SMU TO THE ACC STARTING 2024-25
- Thread starter loca2874
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"It will be interesting to see what type of hole this venture puts the University in over the long term. Maybe their boosters are willing to kick in substantially more to athletics, but what does that commitment do to fundraising for the university proper?" I read his point to be that there is some limit to donations and if they go to athletics, they come from somewhere else.
Why would conference affiliation bring in money on the academic side?
1). They won’t be making less in conference revenue distributions in the ACC than they were in the AAC as long as Clemson and FSU are onboard.
2). ACC schools have a number of joint ventures involving grants. Much like the Big10. Being a member university brings in research money into the schools.
I think Pony is a bit crazy for giving up their major source of athletic revenue for quite a while, but ultimately that may be the price for one of the last seats on the lifeboat….
Meanwhile we’re playing the violin as the titanic sinks.
Meanwhile we’re playing the violin as the titanic sinks.
Or maybe their lifeboat reaches the shore in 7 years only to find all their friends have moved to a nicer island.
Could we hire SMU board chair David Miller? Seems to be pretty good at fund raising.
I have no inside info but my sense is that this is pretty unfair. Lots of stuff is changing at TU but there are a lot of things other than athletics that need attention, too. Those things build a foundation for athletics but it all takes time. If you want to cast blame, look at whoever gave us Clancy and Levitt. That's when we truly were playing violins.
I don't agree on the UNT thing. They'll have a decent following if they're good and no one will claim them if they're blech. The one thing about TU is there are 15k die hards who will show up to every game.
As for Army, they would kill with visiting crowds in Texas. Ft. Hood (Killeen) used to be one of (if not the) largest Army base in the US. (I know it has a new name I just can't remember it). Not too mention the other bases in TX. I would expect a game at UNT or UTSA would see those schools with respective sell outs. Heck, we'd push a sell out here with them. I'd love to see Aresco get really aggressive and push for Air Force as well and then grab New Mexico or Colorado State and sell the add'l media money to them. You'd think by consolidating all 3 academies into a single football conference would warrant some additional $ for the conference as well as an added opportunity for Aresco to sell the service academy competitions. I say Air Force and CSU would be all sports and it would make sense for both to do so.
I come back to winning being important for TU.
It certainly was for our exiting CUSA.
It certainly was for our exiting CUSA.
There might be a universe where this kind of Aresco exists but I'm afraid it's not this one.
Did you see Everything Everywhere All At Once, the best multiverse movie ever?
Army played at UTSA in 2020. Attendance was under 8000. Not sure it this was an anomaly but the only recent game I could find where Army played at a current AAC Texas school the attendance was abysmal
Looks like most of their home games that year averaged between 6-8k so I would say Covid was definitely a factor.
Teams in the ACC that I would prefer to watch more than Army:
- Clemson
- Florida State
- Stanford
- Duke
- Louisville
- Miami
- NC State
- North Carolina
- Pitt
- Syracuse
- Virginia Tech
- Wake Forest
- Boston College
- Virginia
- Georgia Tech
- SMU
- Cal
Didn’t think about Covid when I first posted. Will be interesting to see how the attendance numbers work when they join the league.
I’m not an Army football fan. Wouldn’t watch them unless they’re playing Navy or TU. The AAC will be a step up for them week in week out as far as the caliber of competition.
The year before (2019) army played at utsa and the crowd was over 30k.
Sort of. TCU raised $200 from four donors. And made a big deal out of it locally. This is SMU matching TCU, but with the bulk of the money coming from 3 former players. Either way, it’s not like they made a soft drive of their elite donors to get the money. 3 guys wanted to build this thing and SMU said OK.
Why?
The only reason I care to watch army is the novelty of the offense they have to run because of the recruiting limitations they have…. But that novelty gets really old really fast.
Miami, Pitt, Louisville, Georgia Tech, Ava Tech, Duke have all had some interesting teams over the past few years. The last interesting Army team was probably from 1944.
Army won 11 games in 2018 (pounded UH 70-14 in a bowl), won 9 games in 2020, won 9 games in 2021 (beat Missouri in a bowl), and went 6-6 last year.
Obviously they crapped their pants last week against an awful team but they haven’t been bad as of late.
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Please, these teams are like the Busch Lite of college football, generic. Each has something interesting once every 25 years, and it's usually "loser makes it big", which is a pretty lame way to be interesting. Army is interesting a lot more often than that, as well as being as close to real amateur athletics as you'll find in D1.
To be fair, most college teams would have that number of wins playing Army’s schedule.
That 70-14 ass kicking of Houston won me over
And the fact that I didn’t recall any of that should tell you how much common people care about Army. Especially since I probably pay attention more than the average pair of eyeballs.
Ah yes, the perpetual P5 argument to exclude up and comers. "We didn't let you play a P5 schedule and since you didn't play a P5 schedule, you can't be very good." A non-P5 school to be taken seriously has to be really good, beat P5 teams usually on the P5 team's field, and be lucky that when it scheduled a couple P5 schools 7 years ago, it picked ones that 7 years later when the game happens happen to be good at the same time as the non-P5 school is. That's why success is rare. A non-P5 school breaking through requires a whole lot more than for a P5 school, which has a fresh chance every year.
But you remember Virginia's, Georgia Tech's and BC's records from 2018 and 2019? If so, then you have WAY too much time on your hands.
Zero to do with P5. Last year schedule
Coastal Carolina
UTSA
Villanova
Georgia State
Wake Forest
Colgate
LA-Monroe
Air Force
Troy
UConn
UMass
Navy
Has to be one of the weakest schedule in D1 football. Are Villanova, Colgate and UMass even D1? Is UConn still D1? They play this type of schedule year in year out.
What would TU’s record be if we played that schedule every year ?
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Wake was ranked #15 when they played. Coastal Carolina won 9 games, Air Force won 10, UTSA won 11 and Troy won 12. I think Ga St was the only team they lost to that won fewer than 9 games. Prior years their schedule was possibly better, or at least more big name schools if you consider those to be synonymous.
I was talking more about their wins. We will see how Army fares in the AAC. The schedule will be a big step up for them imo. As I said above, I watch when they play Navy. Can’t say I’ve watched another game of theirs in years. Who knows…maybe they win me over.
So I was thinking I wanted ou to beat the crap out of smoo but after reading the comments from the ou fans about Tulsa , kinda hope us and smoo both beat ou 😂
I expect they will average 1 loss more in our conference. They switch back and forth between 2 and 3 non d1 games per season. I imagine at least one of those would be covered by one of our cellar dwellars. 2021 was one of their stronger schedules, and 2022 was one of their weaker schedules.
I specifically didn't say anything about Virginia or BC. I said Miami who had arguably the best college football team of all time 20 years ago and who has had some above average success since, Duke who had some good seasons in spite of their basketball-i-ness. Louisville who had a Heisman winner and also produced Teddy Bridgewater. Pitt who has produced quite a few NFL players as of late (Like Aaron Donald & Kenny Pickett), Georgia Tech who is basically a better version of Army, and VaTech mostly because of Michael Vick / Frank Beamer.
All of those schools aren't going to be must-see-tv at the same time.... but they've been must-see-tv a lot more often than Army has for the past 20 years.
Ask any common fan and this isn't even an argument. Army isn't even in the same stratosphere in terms of interest. (Especially when you exclude military personnel)
I must have missed the post that established why we are comparing Army to ACC schools. One is an expansion prospect, the other is not. If any comparisons are made it should be to WSU, OSU, Colorado St, Air Force, San Diego St, Liberty, Boise St, etc. The only tie between them and Army is that they would replace SMU who went to the ACC. Don't understand why that brings about ACC/Army comparisons.
Miami is like watching REO Speedwagon play at the fair. Counting your names, it looks like you would put Army about middle of the pack in terms of fan interest if Army were in the ACC. I think it's higher than that but I could be convinced. I think you have probably 90 D1 schools that people only watch because they want to watch football instead of mow the yard, and Army and 3/4 of the ACC are in that category, interchangeable.
That's like 17 million people if you include vets, so that's a pretty big exclusion! About 4.5 Oklahomas.
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