P12 - MWC

[307bball]

I think in 15 years, we're more likely to be competitive with bsu if they are in the g6 level. I don't see where you think all this money is going to come from? wsu and osu, if not invited to p4, are about to experience a huge regression associated with their new g6 label.

Viewed differently by who? Most everyone views the g6 as interchangeable sans maybe bsu. Liberty from cusa crashed the party. Parity in g6 is about to increase not decrease.

How exactly are all these g6 teams going to generate all this money to all of a sudden pay up? Most are all heavily subsidized by taxes already. csu already outspends us significantly and hasn't jumped ahead.

I honestly think most of this is in your head. The media perception will be based on that year's performance like it always is. Outside of regional bickering/banter on message boards, it's not going to matter to most cfb fans.

A good coach at WYO will keep us very competitive within the g6 level.

Again...I am not making a claim about how good UW or CSU will be in a vacuum. I am saying that, if CSU (and USU) are in a conference that is regarded more highly than the conference that Wyoming competes in, that will translate, ultimately, to a talent advantage over Wyoming. Wyoming may be "just fine" competing with UTEP and Northern Illinois while CSU will keep getting bashed by BSU....but when we play against one another, the effects of who chooses to play where will be seen. The biggest factor in competitive results is who has the best players. I have never felt like we were at a recruiting disadvantage with USU and CSU....For the first time...I think the door is open to that changing. And it won't take a ton of money to do it....

Anyways...this whole thing feels like re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic. I see no way that Wyoming will ever have what it once achieved. I'll enjoy whatever crap conference championship we sink our way to winning but it will never be the same for us who remember.

 

[PAPoke]

We don’t seem to agree on much. But very much agree with you here.

Glad that i could be a rallying point for y'all. You both seem to disagree with me a lot around here haha. Love a good exchanging of ideas and perspectives.

 

[Cowboy20]

Outside of our two leagues, nobody else will be referring to one conference is better than the other. It will come down to which G6 conference has an undefeated team going into November for the rest of the country to even care. The AAC has been that conference for the past couple years, and Boise crashed the playoff party last year. That door is open to us all, so whatever nostalgic memories you want to hold onto, that’s fine, but winning the league you’re in is what will matter. Scheduling and quality wins OOC will matter. Who cares how the pac does and how they perceive themselves? Let them believe they’re better, beat them when you play them, and move on.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Again...I am not making a claim about how good UW or CSU will be in a vacuum. I am saying that, if CSU (and USU) are in a conference that is regarded more highly than the conference that Wyoming competes in, that will translate, ultimately, to a talent advantage over Wyoming. Wyoming may be "just fine" competing with UTEP and Northern Illinois while CSU will keep getting bashed by BSU....but when we play against one another, the effects of who chooses to play where will be seen. The biggest factor in competitive results is who has the best players. I have never felt like we were at a recruiting disadvantage with USU and CSU....For the first time...I think the door is open to that changing. And it won't take a ton of money to do it....

Anyways...this whole thing feels like re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic. I see no way that Wyoming will ever have what it once achieved. I'll enjoy whatever crap conference championship we sink our way to winning but it will never be the same for us who remember.

Let's see how the p4 vs g6 shakes out first.

The MWC was theoretically better than cusa, sunbelt, etc and our schools spent a lot more money but mostly weren't more competitive (bsu is bsu). Our bowl tie-ins were just as crappy. Hell, osu would have been tied with us last year. They were, what, 2-5 against the MWC? wsu would have been 4th or 5th at something like 5-3. Liberty from lowly cusa represented the g5 a few short years ago.

I'm just not seeing how this big divide in the g6 is all of a sudden going to happen.

 

[307bball]

Let's see how the p4 vs g6 shakes out first.

The MWC was theoretically better than cusa, sunbelt, etc and our schools spent a lot more money but mostly weren't more competitive (bsu is bsu). Our bowl tie-ins were just as crappy. Hell, osu would have been tied with us last year. They were, what, 2-5 against the MWC? wsu would have been 4th or 5th at something like 5-3. Liberty from lowly cusa represented the g5 a few short years ago.

I'm just not seeing how this big divide in the g6 is all of a sudden going to happen.

To be fair...I don't know how big of a divide it will be.

I'm trying to distill this down to Wyoming VS CSU and to a lessor extent, USU. While we shared a conference, we had as even of a playing field when pursuing recruits as could be managed. This changes when you are recruiting across conference lines. It matters even to schools who are not competitive within their conference when they are recruiting against schools from other conferences.

Now....I don't know the future. It's true that I've cared a great deal that Wyoming was competitive with Utah and BYU. That has diminished but I remember beating them and the great games that were a part of those rivalries. Maybe I'll one day I'll care as much about beating South Dakota at the same level as I used to care about the border war. I guess I can look forward to that. Or .. maybe you have this dialed in...maybe Wyoming is perfectly positioned and our recent dominance over CSU in football will continue in perpetuity. My perspective on this is gloomy. You certainly don't have to share it.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

This changes when you are recruiting across conference lines. It matters even to schools who are not competitive within their conference when they are recruiting against schools from other conferences.

This is where we disagree. Recruiting will be and has been effected by the p4/5 vs g5/6 designation. No argument there at all.

Once you look within the g5/6 ranks, there has been no indication that conference affiliation helps with recruiting. It just hasn't happened. Within that level, coaching is most important. bsu has program-level advantages that would remain even if they didn't go to the pac.

People at UW will determine our competitiveness within the g6 ranks, not conference affiliation.

 

[307bball]

This is where we disagree. Recruiting will be and has been effected by the p4/5 vs g5/6 designation. No argument there at all.

Once you look within the g5/6 ranks, there has been no indication that conference affiliation helps with recruiting. It just hasn't happened. Within that level, coaching is most important. bsu has program-level advantages that would remain even if they didn't go to the pac.

People at UW will determine our competitiveness within the g6 ranks, not conference affiliation.

10+ years from now...we'll have the answer to this. Wyoming will either have had the same, worse or better results against the teams that split...this is the perfect experiment. My guess is that our coaching and their coaching will be about at the level it has been so that's a wash. Success will be mostly determined by who has the better players. In the last 15 years I think Wyoming is 10-5 in border war football games. I think the series is 50/50 if you go back to the 90s. Do you predict that will continue? I think it gets worse over the next 10 to 30 years. Unfortunately we won't know for some time.

If nothing changes and we have the same results against the teams that left, we can be reasonably convinced that all of this conference shuffling has had no real effect on how good we are competitively against that group of teams.

 

[OrediggerPoke]

10+ years from now...we'll have the answer to this. Wyoming will either have had the same, worse or better results against the teams that split...this is the perfect experiment. My guess is that our coaching and their coaching will be about at the level it has been so that's a wash. Success will be mostly determined by who has the better players. In the last 15 years I think Wyoming is 10-5 in border war football games. I think the series is 50/50 if you go back to the 90s. Do you predict that will continue? I think it gets worse over the next 10 to 30 years. Unfortunately we won't know for some time.

If nothing changes and we have the same results against the teams that left, we can be reasonably convinced that all of this conference shuffling has had no real effect on how good we are competitively against that group of teams.

Not sure that’s the perfect assessment. I would suggest comparing records of all MWC teams before and after the split against each other. I personally believe we probably over performed our current mean under Bohl (he’s a coach who knew how to execute a gameplan to get wins against average competition) and will probably underperform under Sawvel (he’s a coach who seemingly will make baffling decisions to cost us games we otherwise should win).

 

[307bball]

Not sure that’s the perfect assessment. I would suggest comparing records of all MWC teams before and after the split against each other. I personally believe we probably over performed our current mean under Bohl (he’s a coach who knew how to execute a gameplan to get wins against average competition) and will probably underperform under Sawvel (he’s a coach who seemingly will make baffling decisions to cost us games we otherwise should win).

yeah...probably lot of ways to dice this...it will take some time for sure.

Btw...I think you are right about Sawvel

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Not sure that’s the perfect assessment. I would suggest comparing records of all MWC teams before and after the split against each other. I personally believe we probably over performed our current mean under Bohl (he’s a coach who knew how to execute a gameplan to get wins against average competition) and will probably underperform under Sawvel (he’s a coach who seemingly will make baffling decisions to cost us games we otherwise should win).

Weird. We agree again.

Our series with csu will depend on who we hire/retain and who they hire/retain. We have to do better but they have been pretty bad at this since Sunny.

I look at this like when the big east became the aac. Some programs in aac were better than us and some aren't. The "bcs" label was gone and it became program-level differences not conference. The pac is in the same boat. There's always a hierarchy within a conference and within a year. usu and tx state might all of a sudden be consistent whipping boys. They go 10 years of abysmal results and the pac move might have hurt more than helped.

Good coaches and winning are what matters now.

 

[TheRealUW]

I don't understand why people think g6 teams are all of a sudden going to rain cash down on athletes. Hell, the opposite is more likely. Some P4 teams are more likely to say this is nonsense and not sustainable.

I guess it depends on what you consider "raining cash".

Wyoming's own 1WYO NIL collective had a pool of about $18.7 million dollars to pay athletes at Wyoming last year. To be fair, they only paid out around $4.1 million, with about 80% of that going to football players. These numbers do not include any private NIL deals outside of the 1WYO collective.

Raining cash? I suppose it's all a matter of perspective.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

I guess it depends on what you consider "raining cash".

Wyoming's own 1WYO NIL collective had a pool of about $18.7 million dollars to pay athletes at Wyoming last year. To be fair, they only paid out around $4.1 million, with about 80% of that going to football players. These numbers do not include any private NIL deals outside of the 1WYO collective.

Raining cash? I suppose it's all a matter of perspective.

I guess relative to other g6 schools. I think there are very few that would have the ability to run away from the pack so to speak. My point being that WYO is not going to be extremely disadvantaged relative to most g6 schools.

 

[307bball]

Weird. We agree again.

Our series with csu will depend on who we hire/retain and who they hire/retain. We have to do better but they have been pretty bad at this since Sunny.

I look at this like when the big east became the aac. Some programs in aac were better than us and some aren't. The "bcs" label was gone and it became program-level differences not conference. The pac is in the same boat. There's always a hierarchy within a conference and within a year. usu and tx state might all of a sudden be consistent whipping boys. They go 10 years of abysmal results and the pac move might have hurt more than helped.

Good coaches and winning are what matters now.

supposing 10 years from now, the teams that stayed have a significant difference in winning percentage in either direction against the teams that left to re-create the Pac. Can you chalk that up to differences in hiring retention?...I get that you could do that if you just consider Wyoming over that short of a time period...but if you take multiple teams over multiple years that would suggest something beyond just having a good/bad coach.

BSU is such an outlier in the dominance category that if they fall off much ... it will skew things. I just can't shake that this is Utah, BYU, TCU all over again. I get that it's different from a money perspective....I'm just beaten down by year after year of this stuff not going our way I guess.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

supposing 10 years from now, the teams that stayed have a significant difference in winning percentage in either direction against the teams that left to re-create the Pac. Can you chalk that up to differences in hiring retention?...I get that you could do that if you just consider Wyoming over that short of a time period...but if you take multiple teams over multiple years that would suggest something beyond just having a good/bad coach.

BSU is such an outlier in the dominance category that if they fall off much ... it will skew things. I just can't shake that this is Utah, BYU, TCU all over again. I get that it's different from a money perspective....I'm just beaten down by year after year of this stuff not going our way I guess.

First, that will be a difficult comparison because we don't know what the sample size will be or the matchup considerations (i.e. dominant or very good team from 1 conference playing a bad team from the other representing most of the matchups).

I whole heartedly believe that for the majority of g6, success is and will mostly be coaching dependent. csu vs WYO is the perfect example. Sunny was 11-4 against us and Bohl was 7-3 against them. It boiled down to coaching. They still had their market, spent more money, etc. We just had a better coach. We don't now.

 

[307bball]

First, that will be a difficult comparison because we don't know what the sample size will be or the matchup considerations (i.e. dominant or very good team from 1 conference playing a bad team from the other representing most of the matchups).

I whole heartedly believe that for the majority of g6, success is and will mostly be coaching dependent. csu vs WYO is the perfect example. Sunny was 11-4 against us and Bohl was 7-3 against them. It boiled down to coaching. They still had their market, spent more money, etc. We just had a better coach. We don't now.

Yes...It will be majority coaching dependent...and the hierarchy of teams will sort the coaches. The best coaches will be at the best programs in the best conferences. If we want to be the top of the g6...better pay for the top g6 coach...and even that won't be a guarantee because that's not the only thing at play. The problem is that even if you are terrible and luck into a great coach you will only be able to keep them until everybody recognizes they are great. Then you are right back where you started.

Anyways...conferences get ranked against each other all the time...It doesn't mean everything but it sure doesn't mean nothing. Our "rivalry" with CSU and USU is now across a conference border. If we play them every year and maintain a .500 winning percentage over time against them then...great. That's like the best case scenario...I guess best case is we continue the recent 70% winning rate against them but that's probably unlikely. The other scenarios are we play them every year and lose a lot more and go through coaches doing it because historically that is how you lose the coaching job at Wyoming...or we just don't play them much and we have a schedule with a lack of regional historic rivalries....I'm not a fan of the last two outcomes and despite your assertions to the alternative I'm not convince those are low likelihood.

 

[OrediggerPoke]

I guess it depends on what you consider "raining cash".

Wyoming's own 1WYO NIL collective had a pool of about $18.7 million dollars to pay athletes at Wyoming last year. To be fair, they only paid out around $4.1 million, with about 80% of that going to football players. These numbers do not include any private NIL deals outside of the 1WYO collective.

Raining cash? I suppose it's all a matter of perspective.

BYU is paying a single basketball player over $7 million next year.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Yes...It will be majority coaching dependent...and the hierarchy of teams will sort the coaches. The best coaches will be at the best programs in the best conferences. If we want to be the top of the g6...better pay for the top g6 coach...and even that won't be a guarantee because that's not the only thing at play. The problem is that even if you are terrible and luck into a great coach you will only be able to keep them until everybody recognizes they are great. Then you are right back where you started.

Anyways...conferences get ranked against each other all the time...It doesn't mean everything but it sure doesn't mean nothing. Our "rivalry" with CSU and USU is now across a conference border. If we play them every year and maintain a .500 winning percentage over time against them then...great. That's like the best case scenario...I guess best case is we continue the recent 70% winning rate against them but that's probably unlikely. The other scenarios are we play them every year and lose a lot more and go through coaches doing it because historically that is how you lose the coaching job at Wyoming...or we just don't play them much and we have a schedule with a lack of regional historic rivalries....I'm not a fan of the last two outcomes and despite your assertions to the alternative I'm not convince those are low likelihood.

If it is correct that we can't afford a buyout, then our success the next 7-10 years rests on the shoulders of Burman and the PBJ hire. Again, if people who say we can't afford his buyout are correct and PBJ is mediocre or worse, then we suck for 4 years. Then we'll probably suck another 2 even if we somehow made the right hire next time. No mythical external factors. No conference affiliation. Just 1 decision by the person in charge and performance by the person hired.

If the next hire is a hit, then we'd probably have 2 more good years before he is poached followed by 2 bad years for the new hire after that.

The merits, and I use the term loosely, of the PBJ hire loom very large.

 

[doreno5]

I guess it depends on what you consider "raining cash".

Wyoming's own 1WYO NIL collective had a pool of about $18.7 million dollars to pay athletes at Wyoming last year. To be fair, they only paid out around $4.1 million, with about 80% of that going to football players. These numbers do not include any private NIL deals outside of the 1WYO collective.

Raining cash? I suppose it's all a matter of perspective.

That is significantly more than I would have expected but I assume a big chunk of that were one-time donations. The problem is sustaining that level of funding for the long haul. Absent Musk, Bezos , or Gates suddenly deciding UW athletics are their favorite place to donate , I do not see it lasting.

 

[307bball]

If it is correct that we can't afford a buyout, then our success the next 7-10 years rests on the shoulders of Burman and the PBJ hire. Again, if people who say we can't afford his buyout are correct and PBJ is mediocre or worse, then we suck for 4 years. Then we'll probably suck another 2 even if we somehow made the right hire next time. No mythical external factors. No conference affiliation. Just 1 decision by the person in charge and performance by the person hired.

If the next hire is a hit, then we'd probably have 2 more good years before he is poached followed by 2 bad years for the new hire after that.

The merits, and I use the term loosely, of the PBJ hire loom very large.

Larger than the hiring of Koenning?.... Only partly kidding .... But we were a lot further from the absolute bottom at that time. Never recovered.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Larger than the hiring of Koenning?.... Only partly kidding .... But we were a lot further from the absolute bottom at that time. Never recovered.

Good analogy. I agree with it.