Serious Conference Realignment Discussion

[genpop]

The train has left the station and I'm afraid Louisiana Tech is watching it roll away. It's unfathomable that we are in this position, but we are. Louisiana Tech is not mentioned in ANY discussions about conference realignments. ANY. NONE. It's like we don't exist. This does not bode well for our future. We're the beggar with the hat hoping someone will throw us a crumb. Where's our lifeline? How the hell do we come out of this with any respectability? If any conference respected Louisiana Tech we would have at least been mentioned. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Independence is not an option today like it was before. CUSA? Ha! What a joke. And then there is Skip...

The Sunbelt DOES respect Tech. Tech does not respect the Sunbelt and it has come back to BITE us. (no pun intended) Thus, no invite and they are just fine with it. Why else would you invite James Madison?....that's ridiculous when Tech is right there neatly within your footprint. We'd be similar to LSU in that we'd have not ONE rivalry game but several EVERY year (ULM, ULL, Southern Miss). Not to mention big gamers against App state and up and coming Coastal Carolina. Oh what could've been....

[Bone_afide_Dawg]

No offense but this whole thing is very sad. You’re joking about scheduling SWAC, right? Part of the reason Tech is where it’s at is from scheduling 1AA schools. Small thinking leads to smallness.

[PawDawg]

No more SWAC please

[THEarmada]

Here's the new CUSA: (endowment in millions, enrollments in thousands)

NMSU (236, 22)
UTEP (241, 25)
SHSU (117, 22)
Lamar (129, 17)
SFA (82, 12)
McNeese (87, 8)
LATech (107, 12)
FIU (129, 17)

If FIU wants to quit, then ACU (530, 5) becomes the 8th full member.

Bring in UALR and UNO as non-football members.

No to Tarleton and Jacksonville State.

I'd rather have this new CUSA than the Sunbelt.

Sure it would be great to pick up Missouri State or NDSU, but I'd be shocked if they were interested.

Only 7 conference football games. OOC schedule Rice, UNT, San Antonio, and USM - 2 at home and 2 away each year. For the last 3 games schedule 2 money games and a SWAC.

Come again? You’d prefer this over the sunbelt?

[techman05]

Come again? You’d prefer this over the sunbelt?

Can’t imagine. Surely not.

[genpop]

Here's the new CUSA: (endowment in millions, enrollments in thousands)

NMSU (236, 22)
UTEP (241, 25)
SHSU (117, 22)
Lamar (129, 17)
SFA (82, 12)
McNeese (87, 8)
LATech (107, 12)
FIU (129, 17)

If FIU wants to quit, then ACU (530, 5) becomes the 8th full member.

Bring in UALR and UNO as non-football members.

No to Tarleton and Jacksonville State.

I'd rather have this new CUSA than the Sunbelt.

Sure it would be great to pick up Missouri State or NDSU, but I'd be shocked if they were interested.

Only 7 conference football games. OOC schedule Rice, UNT, San Antonio, and USM - 2 at home and 2 away each year. For the last 3 games schedule 2 money games and a SWAC.

[HogDawg]

Here's the new CUSA: (endowment in millions, enrollments in thousands)

NMSU (236, 22)
UTEP (241, 25)
SHSU (117, 22)
Lamar (129, 17)
SFA (82, 12)
McNeese (87, 8)
LATech (107, 12)
FIU (129, 17)

If FIU wants to quit, then ACU (530, 5) becomes the 8th full member.

Bring in UALR and UNO as non-football members.

No to Tarleton and Jacksonville State.

I'd rather have this new CUSA than the Sunbelt.

Sure it would be great to pick up Missouri State or NDSU, but I'd be shocked if they were interested.

Only 7 conference football games. OOC schedule Rice, UNT, San Antonio, and USM - 2 at home and 2 away each year. For the last 3 games schedule 2 money games and a SWAC.

Who gives a crap about endowments.....(no comments from the cheap seats, because TWSS is too easy). But seriously, why should any of us give a crap about these schools' endowments?

[LT]

Well I certainly could be wrong, but maybe we and UTEP could structure payouts like the current Big 12 schools are doing to the newcomers. Make our conference cut more than twice that of the newcomers. Hopefully the proceeds will be ample from all the exit fees, so that our payout is more than it would be in the Belt.

All of our options are pretty bad right now.

[LT]

Who gives a crap about endowments.....(no comments from the cheap seats, because TWSS is too easy). But seriously, why should any of us give a crap about these schools' endowments?

You can spend about 6% of your endowment annually without touching the corpus. You have better opportunities to increase your athletic budget if you're taking 6% of a larger number. ULM is at 23 million btw.

[FriscoDawg]

Here's the new CUSA: (endowment in millions, enrollments in thousands)

NMSU (236, 22)
UTEP (241, 25)
SHSU (117, 22)
Lamar (129, 17)
SFA (82, 12)
McNeese (87, 8)
LATech (107, 12)
FIU (129, 17)

If FIU wants to quit, then ACU (530, 5) becomes the 8th full member.

Bring in UALR and UNO as non-football members.

No to Tarleton and Jacksonville State.

I'd rather have this new CUSA than the Sunbelt.

Sure it would be great to pick up Missouri State or NDSU, but I'd be shocked if they were interested.

Only 7 conference football games. OOC schedule Rice, UNT, San Antonio, and USM - 2 at home and 2 away each year. For the last 3 games schedule 2 money games and a SWAC.

7 conference + 2 H + 2 A + 2 money + SWAC = 14 games. Better rethink that.

[dawg80]

Who gives a crap about endowments.....(no comments from the cheap seats, because TWSS is too easy). But seriously, why should any of us give a crap about these schools' endowments?

Most schools, maybe every school except Tech, use funds from endowments/foundations to supplement coaches' salaries, funding scholarships, and for equipment, travel, etc...

[LT]

7 conference + 2 H + 2 A + 2 money + SWAC = 14 games. Better rethink that.

I can't add. Maybe just 5 conference games a year. Is that possible?

[Dawgonit]

a bit off topic, but say LSUS is merged into Tech. What would happen to the endowments? Would they be rolled into one endowment?

[jpw67]

Tech alum class of ‘90 here. Take FIU away and I could go with this. No it’s not preferable to the Belt but that door is closed. Looks like a nice geographically compact footprint with decent FB to me. Honestly, until we come to terms with who we are in terms of student population, facilities, attendance, etc. v who we wish we were we’ll never find a long term home. Personally I’ve been supporting Tech athletics since the 80’s and really getting tired of the whole aspirational G5 roller coaster…

[FriscoDog]

Obviously Tech athletics aren't in a great position right now and it's easy to look in despair at our future but just remember that teams have succeeded after being in unfortunate circumstances. Look at where Temple is now after getting kicked out of the Big East and moving to the MAC. UCF has managed to go through every level of NCAA from Div III to playing on a far away island in the MAC to now being in a P5 conference. The Big 12 was arguably just as good as the SEC 15/20 years ago and Sun Belt was a glorified FCS conference. Now look at those conferences.

College football is volatile and there will be more changes to come. If I had to guess some shakeups in the future, I would say that the AAC loses Memphis and possibly USF or SMU in the future to the Big 12. The AAC could become unstable just like CUSA. The conference is extremely stretched out (from Philadelphia to San Antonio, same as Marshall-UTEP distance) and having almost half the conference earning less than the rest could lead to some unhappiness. The Big 12 could also take some MWC schools like Colorado St. and/or Boise St. That could cause the MWC to in turn go for Texas schools either in the AAC or Texas St. This isn't even considering that the Big 12 may be picked apart some more or ACC schools defecting to other P5 conferences causing even more ripples throughout conferences. Tech needs to keep looking forward and be ready for the next shift in college athletics.

Athletically, that means working on increasing the budget into the 30 million range or even higher as has been rumored. We need to improve some facilities, especially our football stadium (not just expanding I mean, in fact I'd argue about reducing capacity a bit). Finally and most importantly, we need to increase attendance. I remember 10 years ago we had some great football attendance increases and good atmospheres for games. Go back to what was working then and improve it even more. Our first goal should be getting attendance in football and basketball for every home game back to over 20,000 at minimum for football in the next two years and 3,000 for basketball. Then set more goals after that.

Academically, we need to make sure that Tech increases its profile. We should improve our Carnegie classification to R1 and try and work on expanding the footprint in North Louisiana either in Monroe or Shreveport or both. I would like to see Tech continue to work with Shreveport more and put more pressure to merge LSUS into Tech or expand Tech's presence in SBC. This should help with making Tech more appealing to conferences. University presidents want to associate with more prestigious institutions and we'd have more reach into "markets" hopefully. At least we'd be reachign more students and increasing enrollment. If we truly wanted to be bold, I wouldn't be against working with ULL to try and split up the University of Louisiana system or fight for both of our schools to achieve a LaTech medical school and ULL law school. Obviously the LSU powers would fight it with everything they've got, which is a lot but we have to keep improving Tech's academic brand in as many was as possible.

Everything you said is true.. the problem that I have and I assume many others on this board have is that we do not have the confidence or faith in this administration to make this happen. The reason is that this same administration has put us in the spot we are currently in, not only athletically but also in other areas (i.e. student enrollment, ranked academic programs etc.)