I hinted yesterday I had an idea I was going to throw out today. I just posted this on my Twitter page. Lots of talk about the Miami University RedHawks switching conferences: AAC, ACC, PAC-12. I am going to present a different idea-some will like, some won’t. Something I have been floating for a while now. Create a new conference!
I have a conference of 8 and no team is more than 391 miles from Oxford: Miami, Ohio, Toledo, WMU, Marshall, Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee State, Appalachian State. All already FBS in football. So no need for a team to move up.
All relatively strong mid majors in not only just football and basketball, men’s and women’s, but other sports as well. All committed to athletics. And overall, stronger than the MAC, and arguably CUSA and SBC as well. This is a conference you could sell to ESPN etc.
And here is a map of the conference. (Apologies to Marshall as their name didn’t appear on the map right below OU.) I have already floated this to certain people at Miami. Thoughts?
I’ve always liked the idea of a new conference consisting of some configuration of the original six MAC members (Miami, OU, Toledo, WMU, BG, and Kent), Buffalo (for their media market), and the top members of the Sun Belt and CUSA east of the Mississippi River (top members defined by media market, attendance, and athletic budgets/NIL expenditures) . Maybe throw in Army, Navy, and Temple for good measure.
I think you can’t create a new FBS conference without a NCAA waiver. There was some talk about this with the WAC a few years ago, their commissioner was claiming they still had a FBS charter and wanted to move up a bunch of FCS teams at once.
Good question, and one I anticipated. These teams on a whole are better than the MAC. Think of this as an upper tier MAC conference. Secondly, and this is something many need to grasp, is there are teams in the MAC actively looking to drop down in football. What advantage is there to remain static when in a few years, the MAC is no longer the MAC of today. The last thing we want is to remain motionless in a sea of change, when we are a smaller boat on that sea. Do what we can, while we have some choice.
You know there isn’t one team in that crew I wouldn’t mind going to watch play. This week Akron and coming up Central and Kent are all who cares teams none of us are really looking forward to playing or going to watch. Don’t forget Ball State, Eastern Sacramento State (and UMass again) in future years.
OU, Western and Toledo are traditional MAC rivals and great great teams I’d bet most of us would be happy to see stay on our schedule. App State, Western and MTSU are all nice programs and similar enough to us and decent teams and programs and would make for a really nice season’s worth of games.
Plus-Plus-Plus–they’d hopefully all be Saturday games we can go watch. No midweek 25 degree MACtion crap.
In football this would be seven solid games we’d all look forward to watching and/or attending. We’d have five games left to sprinkle in pay games, other near peer games (AAC/SBC/MW teams) and a twinkie or two in any given year to make a solid schedule that just might, if we win enough games, get us on occasion into an expanded playoff game.
NOW… is this science fiction or could something like this really come to pass???
Given the NCAA’s track in court lately, if a groups of schools wanting to form a new conference were to sue the NCAA over its requirement for a waiver, said group of schools would probably win.
wouldn’t be opposed to this, i was hoping last year we would add north and south dakota state to expand the reach of the conference but it is what it is
Those aren’t bad schools to consider, but consider travel costs and travel time. We aren’t just talking FB and BB, but other sports as well. And since Miami rarely charters flights for its teams, travel can be horrible. I know of one situation this year where it took a Miami team 13 hours to get home from a conference game on the east coast. Far from ideal. That is why I configured this as I did.
Toledo has their sights set higher than what’s essentially a MAC 2.0 and won’t join this cast of characters without BUGS. Since you’ll be forced to take the Falcons, you might as well throw Buffalo in as it keeps things at an even number, provides some cushion against defections and doesn’t impact your geography objective. Otherwise I’m fine with your idea of offloading the MAC detritus.
