The “Athens is in the middle of nowhere” excuse is irrelevant. Look at Wisconsin, Penn State, Boise State or many other schools. Those schools aren’t in prime locations, but they have massive followings and garner respect across the country.
-WOUB article-

The Madison metro area has over 500,000 people.  Penn State, while being fairly rural, has around 45,000 students in Happy Valley, and counts almost 500,000 people in their alumni association.  The Boise metro area has over 600,000.

Athens has around 24,000.  I'd hardly call this revelation "irrelevant".

Dominate the MAC.  Multiple years.  Both sports.  Then we can talk.

It makes me a bit queasy to wholeheartedly agree with Ozcat, who has an unfortunate propensity to look down on his own alma mater’s athletic program, but he’s exactly right.

As to the article, it’s full of holes, incoherent arguments, and self-admitted ignorance. I did learn that Oregon rose to prominence not by being the most popular school in Oregon, and not because Phil Knight stuffed its coffers with tens of millions of dollars, but because they have shiny uniforms with swooshes on them!

I wish we had fancy Adidas uniforms like MAC powers Akron and Eastern Michigan. Winning in our Russell uniforms looks so stupid.

C'mon.  It wasn't that rough, was it?  In all seriousness, I do not, at all, look down upon our athletic program.  I donate money to only one school, Ohio.  I purchase season tickets for only one school, Ohio.  I may attend a few Buckeye games each year, but in no way does my financial committment to OSU come anywhere close to what I throw towards the green and white.  I'm digging OUr recent success as much as anyone.  I'm trying (with some success, but not as much as I'd like) to get as many of my fellow OU brethern to start giving money to the Bobcat Club.  I can see that we're making progress, and winning consistently will (hopefully) only help in the future.  Do I think in 10 years or so, we could possibly be ready to explore moving up, or leading other schools with us, to a new and better conference?  Sure.  But we just are not there yet.  But we're moving in the right direction.

I enjoyed this.  Hilarious.

OUr students don't seem to be doing that anymore, just alumni.  If our students are doing it, they are doing it while hiding from the public.

We can discuss the need to have 10 years of winning championships or whatever before we become "attractive" to another conference.  However, we must understand that at the end of the day if/when we ever get the opportunity to move up, we can do all the asking we want but it will be the conference we want to join that will have the last say on whether or not we get in.  Put another way, if/when the BE decides it wants to extend an invite our way, they will make that call, not us.  

Really?  They'd have to invite us for us to join?   On the flip side, just because a conference extends us an invitation, and that includes the BE, doesn't mean we have to accept.   The way the sands are shifting right now you don't know what you are buying into.  Three years ago CUSA looked a heck of a lot more appealing than it does now.   Three years ago the name Big East and Ohio wouldn't have been mentioned on these boards, much less CBS Sportsline or SI, without huge gales of laughter.  But here we are.  It's obviously still a huge long shot that we would ever be invited but the fact that it's even out there is testiment enough of how tenuous the status of the BE is right now.

Has anyone else considered the possibility of the MAC and Big East combining to form a super conference?

Wait for it....the BIG MAC.

so to recap-

- stop thinking about moving to a different conference because you'll never be good enough to leave the MAC.
- In spite of being a founding member of the MAC 60+ years ago it just wouldn't be fair to the conference, and ourselves, if we didn't commit to spending 10 more years really dominating the conference. Just so, you know, we can look ourselves in the mirror and say we really earned that promotion.
- we shouldn't leave the MAC because what if something happens to the new conference, then what would we do?
- Peden is too small, and we can't ever change it. ever.

ok, got it. thanks.

Tell me more, because frankly, I'm ignorant of whatever impending doom we were under. 

-j

Perhaps I should have explained myself better in my recent post, so here goes.  I do not believe we need to spend 10 years winning championships as others have advocated on here.  My post was ment to be more sarcastic than anything.  I beleive others have suggested that we just need to stay in the MAC and win championships and then we can go and tell other conferences to let us join them.  That in my opinion is wrong.

If/when the BE extends an invite to us, I am sure it will not revolve around how many MAC Championships we have won.  Although that helps, as I have posted elsewhere in this thread I believe that if we finish this year as well as we wish/hope, coupled with our B-ball finish last spring and hopefully a repeat this spring, we have the appearence of being "hot' or at least a program headed in the right direction.  Add to that the Convo as well as the new IPF and I beleive we look more attractive to a conference looking to increase the value of their league.

Let me be very clear, I personally believe staying in the MAC will not amount to staying secure but rather will at best be stagnant or at worst send this program in reverse.  The MAC overall is and will remain a doormat in FBS/D-IA athletics.  This league is going nowhere fast and is backward thinking in its view.  In my opinion, people looking at it from the outside see the members as a bunch of pretenders who cling to the claim of being a top level athletic conference while in reality doing nothing to justify that claim.  If anyone watched the Buffalo/KSU game on ESPNU last night and thinks the MAC is great, the game was an embarrassment.  Could there be any less people in the stands?  If I was not familiar with the MAC and I tuned into that game I would think that I was watching a  couple of D-III teams borrowing someone's stadium.  Terrible, just terrible!

I agree that the Kent State/Buffalo game was atrocious. I also recall that Ohio lost to Buffalo and nearly lost at home to Kent State less than 12 months ago.

I'm not saying our program isn't dramatically better than both of those, but one can hardly make a credible argument that they don't belong on the same field as Ohio. Let's worry about sustained domination on the scoreboard, in attendance, and in general interest before we all declare Ohio too good for the MAC. We're on our way, but certainly not there.