Whom ever is running the Marshall Athletic Department should have had enough foresight to what was happening to have Marshall move to another conference as well. This is a classic case of not reading the best seller "WHO MOVED MY CHEESE",
GO BOBCATS
I'm sure they tried, but they haven't been able to get it done, and the reason has everything to do with media markets.
The interesting thing about Landon's article is that it is totally focused on the revenue side. He makes the point that CUSA pays them $200k, while the MAC pays $800k. While the $600k difference isn't small, it can be overcome with a single money game. I suspect that the difference is even greater on the cost side.
Traveling distances are much shorter in the MAC, especially with UMass gone. Bus trips are much less expensive than air travel. Also, remember, these expenses are not just for football. Every team, men's and women's, needs to travel to away games. How much does it cost to fly, say, the women's swim team, to Houston, versus busing the women's swim team to Akron? The difference has to be many thousands of dollars for each trip, for each sport.
It would be very interesting to have someone pick the travel expenses out of each individual sport's budget, and add them up to get a total travel budget for the athletic department as a whole, and then compare a CUSA team to a MAC team. I'd be very surprised it the travel budget difference wasn't greater than the revenue difference. I suspect that when you factor in both costs and revenues, Marshall is more than $2 million worse off in CUSA.
Is that unacceptable? Perhaps. Once you make your bed, though, you have to sleep in it.
Last Edited: 6/14/2016 10:20:49 AM by L.C.