I admittedly am “getting the cart before the horse” here but I can’t help but wonder, should WKU and MTSU come aboard, if there might be the potential to have a conferences football challenge series created; especially perhaps the MAC vs the Sun Belt? I believe the changes would bring both conferences to 14 schools for football. I also think both conferences have existing contracts with ESPN, who seem to enjoy creating such arrangements.
There may be a some animosity among schools because of the way conferences have evolved the past few months but I suspect any money realized from this would tend to “soothe the wounds”.
Could probably do the same for basketball although I think the Sun Belt has some additional teams for BBall. Consequently, it may not be quite as “clean” of an arrangement as football.
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Nothing of significance to add. Just seems like an interesting (at least to me) concept. I will offer that I recognize there would be challenges pulling it off; particularly scheduling. Most schools have some of their future OOC games arranged, if not scheduled. In fact, certain teams may already have games scheduled/arranged with a school of the other conference. In addition, would the games all be on one day or on multiple days…at beginning of season, mid-season, etc. (probably ESPN comes into play here).
I do think it might make sense to schedule the 14 games specifically for the “conference challenge”, independent of other arrangements and only count those games in the challenge results. Perhaps the schools would keep the agreed to dates open in their schedule and the assigned games, the following year, would correlate with the final standings of the conferences from the prior year…1 v 1, 2 v 2, etc.
I’m pretty sure this just “scratches the surface” I wouldn’t see it even being feasible until at least 2024 and probably later than that.