Quinn

I think for a branding standpoint, you wont' see any affiliate members.

The C7, ACC and Big Ten can all have 5 members and compete as a conference, selling their TV rights. The automatic bid is not a necessary component, just a luxury...since the ACC had only 4 members until Syracuse and Notre Dame came (a short lived 6 team conference until Maryland announced they were leaving).

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e-parade

The B1G has apparently come forward in the past saying they won't support a Lacrosse conference if there is no auto-bid.


The ACC will continue their status quo and the C7 will likely follow suit on that though.

Deleo77

I get that there is a 99% chance that X, Butler and the others are leaving, and will join the C7, and the A10 will probably pick up GMU, Davidson and a couple others as new members. But what if the A10 went to Temple, Cinci, UConn and Memphis today and invited them to join for all sports except football?

Perhaps X and Butler would rather be in a conference with Villanova and G'town, but those 4 schools above are better basketball schools than the C7. Adding 4 teams would make the A10 too big for its own good, so there would be a lot to think through. But the A10 approaching these 4 schools for basketball and other sports today, is a lot different than a gutted A10 doing it.

BM-GW

Positive that I had to go back three pages on the board to find this thread, but here's a good interview with Patrick Nero, GW AD and member of the expansion committee. The GW president is currently the chair of the committee. Seems like they are being proactive.

RF1

The fact that Nero is leading this gives me no comfort. He was formerly the commissioner of the America East Conference, and if I am not mistaken was at the helm when it lost its best teams - Northeastern, Drezel, Delaware, and Hofstra. He replaced them with SUNY's and the America East has never been anywhere as good as it once was.

I also don't like the fact that his name is Nero as his namesake is best known for fiddling while Rome burned. Let's hope history does not repeat itself.

Rhett1

Nero actually took over America East in '05, right after they lost Northeastern. His main goals were to find expansion candidates (since the league was at a potentially precarious 9) and publicly stated the league's desire to sponsor football and ice hockey.

He had one very clear job and two other ambitious but attainable goals and went 0 for 3. That the A-10 put him in charge of expansion after he failed so publicly in this arena before is stunning.

uz2b-len

Sort of like the Patriots hiring Bill Belicheck after he bombed out in Cleveland

Rhett1

When he was in Cleveland, he beat the Patriots in the playoffs. He didn't bomb as badly as revisionist pundits claim or as badly as Nero did with AEC.

BM-GW

Nero isn't the chair of the committee, GW president Steven Knapp is. Nero is a member. Nero and Knapp have been doing nothing but good since they came to GW.

LastMinuteman

GW is probably the best choice to head this. We can't just put Xavier in charge of everything like we usually do, for obvious reasons. At the other end of the spectrum, we don't want Fordham leading this. GW is a founding member, not a candidate to move to another conference, and a private university but not a small university nor a Catholic university. So we can assume they have a strong investment in the future of the league, and we can hope they're somewhat neutral in the public-private-Catholic spectrum. If their AD has learned the hard way not to trust the CAA, all the better.

Bona84

He bombed out as HC of the NYJ, as well.

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Bona84

Rhett1

It's hard to bomb when you resign at the press conference announcing your promotion.

Nugget49er

We are leaving the conference so it is none of my business who the A-10 adds, but we are not leaving because we don't like the A-10, this is just about adding football at Charlotte. What I am saying is that I want the A-10 to continue to thrive and that makes me scratch my head about Davidson. I do not want to disparage the Wildcats because they have a nice program but it is just at a different level from the A-10. As our cross-county neighbors, Charlotte plays them most years and is 28-11 against them all time. Even during our time in the A-10 (and you know how bad we have been then) we are 4-2 against the Wildcats. In Davidson's best season in several generations, when they went to the Elite 8 in 2008, we beat them by 7. Their coach Bob McKillop will be there until he retires (he is 62) and they will always be well coached under him and knock off some big boys because they play smart, disciplined ball, but when McKillop leaves they will not be able to replace him for what they can pay. Do what you need to do to flourish, but look at this one carefully.

xudash

We may be approaching the next big wave of shifting:

http://www.startribune.com/sports/blogs/192067661.html

If the ACC "as-is" is headed towards ruin, then whatever is left of it will most likely combine with whatever is deemed to be the best set of programs from the BE(f).

Perhaps that expedites the BE split that is under negotiation now.

Moliva

Dash, do you see the BCS realignment directly affecting us? I think the thing related to our world was the Big East breakup. We saw it coming years ago and it finally happened.

I think the C7 robs the A10, the A10 finds some new schools and then things are pretty stable in our world for a while. Do you agree?

With that said, I really don't care too much that the BCS conferences plunder one another.