<p>^ Yeah, the MWC is a very unbalanced conference.</p>
<p>At the very least, you can say the BE/ACC are competitive from the top down, with the exception of a few bottom dwellers like Duke and Syracuse.</p>
<p>The MWC is just a beefed up WAC now, too bad it was a nice conference that had some good support from it’s base.</p>
<p>Plus, it doesn’t hurt that our low ranked team (Louisville) has a recent BCS Bowl win. Hopefully they can step back up and get competitive. I know they just expanded their standium, hopefully that will give a spark to the program.</p>
<p>Even with the BE down, I like the conference. I think it has a good mixture of schools, with the exception of USF, never thought they fit.</p>
<p>Not sure what this Villanova business is, I don’t think it’s a good soluation. But a balanced schedule would be great, even if it means inviting a punching bag.</p>
<p>I suppose Memphis wouldn’t be to bad, not a ECU or UCF supporter.</p>
<p>also, where is rainey going to end up? Personally, I think it was a smart move to suspend him indefinitely, even though it’s a HUGE loss for the gators.</p>
<p>The Big East is fairly desperate to avoid becoming just a “basketball conference” because then they would never be able to be competitive revenue wise with the other 5 BCS conferences. </p>
<p>One way out is expansion, but you said it yourself. There really aren’t that many attractive teams that “fit”, and it’s not exactly like Memphis, ECU, or UCF would add a lot. Not to mention the nightmare of scheduling 18 teams in men’s basketball and non-revenue sports.</p>
<p>Villanova is already in the conference, already a good fit, in a large city. The transition all the way from FCS level to BCS level would be tough, but there’s no reason to think that they wouldn’t be competitive within the decade. And they give some breathing room to a conference that is already operating at minimum BCS member capacity.</p>
<p>^ I can’t see how Villanova would be competitive. </p>
<p>My “outside the box” solution is to see if Umass would like to join the conference. They are very similiar to Uconn, and could use the Huskies as a pattern for development. They played Michigan well today and I could definitly see them being a competitive program in 10 years.</p>
<p>I was recruited by UMass out of HS, and had one buddy who played there. Under-rated program that could be built up.</p>
<p>Villanova would be comparable to Duke (doormat). They just don’t have the resources.</p>
<p>The best possibility is to see if Temple would want to rejoin the conference as a football only school.</p>
<p>There are major reasons to think Villanova wouldn’t be competitive in a decade. Mainly funding/resources/assets. Villanova is a small private school, small fanbase. They barely fill their 12,000 stadium as it is. No state funding, no state following.</p>
<p>The only benefits are a balanced schedule and a good market to insert a BE network, if there is ever a BE football network.</p>
<p>^ Very exciting game. I was semi disappointed in the beginning of the game (Spartans were blowing it). But I am glad they pulled it out in the end. Bravo. Go GREEN!</p>
<p>By the way, can somebody tell me that when I walked from Auburn’s stadium to my tailgate spot, everybody was chanting “SEC, SEC, SEC”? Why not root for your own school?</p>
<p>just curious, where do the less intelligent college football players go after they graduate, that is if they don’t make it into the NFL? I mean… communication or family studies don’t get you very far.</p>
<p>Even if they do end up playing in the nfl, what happens after they retire after an average career? They make quite a bit of money in those years, but I would imagine that they’d spent a lot of it on night clubs or stuff like that.</p>
<p>Villanova did win a FCS national championship last year (beating Temple and James Madison along the way :)) so if there was a time it would be now while the program has momentum from that. The 22 extra scholarships (nearly as much as USC has lost :)) also should help.</p>
<p>They would have significantly more resources at the FBS or BCS level, if only from appearing on TV exponentially more often. There’s already some name recognition from the successful basketball program and philadelphia is a pretty big city.</p>
<p>UMass is a good option also, but clearly the Big East wants Villanova for other reasons.</p>
<p>I don’t know, I guess I will believe it when I see it.</p>
<p>Very few schools with Villanova’s structure can compete at the FBS level. They are really comparable to Duke, perhaps Wake Forest. Not to many ND’s out there.</p>
<p>Small private school, small fanbase. The philly market doesn’t give a crap about them, it’s a pro sports town. If anything Temple is a bigger draw, which might be the better soluation.</p>
<p>The NCAA has been extremely reluctant to enforce that rule (in fact, have they ever?) and have periodically lowered the requirement all the way from 30,000 per year down to the rolling 15,000 requirement they have now. It’s largely the BCS conference schools that push requirements like that, and since the rules are made by all 245 NCAA division I members (FBS and FCS) the 65 BCS schools are in the minority.</p>
<p>A number of teams have moved up from FCS to FBS in recent years and the reason is obvious: the money is much better, all around. TV is better, attendance is sometimes better (people tend to want to go to FBS games, not FCS games). The bowl payouts are huge and simply being in a BCS conference is worth at minimum $1 million extra revenue per year from the BCS bowl payout. So I would expect Villanova to have more resources to spend on football, just from that alone.</p>
<p>But yes, having a small alumni base (the most logical group who would follow a FBS team) is a huge disadvantage. Still, college football is more in demand than ever and in a city as large as Philly, with the only FBS presence being Temple, that having a BCS team there would raise the Big East’s profile significantly.</p>