Ruski

Difference is USF and ECU bring huge money from football...although ECU needs to right the ship before they lose their massive fan base. I'm a Tulane grad and have no idea how the hell we got into the AAC. I think it would be amazing if AAC would bring in SLU+Army for football. But to be honest SLU's biggest asset is geography. VCU/Mason/Buffalo/UMASS/Liberty all bring the big flagship type of campus that the AAC needs, already have too many small privates (Tulane, Tulsa, SMU). Even Dayton would get in over SLU on basketball performance. If Ford could get SLU to the tourny for a few years in a row, maybe SLU finds itself a more fitting new home after the next realignment (Big12 contract ending). Trips to Memphis, New Orleans, Wichita, Cincy, etc have to be preferable to A-10. Also baseball would be big improvement and I think AAC has better men's soccer.

Google is not that difficult...took all of 5 minutes "SMU has the second-largest athletics budget among non-autonomy conference schools and the second-largest football budget in the American Athletic Conference. For the fiscal year ending May 31, 2015, SMU reported $53.3 million in total athletic team revenue to the U.S. Department of Education. Of that, $16.4 million came from football." - SMU "According to the report, student fees at UMass Amherst accounted for 27 percent of the $151,126,827 athletic department budget between 2010 and 2014." - UMASS "Akron's sports budget, at $32 million, was the highest in Ohio among the Mid-American Conference schools." -Akron "UNM had projected a $33 million budget. It only raised about $31.8 million — about $20 million through ticket sales, fundraising and other revenue sources and received about $12 million in subsidies — and overspent its budget by about $400,000." (2015-2016) -New Mexico Finding SLU's athletic budget does seem difficult however...

Creighton is not P5..... BigEast doesn't play football, ergo can never be P5