletic directors throughout the Group of Five that the next wave of realignment should focus on common sense instead of more poaching. The typical food chain reaction would have the American Athletic Conference add a few teams, deciding whether to attempt to poach the Mountain West or pluck a few members from Conference USA. With the addition of Cincinnati, BYU, UCF and Houston to the Big 12 essentially all close to being completed, the buzz this weekend came from what could be next for the AAC, Mountain West, Conference USA, MAC and Sun Belt. ![]()
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