Peden also has team meeting rooms, hydrotherapy rehab pool, a few things BG does not. Overall its my opinion that its a better house than the cavernous BG stadium. You are taking Miami's success relative against ours. What you should be looking at is how much tradition does 1 MAC championship in a quarter century mean on the national landscape? That is like arguing who is the tallest midget. Further I will say the conditions that resulted in Miami having success in the 70's has changed when all the MAC schools were targeting the same Ohio players. The majority of Kent State's team is not from Ohio and they are a much better program right now than Miami. The MAC has 13 schools now which makes a MAC Championship harder to come by. Its a different day and age. Temple is favored to win the MAC Championship. You need to get with the times and stop blaming the MAC or tradition on our football fortunes (we have 2 division titles in the last 4 years). This is why I don't like to post much on this board its like a timewarp from 1984 (music references, clothing styles included).

From what I have read, very few schools out there even have hydrotheraphy pools. That is the way it was advertised when the project was completed. The tower facility at Peden is nicer and the stadium has a more finished look. I have never heard anyone say anything negative about Peden as what I've heard at times about BG's staadium. We can say whatever we want as to how we define tradition but in the way most people define it Miami doesn't have very much of it sitting at the bottom of a non-BCS conference.

Bowling Green has a state of the art pool

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3UOW...

I'm not so sure that being the cradle of coaches means as much as being the cradle of great players who graduated from a school. Anyway,  I would like to ask how we match up in wins, championships, games won against BCS schools, players  still in the NFL, players drafted, attendence, football budget, overall athletic budget, athletic dept profit or loss, Sagarin rankings, season tickets sold, TV ratings for our games, bowl wins, All-Americans, capacity of stadium, IPF, to start with and there are probably many more ways to look at where Ohio stands versus the MAC schools and others.  Vary the time frames to see how we do in the past 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, or whatever.  I don't think we would do very well past the past 5 years or so in many categories.

Back to my original point-When you see Big Ben or Randy Moss or Pennington or Leftwich playing on Sundays even though their current college teams are not so good, it still has a bearing on what people think about a program ( and I would guess the donations to their old schools help the programs too).  The photos on the walls can mean a lot to a recruit.

An article in the Huntington paper recently said that season tickets go up 5,000 when WVU is scheduled to play in Huntington (WVU fans?).  If that's anywhere close, expanding to play WVU makes some sense.

Being realistic, I hate to break the news to anybody, but Ohio is not going to a BCS conference anytime soon and probably never will.  Oh, maybe Orrin Hatch can get all of us in.

Not that much actually.

If we were to just double the size of Peden, bringing the total number of seats to just under 50k, that would put us middle of the pack for the Big East (in my opinion the mostly like place for Ohio should we ever join a BCS confrence.)

If we went up to 40k seating, we would be at the bottom of the Big East, but not by much.  Only about 2k seats behind both Lville and Rutgers, and still beating UC by 5k.

If we just add 10k seating, we'd be ahead of 4 BCS schools, and just behind big east member UC.

The convo is already BCS ready.

Edit to add:

Without doing the math and just glancing at the BSC stadium cap list; I'd say the average Stadium size is around 65,000 seats.

Another part of the equation to moving up to a BSC conference is the media markets. If a school wants to move up to a BSC conference, the school needs facilities; attendance and media outlets IMHO. Media outlets can can get a school  like UConn; South Florida and other schools with small stadiums in a BCS conference. Unfortunately, Ohio University does have a " TV media market" to offer a conference. My relatives in Athens have always had their TV meda outlets from Columbus and and Huntington/Charleston. I don't think Ohio University can deliver the Columbus or Huntington media markets. One can use VA Tech as a school with no media market of a school that is in a BCS conference; but VA Tech can deliver most of the Commonwealth of Virgina which is a very nice media market. The same goes with Nebraska. Of course, with the "new" media, things can change; but I don't see Ohio U being able to deliver value to the broadcast media.

I am a guess at this board and I am not trying to flame Ohio U. I have relatives in Athens and I like OU. Do I think Marshall will ever be a BSC school, not really and I think OU is way below The Herd in the pecking order for a BSC conference bid. With the current economic situation in the US, a lot of colleges will have to evaluate their position in college athletics. JMHO.

Are you serious in comparing the VA Tech "situation" to Ohio U and Marshall  situations? VA Tech is the Land Grant University of the Commonwealth of Virgina and delivers the Roanoke; Richmond; Norfolk, and the Northern Virginia TV markets. VA Tech sells nearly 10,000 season tickets in the Greater Richmond area.

Never mine, this is not the forum to have a debate.

Lets just put it this way, I've been around long enough to remember when Virginia Tech was just a dot on the map. They used to be horrible at everything and had no fan interest whatsoever. Research it.

 Virginia Tech didnt always have the support of any of those markets you mention with the exception of Roanoke until their football program took off. The fan base is good in Richmond but they dont have nearly as much support in the Norfolk area as you claim.

To be honest with you I would rather hear the glass is half full critique from you as a visiting fan than to hear it from some of the alumni on here which haven't watched a game in Peden Stadium since like 1982. There are some aces in the hole when it comes to sports media with Ohio University, The Scripps College produces many notable sports journalists and sports media professionals. Bobcat gear is displayed sometimes on national TV by alumni. Secondly Ohio has a great sports administration program. Third Ohio Athletics has a broad based tradition at the DI level. Football, basketball, golf, volleyball, wrestling, baseball I can all say have had some notable players and coaches through the years. This is a pretty big time D1 school when it comes to sports. We aren't a mega land grant school like Texas, Florida, or Cal that is going to win national championships by virtue of resources in every sport but we are attractive enough that good players will stop through here. Getting back to what you are saying here about Ohio's ability to carry media markets it carries several for the MAC in the regional TV package. Columbus, Chaleston, Wheeling, Roanoke all have the MAC game of the week because of Ohio and those markets were broadcasting regional TV games for the Bobcats before that. If you combine all of those areas that is a nice market of about 5 million people. Then across the state of Ohio there is general interest in the Bobcats, students from every corner of the state attend the school. Its not uncommon to see someone wearing an Ohio shirt in a mall or at the movies, more so than other MAC schools. If you want to know what the small time is that would be Marshall. I had never even heard of Marshall until I was a sophmore in college. The school was virtually unknown north of Columbus. Now that I am familar with the school I can respect Marshall as a legit D1 athletic school but I'm not sure if the academics are above the DII regional college level. I can't believe Billy Crystal actually went to school there. I know it was because of a baseball scholarship but still. And cheating, Marshall has an ugly history in that regard. Who is better positioned for the BCS, Ohio or Marshall? It depends on the circumstances behind the expansion but it looks to me that Ohio brings everything Marshall does in market plus more intangibles (state name, academic programs, located in a bigger state).

Wes,  I like most of your posts, but this one --- geesh!   Marshall has some very good academic programs.  It's journalism school, while not quite on par with Ohio, Missouri and Northwestern, is a very good one.  Its medical school is gaining respect and fairly recently added a Comprehensive Cancer Center, which is recognized by the National Institutes of Health.  This is very prestigious in the world of academic medicine.  MU does not have as many Ph.D. programs as Ohio, but it is certainly way above your average D2 school.  And, most importantly, it has a lot of momentum on both the academic and the athletic side.  It's an institution that is not resting on its laurels but is striving to improve and is making improvements on a continuous basis these days.  Marshall has had some cheating scandals in the past, that is true, but it is unfair to characterize the program as though it is some cheater's haven.  You make it sound like SMU or USC.  That's not fair.   

Western Kentucky? Are you from Kentucky or something and that is why you want to add them? I believe they went 0-12 in football last year. That would not help the football conference.