Agreed! TX and OK didn’t win and weren’t in the championship game. TX has the money, but money hadn’t been able to buy wins.Originally Posted by HogDawg
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Agreed! TX and OK didn’t win and weren’t in the championship game. TX has the money, but money hadn’t been able to buy wins.
True, Texas does have the money. But MANY schools have money now. And I truly believe many of these college football programs have enough money that college football has now reached a point of "diminishing returns". Schools like Texas literally have much more money than they even need to run a college football program. There's only so much so spend their money on. IMO, that's why you're now seeing these insane Coaching contracts enter a new phase. School's like USC and Texas are sitting on a pile of money, and have no where to spend it. They've already got the best facilities, indoor practice field's, academic centers, etc...in the world, and the only place left to spend the large sums of money they are making is on coaches.......and maybe players in the future.
Totally agree.... Picking that perfect coach that can really do something with your program is always the gamble still. Some of these big money schools can afford just about any coach, but have not made the best decisions. In order to compete with the top SEC programs, Texas is going to have to have a near perfect coach. I guess my point is that money doesn't always matter, if you pick poorly.
See Jimbo as exhibit 1. Dan Mullen as Exhibit 2.
Exactly...
I'm just going to leave this post here from the C-USA BBS board. There's a lot of good stuff in there, but in particular I want to point out that this confirms something I've said here before. At about the same time your AD decided to publicly attack the SBC as a lesser conference, USM and Marshall were quietly plotting to leave C-USA for the "lesser" SBC.
Due to the nature of my employment I get to talk with a bunch of people who I trust to me "in the know" around USM and throughout the years they have feed me information that turned out to miss the mark on only a very few occasions. And here is the rundown of what I put together from what several different people would even comment on.
In the last 3 years USM has tried to do its part to "strengthen" CUSA and ties with teams. But some of the schools in this conference came into this conference not actually giving a crap about it. It took some nagging by some influential USM boosters and staff to convince the school president to initiate a vote to have Judy removed as the Conference Commissioner. It required a certain number of yes votes from other conference presidents to do. And in each situation no more than 4 school presidents would even entertain a vote on it. The first time it was USM, UAB and Marshall. Around the 3rd year 2 more school presidents were on board, WKU and MTSU. Very specifically the Texas schools flat out refused. And to be totally honest, you could lay the current predicament that CUSA finds itself in squarely on the shoulders of the Texas members.
USM's AD, being that he spent time as AD at a Sunbelt School had made some calls to other conferences (AAC mostly to be honest) only to be told that they have no shot based on media market alone. Because for what ever reason people in charge in other conferences give Tulane credit for the New Orleans media market but have failed to realize that USM has more fans in N.O. than Tulane does. So with that out the window he began to call some contacts in the sunbelt 2 years ago around a plan that apparently they had thrown around in the past while he was at his prior SBC school. These talks were to to gauge interest into some form of a super conference merging CUSA and the sunbelt and possibly a few other schools. Those he spoke with were interested if CUSA were. When he brought this up with other CUSA institutions it was immediately shot down. So with this, and with the failing of the president to get enough votes to try to remove Judy, they quietly began looking for an out. Which means that he contacted his SBC contacts and said "hey, what about if we just join your conference outright?" This was done before the 2019 football season. And just after the SBC had had talks with ESPN about their media deal.
The sunbelt, like CUSA, signed their media deal in 2017. The media payouts were similar between the two, within 100k per team of each other. Then you add on all the other stuff to get the amount of money distributed by the conference to each team. CUSA has a higher total distribution due to more bowl tie ins and such for example. BUT the media payouts per team were similar...........at first. The Sunbelt will not openly speak about its media deal. Thats actually part of the deal. But every year or so they have a meeting to look at what the ratings were of the games and all the associated numbers and they can "slide" their payouts for a year or two. The sunbelt had seen a viewership increase per game of over 130% per year since the contract was signed. The media part of the deal was increased a bit. And before the 2019 it was more that CUSA's. The only reason CUSA's payouts per team was higher per year was because of more bowl tie in's essentially. But the feasibility study that was done showed that USM could save AT A MINIMUM $400,000 per year in travel expenses in the sunbelt. Up to $1,100,000. The difference in the sunbelt and CUSA payouts were not even that far apart. So for USM, this is not only a no brainer at this point but required to try to save the program. The only catch was that at least 1 other school had to come along. UAB, La Tech, and Marshall were approached (this was before the 2020 football season) and USM was basically laughed at by Tech. UAB had already found out that if anything happened with the AAC they could be called so they weren't willing to commit. Only Marshall entertained the idea.
Now in summer of 2020 when the sunbelt sat down with ESPN to talk about the viewership stats and contract and such it was mentioned that they were in talks to bring in Southern Miss and maybe another school or two. ESPN has a chart with every school and a value of viewership they place for each school, regardless of that schools success or conference affiliation at the time. Given the way the sunbelt has grown viewership, and the proximity of its institutions to USM specifically, and the fact that ESPN considered they have 0 of southern miss's viewers subscribing to their services due to USM not being in a conference with a ESPN contract, then they had a value to add. Reportedly the first deal was that ESPN would kick in enough money to flat out pay USM to be on equal footing with the rest of the sunbelts payouts without the rest of the schools having to take a cut to their payouts. And not only that, but just based on the normal stats with the SBC schools ESPN was increasing the media payout again. The exact amount wasn't shared with me. But I was told by 3 different people the same exact phrase. "The media deal alone per school is about 3 times what conference usa's is." CUSA gets more money from bowls due to more bowl tie in's. But the yearly distribution per conference will be almost exactly the same, maybe a couple hundred thousand in the sunbelts favor after this.
So its not like both conferences have 500,000 per year per school media deals. CUSA may have 500k, and sunbelt may have 1.6m. But then in the actual payouts both may be 2 million per year per school. Then ESPN basically agreed to throw 2 million more at the SBC to give to USM just to get them on board (and gain those perceived extra viewers they think they will give according to their chart).
And this was all decided before the 2020 football season was over. At least for USM's part. As negotiations continued (mostly between the sbc and media partners and other schools about joining) by summer of 2021, and another year of the sbc increasing viewership, and the list of schools potentially to join USM into moving into the sunbelt (Marshall was basically a done deal at this point, everything else since then has been smoke and mirrors) the payout scale shifted again. I was told before the news that USM was even talking to the SBC broke that "USM, with travel savings figured in will see a 1 and a half to 2 million dollar revenue increase in the first year in the sunbelt. And it could push 3 million".
Then there is the CUSA payout. No school that left CUSA before 2009 ever paid a penny of exit fees they owed the conference. There was said to be a loophole for the founding members that USM and possibly UAB could exploit to may no or only a portion of the exit fee. Worst case for USM it would forfeit the 2021-2022, and 2022-2023 CUSA distribution (about 1.5 million per year) to cover its fees. However its also said that the USM "had the donations to pay the fee all at once before the end of July". USM could forfeit this year cusa payouts, next years cusa payout, but play in the sunbelt and get a full payout from them, and essentially only have a loss of 1.5 million. Which they would save at minimum almost a 3rd of that on travel. So only a 1 million loss.
And then there is this nugget. The only thing that keeps the CUSA distributions higher than the sunbelts the last few years. The bowl tie ins. CUSA has more of them.................till now. Do you think CUSA will maintain all its tie in's? No. It will not. The sunbelt will pick up a couple of them, thats almost a certainty. Maybe you see a flip where the SBC has 7 and CUSA 3. There is zero chance that CUSA will have as many as the sunbelt by the time the new bowl contracts are worked out. Which will further tip the financials in the sunbelts favor going forward.
How’s your football team? Looks like the rats are abandoning the ship. I especially loved the player tweeting about leaving “ULL” for LSU.
Enjoy mediocrity for the next few years!
Yep, cue up "Leaving LOUISIANA In the Broad Daylight" by the Oak Ridge Boys:
https://www.google.com/search?q=leav...e-gws-wiz-serp
Mostly all of this strikes me as plausible. Here's what I question:
USM was basically laughed at by Tech.
What probably happened was that Tech's leadership already knows that oo-la-la basically runs the SBC through bullying, corruption and other various chicanery. In much the same way we've derided "C-UAB" lately. * Tech wanted no part of that baloney. We've already got to put up with their shenanigans in state politics -- why would we want more of it in conference politics too? It's more likely that Tech leaders WARNED their colleagues at USM to stay away from those crooks.
But the USM AD, having recently arrived from Troy St, is probably accutomed to taking hush money from the Cajuns, so had no qualms with it. Rather than have to explain to his boosters that he's a grunt in the Cajun mafia, it was easier to just blame it on the same old "Tech arrogance" trope that the UL-twins have been pushing all these years.
*Remember that one girl from high school who was the queen bee despite not being that pretty? And you wondered how she became so popular? Everyone already knew EXACTLY how she came to be the clique boss, but nobody was about to say it out loud. That's basically ULL in the Belt.
Well, based upon what you are saying, USM and Marshall got their wish. No jealousy here. Not one moment EVER goes by that I wish LA Tech was stuck in the Suckbelt like USM and Marshall are going to be.
By the way, I've watched T-Mac's video a thousand times of when he supposedly "attacked the SBC as a lesser conference", and I'm calling bullshit on that. To paraphrase, T-Mac said CUSA was not --and had not ever been-- in merger talks with the Suckbelt. That's called being honest and candid (as far as he knew) with the media/press. Now, if you're telling us that Marshall and USM secretly had representatives negotiating with Suckbelt officials behind CUSA's back, then so be it. But that says more about Marshall's, USM's and the SuckBelts lack of character than it does T-Mac's. And I'm no defender of T-Mac. But out of all the problems I have/had with T-Mac, this isn't one of them.
Sorry, case dismissed.
NIL deals are definitely changing the game aren't they? The good news for LaTech is that they don't have any good players on the roster to begin with so y'all don't have to worry about P5 schools giving them NIL deals.
I'm happy to know that your cognitive dissonance gives you the ability to believe that you are in a great conference situation. Enjoy that SHSU rivalry.Well, based upon what you are saying, USM and Marshall got their wish. No jealousy here. Not one moment EVER goes by that I wish LA Tech was stuck in the Suckbelt like USM and Marshall are going to be.
THIS! I want no part of the belt.... It is either up from CUSA or stay for now. USM will soon find out that they are considered in the lowest of low conferences.Well, based upon what you are saying, USM and Marshall got their wish. No jealousy here. Not one moment EVER goes by that I wish LA Tech was stuck in the Suckbelt like USM and Marshall are going to be.
Come on guys! He came here looking for some kind of affirmation to overcome the obvious psychological complex he has. Obviously he idolizes us, because he came here all excited and everything hoping for praise, and you guys are just making him sad and angry.
I know it's hard, but pretend you care. Call him a big boy; tell him whatever he says is wonderful and that you're proud of him!
Almost forgot to add....New Orleans is LSU's market. I've seen those statements by S Miss fans saying otherwise, but those are just silly. That's as bad as La Tech claiming the Dallas market, because we do have a lot of grads there.
Sure, the psychological issues are probably real.
What is also real is that you guys are in the worst FBS conference in the country and it is not even close. And what is also real is that once your AD realized just how terrible C-USA would end up being, he started calling Sun Belt teams (including lowly ULM) to beg for a spot in the Sun Belt.
And finally, what is also real is that this is was all self-inflicted. Your conference is going to have the worst teams, the highest travel costs, and the lowest conference payouts in all of G5. But if all of that is worth it to you to not be in a conference with ULM, then so be it.
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