Yeah, I've been saying this for years. The mid-major conferences that have made substantial jumps don't compete at the FBS level in football. Their basketball budgets are larger, they pay their coaches more, and they get better results.

This really isn't all that complicated a thing. By and large, you get what you pay for at the conference level. The MAC will continue to be a one bid basketball league until they drop a level in football.

Appy is way off the beaten path...nowhere near a commercial airport. If EKU would go full d-1 in football, a WKU - EKU package deal would work and be within a reasonable bus ride for Ohio, Fiami, Ball State (?)

Charlotte, any school in or near Atlanta, MTSU... air flight for everything except football. Middle is so proud of being in the watered down C-USA, they might not want to bolt. If Murray State would get serious about football, they have been good in basketball for a long time. But since they are not even good at 1aa, not sure they could go D-1 in our lifetime.

Is that a result of the changes during Shauz/JG era lobbying those at the MAC to award more to the teams advancing rather than spitting the share equally amongst league members? Seems like we need to get in the dance to make our shares mean more then.... Saul sitting on 2 seed byes needs to make the tourney then it seems.

WKU and Marshall...make it happen.

When my daughter was a senior in h.s.(2009) the acceptance rate we saw listed for WKU was 95% which raised the question... who was the one out of 20 that they DID actually turn down? (Did you find it unusual that even with the sparse crowd and students on break at WKU that night, the only concessions that were open on our side of the arena were beer kiosks?)

By the way, I was looking at Forbes college rankings a while back and noticed that Belmont was ranked the #421 best college in the nation and #291 in private colleges. Next time you hear somebody gushing about how Belmont wins so many basketball game "with those stringent high academic standards" - be sure and take it with a grain of salt. Maybe bust out laughing after they leave.
(WKU is ranked like 137 spots lower than Ohio by Forbes)

Why in the WORLD would a school want to move from a conference ranked #12 (in analysis above - you could argue actually #13 if AAC #s were corrected) with a conference payout of over $200M dollars all the way down to the MAC, ranked #20, who only got $96M in that time-span?

Certainly their travel budget might go down, but likely not by the roughly $1.5M a year they'd be giving up. And that's just the basketball portion. Add in football (and the associated tv/bowl game/etc payouts) and my guess is they'd be losing anywhere from $2-5M a year to make that switch.

Makes a LOT of sense for the MAC, sure, but good luck getting those schools to pick up the phone.

Meanwhile - we turn our proverbial noses up at schools who could actually help generate real revenue for the league and schools (and gain national recognition in the process - increasing enrollment/merchandise/endowments etc) but don't have the academic standards we desire? Give me a break. Does Akron? Does EMU? Does Toledo? I'm an Engineer. I get how important academics are at universities. I have zero idea why that matters when it comes to athletics though. We're not playing in a mathletes league. This is basketball and football. Unless you're worried that your school would get steam-rolled in those sports just b/c other schools would be able to recruit from a larger pool of recruits? (I'd argue that wouldn't be true - you can recruit good athletes who are also good students). I find this whole line of thinking just silly.

How would the rankings change if friggin' "Kron could win an NCAA tourney game - or 2? Thinking we could just blame all this on "Kron....... :)

Is that school located in Mt. Pleasant? ;)