I keep seeing this thread around the Celeb Hot or Not threads and can't help but notice the similarities ("Is Mizzou hot or not?!?" "Well, if you were the WAC, you wouldn't push him out of bed" "But he has boney elbows and toothless rednecks in the SEC don't like that")

SI

Mizzou thinks Mizzou is hot.

I'm hearing that Missouri is on the cusp of receiving a record 23rd invitation to the SEC today.

If the BE exit fee increase passes, which can't happen without at least a couple football school votes, it will say a lot about who really has options and who doesn't.

Would be fascinating if what the vote was and who voted for it leaks.

That's the thing...I am of the thought process if we don't get into a BCS conference we are done with.

Look at our scheduling, it's horrendous for after October..the fanbase isn't going to continue going to home games of Bo Diddly Tech, Weber State, New Mexico State and such.

I think the administration is playing hardball because they don't want to get in, they don't want to burn bridges at the WCC which is odd to me as the WCC has flat out admitted they expected us to go and they do not blame us if we do.

Mizzou is also currently undefeated in B1G play.

kbohls kbohls by PeteThamelNYT
A&M's Loftin says he doesn't "think it's likely to see another team join SEC and move by July 2012."



So what's the motivation here? Speaking strictly as a new SEC member, or is there some reason they wouldn't want Mizzou in?

Following up on Macro's post earlier:

Big 12 TV partners didn't want BYU - CBSSports.com

After spending way too much time reading about this issue, here is what I think/have gathered:

The SEC's commisioner (Mike Slive) is nearing retirement and wants to cement the future of the conference with one last, huge media deal. Getting access to Texas is the first and biggest part. He also wants to add Missouri for its access to two good markets in St. Louis and KC, but many of the schools don't see them as good fit location-wise, culturally, and because they are one of the few schools that would probably leave the SEC for the Big Ten if the call came.

The reason I have been following so closely is because West Virginia appears to be under consideration, as well (but things have been tight-lipped for the past several weeks -- in contrast, WVU's AD Oliver Luck had previously been one of the most outspoken administrators on the topic over the past 18-months or so, some would even call him a big mouth). West Virginia has reportedly been negotiating with the Big East to get out of the 27-month waiting period to withdraw and has been pulling strings in order to add more athletic programs (5-10 years ago, we eliminated a number of programs in order to focus more resources on the revenue sports and got down to 17, which is like one more than the bare minimum allowable by the NCAA I believe) to make itself a more attractive overall department. That move has been successful, as the football and basketball programs have both been very successful (reaching Elite 8s, Final Four, winning multiple BCS games, etc) and has put us in a pretty good position.

WVU and Missouri are both attractive candidates, but neither are headliners or bring enough to the table on their own. The current rumor being floated, and I have seen/heard it from a number of different places now, is that Florida State is in play for the SEC and that the SEC and FSU have let the ACC know (and that is what lead to the pre-emptive move to weaken the Big East by grabbing Pitt and Syracuse, as losing FSU + the ACC signing its now-below market TV contract just before the Pac XX rewrote the books on TV deals may have put some of the ACC schools in play for the Big East when its new deal opened up in 2013).

I think FSU, WVU, and probably Missouri (if the Big Ten continues to hold course, which is likely) all end up in the SEC within the next five years. I believe the SEC/Slive thought that WVU and/or Missouri would easily be able to get out of their current conferences and join for 14 to balance out A&M, while FSU and the other school would join after the ACC fortified itself without FSU (recall Slive repeatedly saying he did not want to be responsible for the death of another conference).

Right now, I think WVU believes it will be 14 largely because it has an easier path to exit its conference and because it can more easily fit into the SEC East (which is a big stickler for maintaining interdivisional rivalries for Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee apparently). WVU has been furiously raising money in the last several weeks to improve its baseball facilities and apparently to add m/f golf teams, softball, and men's track (which was one of the casualties of the previous downsizing) and quite possibly buy its way out of the Big East.

Sorry for the long post and I'm sure it all sounds crazy, but there has been an awful lot of smoke in the past few weeks. It is also quite possible that someone like Oklahoma or possibly Virginia Tech or a North Carolina school could come into play and blow this whole "plan" apart, but this is kind of where I see things right now.

I just don't see FSU leaving the ACC now that they instituted that huge buyout in order to leave.

FWIW, I have heard virtually nothing on the FSU rumor from Tallahassee folks (newspaper, radio, etc.) since early on when aTm first announced and all the speculation at that time. That's not to say it doesn't still have legs, but you'd think there would still be a murmur of conversation if it was true.

$20 million is a lot, but its not, if you know what I mean.

It has been internet-speculated (so, obviously take with a large grain of salt) that Florida State got some type of grandfather deal when voting on the new buyout. I don't know if I buy that, but if the SEC gets a bump up to say $20-25 million per school and the ACC is signed on for something like $12-15 million for the next 13 years, it wouldn't be a tough call (and I'm sure the SEC would help since FSU, as a new "national" name to the conference, would be the cornerstone of a new deal).

In other, non-fantasy news (in regards to my dreams of WVU joining a real conference), it looks like Villanova is not too keen on Temple joining the Big East in all sports: Temple, Villanova on edge as Big East deliberates | Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/14/2011

So, it looks like we have Villanova blocking Temple and USF blocking UCF, so we are going to end up leaving out two schools that are close to being competitive at a BCS level, that are in the Big East's current footprint, and are located in very good markets because our existing schools don't want to compete against them. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. No wonder this mess of a conference is destined to fail.

The buyout would have been pointless if it did not apply to Fla. St. FSU and Clemson were the two schools most likely to leave. My sense was the buyout was understood basically as insurance against those schools leaving. I mean, it isn't like Duke was planning to go anywhere.

Yeah, that wouldn't make any sense if they exempted one or both of the teams most attractive to a competing conference. What incentive would the other schools have to handcuff themselves but let the others out at a discount?

WVU and Louisville will reportedly "abstain" from voting.

Like I said, take it with a grain of salt. At the time, $5 million seemed like a lot for the Big East buyout, but the 27-month thing has been the more prohibitive to this point for Syracuse and Pitt (and possibly WVU and Louisville, as well).

For what it is worth, the SEC does not have a buyout mechanism at all and the Big Ten doesn't have a buyout, but has an agreed grant of rights through sometime in the 2020s (apparently, you can leave but your broadcast rights stay with the conference until then).

Sigh....we will see how this pans out...but if the administration isn't committed to seeing the sports programs flourish, I might be wearing Red and supporting my best friend who is Utah's DC.

That's just what they tell themselves every year they kick Illinois's ass ;)

SI

schadjoe Joe Schad
Big East officials are meeting with UCF today, conference call for prez/chancellors today, exit fees, expansion could come rather quickly

Further substantiation of that:

McMurphyCBS Brett McMurphy
Big East spoke w/Boise State on Thursday & is meeting today w/UCF in Cincinnati

Boise, 3 more could get Big East invite next week - CBSSports.com

Once divided on whether to invite Boise State, the Big East is now united on extending an invitation to the Broncos, along with Air Force, Navy and UCF, college football industry sources told CBSSports.com.

The only "interesting" thing was that FSU, Maryland and "one other" (VT? Clemson?) supposedly negotiated the new ACC buyout from $34 million down to $20 million.

Honestly, unless you grant media rights to a conference like the Big Ten and now Pac-12, any buyout is negotiable.

I think if the AD was voting, FSU would be begging in right now, but from a president's point of view, I don't know if it's a slam dunk as long as the ACC is viable as a BCS conference.

I actually like Navy and UCF for the Big East.

It would be interesting to see how things are handled should Navy play in a BE championship game. With the way the Big East has been rolling along lately, I can totally see Navy somehow winning the Big East and then losing to a 4-8 Army the next week. :)

You know what that Big 12/BYU story drives home, is that it's almost impossible to believe ESPN did NOT tell the ACC which teams to take out of the Big East, like one of the ADs accidentally let slip last week - and then had to apologize for saying and lie about telling the truth.

Yep. BC AD.

eta: Let's also not pretend like it wasn't a competitive move by ESPN to ensure that NBC Sports doesn't have a viable league to bid on.

It seems to be a northeast-wide thing. Nova blocks Temple, BC blocks UConn (as DeFillippo also admitted), and UConn blocks UMass. They're all fighting to get the largest share of fan attention instead of realizing (part of) the reason why casual fans and alumni don't care is because of a lack of regional rivalries.

Well, to be fair, look at how it has hampered rivals like Michigan-Michigan State, Alabama-Auburn, Duke-UNC, and Miami-Florida State.

Sure, let's just rape the Mountain West of what little relevance it has left. :mad: :banghead:

The Mountain West and Conference USA have announced their football teams will be merged into one large association.

Mountain West and Conference USA Announce Football Association - Mountain West Conference Official Athletic Site

How the fark does that work?

The MWC and the WAC always seemed to me to be a natural pairing - thats what I did in NCAA12 anyway :)

All I know for sure, from the reports I'm reading, is that its "creative and innovative"

Not sure what this does for Boise. Seems like they would rather be in an AQ conference especially if the BE pitch is just football-only.

Except there's a real reason in some cases for rancor. Considering the lawsuits that UConn filed and aggressively waged against BC when BC went from the Big East to the ACC... I'd look at them askance should they suddenly want to join me

Boise's move east seems like a win-win for everyone in that program and for the Big East. Not a 40-year marriage, but it'll be fine for the interim.

Except it still is a viable league. They took the 2 football teams with the worst fan bases, and the basketball league is still very good. Good enough that NBC should still be willing to bid on it if they want to fill their winter programming lineup. Heck, Versus shows Ivy League football as it is, so to think they won't want Big East football is ridiculous.

Source -- Big East sends invites to five schools, may hike exit fee - ESPN

Houston, SMU, UCF for all sports, Air Force and Boise State for football only. Navy is on the fence for right now.

Sounds like Navy's holdup is in regard to their TV deals, specifically in regards to their games with Army and ND.

Yep. And now that I've really thought it over, I do think all of the expansion options make a lot of sense for potential TV appeal as well:

UCF - Orlando is the number #19 market
Houston - #10 market
SMU - #5 market
Temple - #4 market
Boise State - #112 market
Air Force - #91 market
Navy - not in the top 200 markets

Boise isn't a great market, but they solidify the BCS AQ, which is obviously the #1 priority, and bring a quality program that will compete immediately. The military academies have big followings and have enough clout to have their own TV deal with CBS as it is. SMU and Houston both have winning programs with good coaches in gigantic markets and at least some level of football tradition. It sounds like Temple will get blocked by Villanova, so I assume the other 6 are in, but their program has improved greatly, and their market has great potential.

In any case, 6 of those replacing two teams that were below .500 combined in their BE conference history:

Syracuse - #81 market
Pittsburgh - #23 market

It's not exactly the SEC, but it's probably an improvement in every way outside of basketball.

This Mountain West/C-USA merger is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard and I have a bad feeling isn't not going to be enough to keep Boise State, who is the real crown jewel in terms of AQ status.

So instead of being a small, shitty conference, it's going to be a giant, shitty conference.

So just to be clear, you're voting "Not" on this one, right?

From a strictly impractical, bitter old man standpoint, the apparent new big east is the silliest, most random collection of schools I can imagine. Back in my day (grumpy old man voice), conferences were a like-minded collection of universities tied together through geography and culture.

But ya, they had no choice and the aggressive approach is a lot more appealing than the Big 12's sitting around and praying nobody else leaves.

Some mixed feelings from the Boise St. fans here I think...it will be a lot harder for them to travel to games (but its not like the Broncos have ever stayed in a conference for very long on their way up, so there's not really a lot of history with anyone anyway), but they made it, AQ status...for now. The ride continues - it's like a text sim. Start out as an NAIA independent and move up conferences every few years until you're a real national player.

Edit: Of course, as of tonight, the Boise interim AD says there's been no invite yet....why this silliness has to go on and people and/or media reports have to lie about everything continues to be maddening, but whatever. Also, the Mountain West Commissioner says the rest of Boise St. athletics won't be allowed to stay in the MWC if the football program leaves...of course, who cares, but it gets a little interesting if the WAC is still pissed at them too and won't let them back. Not a lot of other options for the non-revenue sports.

The crawl at the bottom of ESPN says that sources say that Boise State and Air Force are saying they won't be joining the Big East. Yet this news isn't being reported anywhere else, including the most recent post on the ESPN website.

Hawaii and East Carolina will be in the "same" football conference. Absurd.

lets be honest, it's not like these conferences can get BCS AQ status without adding Missouri.

Speaking of which, I'm looking forward to the Big East championship game being played on the blue field in Idaho between Boise State and a team from Texas. Yet the Big East does not include Temple because it does not make "sense" according to Villanova to have two teams from Philadelphia in the same conference. My god.

Texas Longhorns' DeLoss Dodds tells Texas A&M's Bill Byrne nonconference schedule is full through 2018 - ESPN

Texas can't seem to find a spot to play A&M now that the Aggies are in the SEC.