ND is very skilled at getting its way.In knows how to negotiate.It gives enough to make it too lucrative for those who are dealing with it not to take a stack of money in terms of in season games and non bcs bowls to refuse to deal with them.The idea that ND would allow itself to be negotiated into a corner is highly unlikely.They will balk at not taking any non 1A football schools with it into a reduced size league.If unlikely split happens for bb you can be sure ND will friends with it and voting rules set up so it cannot be forced into anything.I am sure ND is helping the BE football with friends army and navy.

Regarding the A10...

I was thinking of an option..a fantasy of course...that could strengthen the A10 and Horizon:


One of the issues facing the A10 now is it's size. 14 teams is just too much for them to handle. the best option? CUT THE FAT.

What I'd like to see the a10 do, is work with some of it's schools and the Horizon, in an attempt to bring the A10 back to 10.

My proposal?

Send St. Bonaventure, Duquesne and LaSalle to the Horizon.

New formats:

A10:
Umass
URI
Temple
St. Josephs
George Washington
Richmond
Charlotte
Xavier
Dayton
St. Louis


Horizon:

Butler *P
Cleveland State
Detroit *P
Illinois-Chicago
Loyola (IL) *P
Wisconsin-Green Bay
Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Wright State
Valpo
Youngstown State
LaSalle *P
Duquesne *P
St. Bonventure *P

*P = private schools



Fordham is the issue though. By joining the A10 and leaving the Patriot, they gained more flexibility in the types of athletes to recruit. Would they change that for the Patriot? doubt it.

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Well, another issue is that the Horizon has already added a 10th school, namely Valparaiso from the Mid-Con.

I do think that you correctly identified the 4 "weak sisters" of the A-10, but it's hard to envision how the A-10 can just "pawn off" certain schools on other unsuspecting conferences.

Back in 2003, when the ACC / BE / CUSA upheaval occured, CUSA unloaded four (4) non-football schools. The BE invited Depaul and Marquette, but St. Louis and Charlotte were sort of left in a lurch. Evidently the CUSA commissioner told them that his new vision for CUSA was to create an all-sports conference, and those two schools obviously didn't fit the mold. So why did the A-10 invite Charlotte and St. Louis to join, when the A-10 was already at 12 ? Charlotte seems like a decent program. St. Louis has been raising a lot of money and improving facilities, but they are WAY west of the remaining A-10 footprint (Xavier, Dayton are 300 miles east of St. Louis).

I live in St. Louis, Rumor was in 2003 that a "Catholic Conference" might form if / when the BE splits.

Providence / St. John / Seton Hall / Villanova / Georgetown / Notre Dame / DePaul / Marquette (8 from the BE)
and perhaps 4 from the A-10:
Dayton / Xavier / St. Louis and who ?
(I always thought perhaps Holy Cross from the Patriot would be a nice 12th)...

Was St. Louis invited at the behest of Dayton / Xavier / ? to facilitate this possibility ?

St. Louis and Charlotte were brought to the A10 as they provided quality programs, better than some existing A10 schools.

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Let's say one of the MVC football schools goes to I-A after the moratorium, for argument's sake: Southern Illinois. If I were the MAC I would invite Southern Illinois and Temple on a permanent basis. Then the MVC could invite St. Louis, Dayton, and Xavier to create a great basketball conference (provided that the MVC can keep up the success they've had the past few years, a big IF).

This leaves the A-10 with 10, although they probably wouldn't mind adding 2 more. Perhaps they would go for football schools, already having UMass, URI, Richmond, Duquesne, Charlotte (who might bring back football), and possibly even Fordham. The A10 could go for William & Mary, and James Madison, and Villanova as a football associate for and 8 or 9 team football league. The CAA could add its current associates Maine and New Hampshire on a permanent basis and have an 8 team football league (ODU adding FB, Georgia State pondering it) and possibly Stony Brook as an associate.

Though only Charlotte made sense geographically, being in North Carolina (the southern neighbor of Virginia, which provides the A10 with Richmond). St. Louis, is in Missouri, and located west of the Mississippi.

If St. Joseph's and the Midwest schools form a conference with the non-FB members of the BE (and Temple joins the BE FB schools again), the A-10 would need to find replacements quickly. My 3 top candidates are: UNC Greensboro AND Wilmington, along with Old Dominion (beginning FB in the CAA in 2009). UNCW is a good men's hoops school, and the same can be said about ODU's women's hoops squad.

And if the BE FB schools don't snatch up Army and Navy, the A-10 could add them.

Then you have:

North:
Army*
Duquesne
Fordham
La Salle
UMass
Rhode Island
St. Bonaventure

South:
George Washington
Navy*
NC-Charlotte
NC-Greensboro
NC-Wilmington
Old Dominion
Richmond

*If they don't join BE FB schools

For more info on the BE situation, click here:
http://collegesportsinfo/forum/viewtopic.php?t=611&start=135#1197099228
That gives my insights on how the BE should operate.

Last night a guy from St. Louis University (perhaps he was the Athletic Director - it wasn't President Biondi, or BB coach Majerus) was commenting on the A-10.

He said they had just gotten a new conference commissioner, and talked about this person as if it was a guy. I guess Linda Bruno is out.

The guy from SLU said a major issue was to get a better TV contract that provided better exposure than CSTV.

Yes, she announced last year that shw would be stepping down once a replacement was selected. No official naming of a new commish yet though.

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hey quinn, your a umass guy, how does this sound?

One step towards cleaning up the a10 mess would be for the caa and the a10 to trade teams. The caa could take umass, uri, charlotte, and richmond and be the football conference while the a10 could take drexel, george mason, vcu, and unc wilmington and be rid of all scholarship football and work on becoming a premier ncaa basketball conference. This would tremendously stabilize both conferences without upsetting any automatic bids.

The caa, as the all conference home to 12 major 1-aa programs on the east coast, could get a better idea of who wants to move up to the bowl subdivision. After at least 5 years, find 6 programs who want to move up (my guess would be umass, deleware, odu, jmu, charlotte, and ga st.) they can move up together and maybe attract certain cusa or mac teams who are not happy but have no where else to go or a socon school who is also afraid of making the jump due to a lack of viable conference affiliation. Automatic bids won't be a problem as long as you have 6 schools moving up together.

The remaining 6 schools who do not want to move up (hofstra, northeastern, uri, towson, richmond, and william and mary) will be in control of their own destiny and will be able to cherry pick, particularly out of the northeast, who they want to be in there 1-aa conference.

The only problem would be the a10 and caa would have to work together for their own good. Also, a split of 1-a and 1-aa schools cannot occur until it is assured that both groups have willing and able expansion candidates to ensure the viability of both in the future.

ACC,

In theory it makes alot of sense. Just like it made sense in the late 90's for CAA football schools Richmond and JMU (and perhaps W&M) to join the America East to be in a football conference with:

Maine
UNH
Northeastern
Boston University (had football)
Hofstra
Delaware
*JMU
*Richmond
*W&M

Non-Football members:
Vermont
Hartford

The CAA could have taken Drexel, Towson (didn't have Yankee conference football at time). Vermont and Hartford would likely have remained in the AE due to their geography. The CAA could have looked like:

Drexel
Towson
George Mason
VCU
ODU
UNCW
ECU
American
* Georgia St
* College of Charleston

GSU and CofC would be later additions...GSU actually did join the league. ECU and American left as well.



But we know it didn't work out that way. The CAA instead took the 4 AE schools (Hofstra, Delaware, Towson and Drexel) and the AE eventually went their expansion route. NU left for the CAA as well when the CAA needed to make a power play to gain more all-sports members than the AE or A10 in the then A10 Football conference.




I think the biggest issue is the worth of programs. The A10 feel superior to the CAA when you look at the top programs historically. There is also some overvalue by programs like UMass and Temple as well as STL and charlotte right now. But in the end, the A10 might LOVE to drop a few schools in favor of the top CAA schools. But the CAA would never allow a "swap" and the A10 can't really kick out 3-4 schools.

It's one of those situations when it makes sense on paper but it's not practical from a business perspective.

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with the talk of fordham going full scholarship for football, could this be the springboard to relaunch a10 football?

current a10 football members in the caa are
richmond
umass
uri

with charlotte adding football and fordham going full scholarship, that gives the a10 5 solid schools to base the league around with a plethora of affiliate members to chose from.

if a10 football restarted it could initially look something like
umass
uri
fordham
charlotte
richmond
maine*
unh*
stony brook*
albany would make a great ninth member if they wanted to go full scholarship (which i hear rumors of)

the caa would then be an excellent all sports league with villanova staying to maintain their rivalry w/ deleware and making a solid nine
hofstra
northeastern
deleware
villanova*
towson
william and mary
jmu
odu
georgia state

obviously a richmond/charlotte....hofstra/northeastern trade would work out perfectly, but as discussed earlier, pride and stubborness would have to be overcome.

Stubborn indeed...which is why it won't happen. Sad.

You can probably trace the problem back to the CAA adding Northeastern. sure they are having a great season this year, great for them. But Northeastern was the LAST of the d1 schools in Boston (BC, Harvard, BU, NU). But the CAA wanted the football league and to do so they needed to take one of the non-CAA members of the then A10 football league to give them the majority. So they took Northeastern. They said it had to do with the Boston market. But we all know if that was the case, they would have taken BU which had a new arena in the works (since completed) and a more successful basketball program. But no football.

So fastforward and look at the CAA: it's a 1 bid basketball, all-sports conference that stretches from Boston to Atlanta. Take away that move and you'd have all these football programs that could make a clean split conference.

if NU had remained, you'd have a lineup of:
NU (AE)
Maine (AE)
UNH (AE)
Stonybrook (AE)
UMass (A10)
URI (A10)
Fordham (A10)
Richmond (A10)

Hofstra (CAA)
Towson (CAA)
Delaware (CAA)
Villanova (BE)
JMU (CAA)
W&M (CAA)
ODU (CAA)
GSU (CAA)
* Albany (AE)

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ahh...the expansion w/ northeastern...i remember it well. the caa was stuck at 5 football schools and needed a 6th in order to convert a10 football to caa football. w/o adding northeastern, caa football could not have been started as no one but the 5 full time caa members (jmu, wmu, towson, deleware, and hofstra) wanted to rock the boat. remember odu did not add football until AFTER the caa had its own football league and georgia state, who did not have football at the time, was brought in with northeastern as uncw's "southern companion" after charleston turned down the opportunity, along with other socon schools who were offered before georgia state. if northeastern was not added, the a10 would still have the football league. now that georgia state and odu have added football, it seems as if the northeastern expansion was all for not, but in my opinion, that is definately not the case. who knows what things would look like if northeastern and georgia state had not been added.

what really made me upset was when they talked about dropping football. while northeastern football is not as critical to the caa football league as it was before odu and georgia state added programs, it would have been rather frustrating b/c football was the only reason they got invited.

NYTimes article asking if Fordham BB is in the wrong conference?Link at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/sport ... rdham.html

we've been discussing this on the A10 forum. If you were to poll the fans with 2 options: stay as we are or drop fordham, lasalle, st. bonaventure and duquesne and go to 10 teams, most favor contraction.

But the Fordham story has been a bog one of late. They have just been awful. LaSalle and St. bonaventure have had some improvements and Duquesne a solid year. But fordham has been bad.

The consensus seems to be that the A10 needs to set criteria for facilities, budget and even attendance. Because as it is now, those schools keep the A10 down.

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