brianstl

In the seven seasons prior to getting the invite (the seasons after their Final Four run), Mason won the conference one time and went to two NCAA tournaments. They were not a Butler or a VCU. They weren't even a Davidson who had won 5 conference championships and made three NCAA tournaments in the seven seasons before they joined the league. Larranaga is one of the best coaches around and he could only get Mason to the tournament 4 times in 15 seasons as their coach. Plus, their was no need to add another team in the DC metro area. You already had GW in DC. Plus, both VCU and Richmond are an hour and half drive away.

SLU and Dayton have been to the same number of NCAA tournaments over the last 10 seasons. SLU has won two outright regular season conference titles in that time. Dayton has won one outright title and won one shared. SLU has won two conference tournament championships. Dayton has won zero. SLU has finished in the bottom half of the conference four times. Dayton has finished in the bottom half of the conference four times. I am not sure how Dayton's resume is better than SLU's.

LaSalle takes crap around the league but over the last 10 seasons they have managed to finish in Sagarin's top 150 six times. That is the same number of times as UMass and one more time than St Joes. Duquesne has only done that twice and not once in the last 8 seasons. We all have accepted Fordham is going to always suck, but a great year for Duquesne is being an average team. Mason has only done it twice in their six seasons in the conference. I still don't get why Mason was ever brought into the conference. They added nothing. In 14 seasons in the A10 the only time SLU has finished outside of the top 150 in Sagarin's rankings were the last two seasons of Crews and Ford's first. In the last 20 seasons it has only happened 4 times total at SLU. The other time being the 2004-2005 season.

The the two quoted sections below are what makes me question if the A10 can really be the answer going forward. The bottom part of the conference is killing the A10. Those programs aren't going to leave the conference and the the track record tells you they won't ever be consistently decent. So how do you avoid having 4 to 8 games against them every year?

I think that actually shows 21 and he picked up an offer from TCU after that graphic was made to push it to 22. So it is now 4 SEC schools, 5 Big 12, 2 PAC 12, 7 Big 10 and 3 ACC schools that have offered him.

I would think Burden has one to at this point, too. That may not matter if he decides to go football. He is up to 17 offers now in football. He has seven Big 10 offers, three SEC offers, three Big 12 offers and three ACC offers in football already.

I think I read somewhere that their deal with Fox is set up so they can add up to two more teams and Fox would increase the money they pay so the payout per team remains the same.

I guess a lot would depend on who the A10 decides to add. An Old Dominion doesn’t appeal to me at all. A Loyola or Belmont would make much more sense for SLU and Dayton.

I don’t think the AAC is a long term answer, but I am not sure the A10 is a better option.

Good point, but I think Houston and UCF are the two biggest targets for a P5 program then Cincinnati then Memphis.

Rhode Island might be a target, too. They might want to add a northeastern program so Temple isn’t as isolated.

The right move now would be for six or seven teams each from the A10 and the WCC to form a conference. In sports outside of basketball create divisions were teams only play their former conference members until the conference tournament to control travel cost. Members of both conferences need to find a way to remain in a relevant basketball conference and obtain a national profile going up against the Beast, Mountain West and AAC in a group just outside the Power 5.

Why would the AAC want to keep the awful football program at UConn? It makes more sense to add Army’s football program to replace UConn’s football program. Adding Army would give the AAC control of the Army-Navy game and possibly an extra Notre Dame game or two when they have to sell their media rights again.

From reading X fans on the internet, they don’t want Dayton or UConn in the Big East.

According to Rothstein this report is inaccurate.