Yes, but they have to be schools that are most likely going to improve the conference's chances of maintaining, reinforcing and improving their BCS standing.




Based on one season and one game. It doesn't demonstrate what they've done over a long period of time. Memphis is a fairly decent bball school. But if the way they are talking about how BCS conferences will be measured for having an auto bid, bball performance may not matter. That is if the conference doesn't care about bball. If the conference cares most about being an auto BCS conference, they will have to pick teams that can improve their BCS chances. If they would like to be good at bball, as that is also important, they may need to forgo a proven football school for a better bball choice and possible risk their BCS chances. My inclination is that if they want to keep their BCS chances, the proven and consistent fball school would be their choice over a hot streak fball school (that has yet to have a long term history) thats also a good bball school. For BCS purposes, the bball performance may not matter if these new standards go through.

IMO, the only nearby teams that can do this based on long-term consistency is Marshall and USM.




Yes, agreed that they make the best of their current 8 members, but until they can offer all-sports memberships they aren't going to take in another team, and another team hasn't demonstrated yet that they can improve and/or reinforce the BE's BCS standing except for Marshall and USM.




Until they have some history behind them over a few years of being a proven competitive team, I wouldn't consider them over Marshall and USM, and I would put them on equal footing with the other CUSA teams. The BE has to be careful not to take on the character of the CUSA by taking anymore of these teams. They have to have a proven and consistent team thats been demonstrated over time. To me the markets of all these CUSA teams are all fairly equal. So are the followings/attendance, with some being not much more than Temple.




You have seen my posts before on this. On an individual by individual basis, where you went to school isn't as important as what you do with your education and/or what you do with your life. I wouldn't recommend to someone to not go to college if they have an opportunity to go. But even if you didn't go to college you can be a success. Its always what you do with your life. I've made that point before many times. But I also acknowledge every measurement has both strengths and weaknesses and as far as the USNews rankings are concerned, I believe they have merit in comparing institutions nationwide. On an individual basis, how one uses their education or life doesn't necessarily have a relationship to what school they went to. The USNews rankings are a reflection of how conferences want to align according to institutional similarities and fit, and that the types of institutions they are reflect and corelate with market. Check my post, you will see that I have been consistent on this.

TS2, you would be fun to have a beer with 8-)! In higher education, I teach a cognitive reading class to freshmen. One aspect is drawing the distinctions between POPULAR MAGAZINES and PROFESSIONAL/SCHOLARLY JOURNALS.

It may be a popular magazine, but it has a methodology. I would follow that as a methodology before I would take someone's word from a very regional or provincial viewpoint.

Many schools have quoted the USNews and World Report rankings. They are not the only rankings. There's also Fiske. The simple fact is that if USNews wouldn't be doing it, someone else would. It has a methodology and anything you measure in social and cultural institutions will have both strengths and weaknesses. You can say the same thing about polls, surveys, who should be in the National Championship game according to BCS or the NCAA Tournament.

Academic accololades relate to market size and football following. The type of institution it is, will relate to the size of its following based on the type of institution it is, if it plays major sports.

Sportgeog, like it was stated on the South Florida thread, you are going to have to face the fact that the east or mid west can not support any more BCS members. There is a big difference between the true divison 1 members (BCS) and how NCAA determines a team.

Memphis is drawing more than 40 thousand fans. How many Mac or Temple/UMass games would it take to make up for one Memphis game.

I do agree if the Big East remains together, the 16 will probably not add any schools unless Notre Dame is forced to join the Big 10 from poor performance.

If the school do split, the current 8 football teams will not be concerned about the NE foot print.

There is not comparison of MAC schools or eastern independent teams with some of the better non BCS schools of the south.

East Carolina in its current state would be a better canidate that any MAC team or eastern div 1AA team.

Can Temple clain BCS status with 20 thousand fans for an opener with a top 20 team.

Your argument for eastern teams for BE expansion just dont hold up with revenue.

UConn is an example of how the NE is growing the BCS. Rutgers had a big crowd last week. If a team does well, the numbers rise. I think the NE is an untapped market. But I will agree that with the new talks that the choice for new members will have to be a proven and consitent winner or it will not help the BE to expand.




Memphis average 38K last year for a good year. Prior to that, their averages were ranging from 1998: 23K, 1999: 27K; 2000 30K; 2001: 25K; 2002: 28K; 2003: 38K. These reflect a mid-major attendance. They had a good year last year, and one of the home games was against Ole Miss, a nearby team. They had 51K at that game, which would bring up their average. You saw the the pic on the City of Memphis website:

http://www.cityofmemphis.org/navigate.asp?sessionID=&sec=COMMUNITY&opt=PARKSERVICES_FAIRGROUNDS_SPORTS

You see all the Tennessee Orange there in the Liberty Bowl when Memphis played them a couple of years ago. I would supect with Oxford being 1.5 hours away and the Mississippi state line being adjacent to the City of Memphis and some following of Ole Miss, including allumni in the Memphis market, that those attending that game could have been up to 1/2 Ole Miss fans.

In order to prove they have a consistent following that is BCS like, they will need to get 40K consistently. Otherwise they aren't much different than UCF, Marshall, USM, slightly above UAB, and not much different than Marshall. Their market isn't much different than all these candidates. They are not out front as they all have competition with their statewide flagship schools, and there are hardly any Memphis fans in Knoxville, Nashville, Chattanooga, Little Rock, Jackson, Johnson City, etc. Its a regional team.




They may if its an impact on their travel budget. They already have one outpost. Duke and UNC complained about having the cummulatives affects of both BC and Syracuse. USF right now is the only outpost. You add a 2nd team that is 800 to 1,300 miles from you on top of USF, you may have complaints.




Marshall. Army and Navy's following might actually be better as far as attendance. Temple's recent attendance isn't much smaller than UAB's, UCF's, and UCincy's.




Its performance recently hasn't been too good. It had a 1-win record last year. Attendance is 30Kish. Given that.




Can UCF? Can UAB?




Revenue may not be as important as meeting the possible new BCS requirements and making a choice that is clear that won't actually hurt the BE as a standing BCS conference. To me Marshall and USM are the only clear choices at this point in time that may be able to do that.

The ranking of schools used by USNWR are based upon student perceptions.There is a lot more than that to a fine school.Popularity polls in colleges measure student happiness not academic achievement.Employers know this .Educators know this.Accreditation know this.Wins and losses and dollars are real,not just articles and measure the success of football programs.ND will move toward the BE ,but not as a full member of the football league.

No it is not.

Their methodology includes the following measurements:

1. Peer assessment (weighted 25 percent). Peer assessment means assessment from university and college presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions.

2. Retention (weighted 20 percent). This is the amount of returning freshmen.

3. Faculty Resources (weighted 20 percent)

4. Student Selectivity (weighted 15 percent). This means the students that are chosen for academic merit.

5. Financial Resources (weighted 15 percent). This is the university spending of resources per student.

6. Graduation Rate (weighted 5 percent)

7. Allumni Giving Rate (weighted 5 percent).

This is the US News methodology. Rentention may be the only thing that relates to student perceptions of a university, but not entirely. It also could reflect the college's performance. Again, every method had strengths and weaknesses. But like everything you measure, you don't throw the baby out with the bath water. To do this, you can throw out the AP, Coaches, BCS, NCAA field of 65, don't have national championships, throw out the NCAA rules and let it be an anarchal free for all college athletics. Everything has a methodology and has both strengths and weaknesses. To a certain point there is merit to these methodologies.




No it doesn't, see the methodology above^




Employers are going to look at several things when they interview someone. If they don't know how to write and communicate and analyze they are not going to go far. It doesn't matter what school they went to. They need to do some thinking, communicating and analyzing. A well rounded education in addition to career preparation is what is needed. It doens't matter where you get the education from if you can demonstrate that you can do these things and demonstrate that you can perform well. A person needs a well-rounded education to be nimble in today's changing work trends, environment, and the need think, perform and act on the needs of the client, employer, and the service they are giving to people. Technology changes so fast, that a large amount of very focused and technical education may not mean much 5, 10, 20 years down the road.



Yes, and that's why universities and colleges are organized the way they are. They respond to the needs of society.




Accreditation of focused fields understand the need for education in both the career or field as well for the need for broadbased education. Students need to demonstrate that they understand how to write and communicate and analyze. That happens through a combined education in the liberal arts as well as the specific field of study that the accreditation organization is reviewing for accredititation. If no liberal arts are provided, then the institution is more of a community college.




Yes they are real. But, again, there is a strong corelation between market, academic accolades and football following. The question to ask is why is Rutgers in the Big East? Its because of their market, which is statewide in New Jersey, and perhaps goes into NYC. It hasn't had a great season in years. The attendance is not great. Its not much different than Temple. Last year they looked like they are turning a corner. They had a very impressive win on Saturday with a maxed out capacity stadium. This reflects the market. But the BE wouldn't kick them out even if they don't perform well. I would argue they shouldn't be kicked out. Its because the market which is related to the type of institution it is and the potential for it to be competitive sometime in the future is what keeps it in. For Temple, there's no desire to keep them. Villanova overshadows it. Its a commuter school, and has several academic institutions in its market with sports teams. It can't get its market behind the team. If Temple was PSU, it wouldn't be kicked out because the market would support their inclusion despite the performance. Rutgers is this, a statewide team. Rutgers doesn't have a large number of seasons that demonstrate a lot of success. Until the tail end of last season and this season, and what they demonstrated this past weekend, they are demonstrating that they are indeed a competitive team.

Lash, if you'll permit: Perhaps a change of tack is in order. With all of these BE "Scenario" threads the idea is to explore what could be IF A CHANGE IS NEEDED. Sometimes that idea appears to be lost in these discussions, but we must also remember is okay to disagree on certain things. Sportsgeog has some points worth considering when weighing the value of certain institutions, but as you're trying to bring out here we must also view them in the context of the BE possibly needing to do something, anything, to upgrade it's profile. In which case garnering 500k more fans is at least more fans. Maybe we should be sure the discussion keeps those considerations in mind.

Sportgeog, may I recommend a new thread based simply on profiling the information of the mid-majors? Perhaps a stable resource link used for discussions such as these? I've been trying to add to my database of attendances, etc, but with the new baby time's been tight.

TS2, No one has ever claimed the USNews reports are the end all/be all for comparing universities. It's simply one way of profiling these schools for commonalities or the lack thereof. If you got a better resource, please bring it up...
though I realize that's not your style.

Lash makes a good point about the significance of attendance. Conferences do look at it in considering expansion. But more importantly, I think it indicates the long run support behind a program and will help a program grow or stagnate.

With that in mind, ECU is far ahead of any other eastern non-BCS school in attendance (excluding the military academies). Non-BCS schools with over 25k in average attendance over the last 8 years are:
BYU 62
Air Force 43
Fresno 38
Hawaii 36
Utah 35
Army 35
ECU 34
Navy 30
Colorado St. 29
TCU 29
Memphis 29
New Mexico 28
Marshall 27 (last 7 yrs ony)
UTEP 27
South Florida 27 (last 6 yrs only)
Southern Miss 26
Toledo 25

All current BCS schools, with 4 exceptions are over 30 (Rutgers 24,606/WF 22,504/Duke 21,748/Temple-soon to be non-BCS 15,614).
54 of the 58 BCS schools are ahead of all but 7 non-BCS schools and 5 of those are mountain time zone or further west.

Gunnerfan,
Congratulations on the little one. I have an Excel spreadsheet with last 8 years football attendance in I-A based on the NCAA figures (with a few gaps for a half dozen schools in 96 and 97 that were in I-AA at that time). I could post it on the board, but it won't format very well.

Yes, but what do the winning percentages look like for all these teams?

I would bet that Marshall and USM have the best winning percentages outside of the three teams already going into the BE, as well as the most consistent winning seasons.

The new criteria being talked about includes not only attendance, but performance on the field and market size.

I've talked about market size, and I continue to argue that the type of institution it is and what it means to the residents of that state as well as other statewide and local and regional teams will impact a market measurement for a team and its definition. Only the teams in the west have statewide markets (except Fresno is very regional in the Central Valley which they define as 4 to 5 million people). The presence of a another major conference also significantly impacts Televison viewership and following. Also travel budgets should be considered, as that is impacting San Jose State.

All of these things should be considered when looking at expansion.

Yes, thanks for your post Gunner Fan. And congrats on the new child.

Sportgeog, UConn is already included in the BCS mix and the school attendance and support of big time athletics is the primary reason the school is included in a BCS football conference. Additionally its the only BCS school in one of the last big states in the east without the existence of a BCS team.

The question on Marshall status is how can the school keep up if the football program slips. This past weekend is not a good showing of where the Marshall football program is headed. One game does not a season make, however, losing at home to a Sun Belt team is really not BCS material if you are trying to make a statement.

Gunnerfan, living out west in Pac 10 and MWC territory adds a new insight to the new Big East.

The MWC is right on the heals of the new Big East and the MWC fans and a lot of other fans already think the MWC is up to or a head of the new Big East.

If the MWC expands behond 9 and continues to improve, the BE BCS membership could be in jeopardy if schools like WVU are the only teams stepping up.

Hate to say it, but Syracuse loss was a grim reality of the health of the new Big East for football. UConn, South Florida, and Cincinnati are not expected to help carry the new Big East, however, teams like WVU, Syracuse and Pitt are and can't afford to have real down years. What I mean is non bowl years.

Rutgers was a solid showing for the new Big East in the opening day of college football. Anytime the bottom feeder of a conference steps up and looks impressive is by far better than the top team making a big splash.

WVU and Louisville are not going to be able to totally carry the new Big East. Both would be great solid middle teams for any existing BCS conference, however, ex

This is where the problem lies with a small conference for BCS football.

If the BCS did not exist and every conference had access to the national championship by way of playoff the issues would be resolved for the Big East.

It would be sort of like the old days when the Big East formed. You have a great basketball conference that provide each member a major conference status feeling and the football independents could reach a major bowl if the team performed well.

Those days are history due to BCS and a playoff is not in sight.

Friarfan has an interesting scenerio that the Big East may just revert back to its roots and concentrate on basketball if BCS automatic bid is not renewed in four years.

I have major concerns with this analogy. Any conference including the Big East that does not have BCS membership will eventually fall into mid major status for basketball as well. The threat of a bolt of the BCS conference from the NCAA is probably ceased due to NCAA allowing more control by the big conferences and the fact that conferences can negotiate TV contracts, however, the public perception of BCS versis non BCS can not be ignored. Added to the fact that loss of BCS revenue could furhter hurt the overall atheltic budgets of teams like Syracuse, Pitt, UConn that are currently carring the Big East basketball.

It not just money that the MWC is pushing so hard for BCS membership. Its all about conference stability. This was the major argument than Miami used for moving to the ACC. This was comming from a school that could carry a BCS football conference. Stability in numbers was what Miami desired and not just the minimum to qualify as a NCAA div 1 conference.

Four years is not a long time to prove BCS worthiness. Syracuse will most likely be looking for new coach if the season does not take an up swing and this could take a few years for Syacuse to improve. This is time the Big East can not afford from one of its marquee teams.

If the Big East had 10 or even 9 football members, the impact may not be as severe for a team like Syracuse having such a down year. Memphis would obvouis help shore up the middle of the pact if the school were a member of the Big East football conference.

The new Big East will be judged on ability to land minor bowls. Just like NCAA multiple basketball bids and Nit appearances, this provides the option for a conference to show progress.

Bottom line, I just think the Big East football conference is too small with 8 members when all other BCS conferences have 10 or more members.

Sooner or latter the question will have to be addressed is basketball games with St John, Georgetown or Notre Dame as important as a solid football all sports conference and BCS membership.

The question begs to be answered and will eventually have to be addressed. If WVU and/or Louisville or some other BE team wins a BCS game this year, the issues with a small football conference will not go away.

All of these issues will be compounded if heaven forbid, Conf USA or the MWC win a BCS game before the new BE does.

My current prediction is there will be 7 BCS conferences within the next four years with 10 to 12 members each.

Tigersharktwo, you have been corrected on this point before. Sportgeog has now corrected you again. Why do you continue to post as fact statements that are clearly not true?

USNWR has never based its rankings nor any part of them on student perceptions. In its initial rankings back in the '80s, they did base their rankings on a survey of college presidents - not a survey of students. Sportsgeog has explained the part that this annual survey now plays in the overall rankings. Princeton Review & others do publish the resultsof student surveys, but USNWR does not.

I am not a fan of the USNWR rankings as a valid measure of academic quality at colleges & universities. But such rankings cannot be rationally discussed by misrepresenting them. Please stick to the facts & post accurate information.

Lash, I didn't say anything about UConn. So far they are indeed proving themselves and their market certainly supports BCS inclusion.




Yes, one game doesn't make a season. Last year they also lost to Troy State. They also upset the number 6 team in the nation and the Big 12 Champion on their home field. Troy State is quite an add to the Sun Belt. It gives that conference the chance to have a 2nd winning team. They have given some SEC teams fits (I think they beat Miss State recently) and gave Nebraska fits a couple of years ago.

I guess the question that should be asked is what is the case for more expansion? What are the benefits and the risks for expansion? It seems to me that there isn't a clear cut team out there that would definitely be a for sure boost to the BE BCS standings, except for Norte Dame. Another question is, is the BE BCS standing in jeopardy, or is this just Groupthink that we are hearing from all these people? It may be that this is all based on perception, and the BE is doing fine. Even if there is a case of borderline BCS status, how can expansion improve it? What are the benefits of each team and the risks of each team. Because if they are measuring members from top to bottom, there could be a risk that a team may actually hurt the overall conference standing. Its not just about which team is hot right now and which team has the best attendance. Attendance is an important part of the equation the way they are talking, but so is performance on the field and market size, and the proven consistency of these measures.

If the BE can't offer all-sports memberships, it has limitations in expanding. I guess I keep on saying that, but I wonder if the BE knows this already and they made this decision of the formulation of the BE-16 on the best overall interest of the league?

Valid and reliable rankings are clearly made by experts in the field of study not by students ,administrators,alumni or by reporters.Rankings made by other coaches is clearly the method of ranking used in athletics.The measures used by USNWR are clearly are lacking in the concepts of validity and reliability.How can a dean of an education school rate an engineering school.?Ahievement in the use of a concept rather than in its learning measures what the student gets out of the course.Spending money on the wrong things does not improve a university.A productive university is measured by useful learning and research,not by superficial variables.