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P12 - MWC

ragtimejoe1 said:
If we had a strong athletic department that included a football team that gets ranked and wins a championship once in a while along with a really solid bball program, we would have to make a decision about joining the pac (sans unknown or nonpublic riffs in the MWC).

My tea leaves say osu and wsu wanted to remain in control so reverse merger was out. They also wanted to have, to the best of their ability, a conference that would be somewhat palatable to cal and stanford should the acc collapse. Either way, usu didn't get in because of some great market advantage. They are just a better run athletic department with better product.

Our product largely stinks, so there we are. On the bright side, we have a chance and environment to improve on it. On the dim side we have the same culture running the show...a culture that tends to regress to the bottom end of our level of competition.
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I trust the folks that opine on media penetration metrics and market desirability....those pretty much have Wyoming's market dead last. Does the Pac care about that?....I can't imagine they don't. Now..I do believe they had to hold their nose as they invited USU and CSU but they had to invite somebody. They took the best of the rest, in their opinion. They had thier reasons...I would be shocked if market factors did not feed into that decision.

What about who has a "better run" athletic department? I would put the stinking product that UW has produced next the the stinking product that CSU has produced and challenge anybody to tell me the difference...just like you did when you dove into viewership numbers. None of these athletic programs are lighting the world on fire. Wyoming and USU have the exact same amount of conference wins in football for the last ten years and both are better than CSU. In order to rank them you have to go into non-revenue sports pretty heavily....is that what is moving the needle? That is just if you consider the only product of an athletic department to be results on the playing field. What about donations? what about attendance? Facilities? Are we being blown away in these categories?

I'm getting to the point now that perhaps the only reason Wyoming wasn't even considered is the conspiratorial one of the MWC defectors not wanting us or OSU, and WSU not wanting us.... also out of our control.
 
307bball said:
I trust the folks that opine on media penetration metrics and market desirability....those pretty much have Wyoming's market dead last. Does the Pac care about that?....I can't imagine they don't. Now..I do believe they had to hold their nose as they invited USU and CSU but they had to invite somebody. They took the best of the rest, in their opinion. They had thier reasons...I would be shocked if market factors did not feed into that decision.

What about who has a "better run" athletic department? I would put the stinking product that UW has produced next the the stinking product that CSU has produced and challenge anybody to tell me the difference...just like you did when you dove into viewership numbers. None of these athletic programs are lighting the world on fire. Wyoming and USU have the exact same amount of conference wins in football for the last ten years and both are better than CSU. In order to rank them you have to go into non-revenue sports pretty heavily....is that what is moving the needle? That is just if you consider the only product of an athletic department to be results on the playing field. What about donations? what about attendance? Facilities? Are we being blown away in these categories?

I'm getting to the point now that perhaps the only reason Wyoming wasn't even considered is the conspiratorial one of the MWC defectors not wanting us or OSU, and WSU not wanting us.... also out of our control.
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bsu for brand football is no brainer. Solid to good bball.

suds for recent bball and solid football.

Fresno relatively strong football and still a decent brand from the old play anyone anywhere anytime days. A couple mwc champs in past 7 years.

csu can be decent in bball recently--a few tourney bids. Nonrevenue sports. I think similar institution as wsu with vet school, and strong financial commitment to improving.

usu solid to good bball. Have won regular season or mwc tourney 3 or 4 of last 7 and been tourney runner up a few times. Won the mwc in football a few years ago.

Remaining
UNM cross country and can have good bball at times. Football is a mess.
Sjsu can field decent football once in a while. Terrible bball.
Unlv said no
AF, academy so hard to tell on this one.
NV has been mostly dysfunctional in athletics. 7 to 10 years ago good bball.
WYO decent football. Unknown if that can continue without Bohl. Pretty much dysfunctional everywhere else.

I think it sorts itself out pretty easily based mostly on performance.
 
ragtimejoe1 said:
bsu for brand football is no brainer. Solid to good bball.

suds for recent bball and solid football.

Fresno relatively strong football and still a decent brand from the old play anyone anywhere anytime days. A couple mwc champs in past 7 years.

csu can be decent in bball recently--a few tourney bids. Nonrevenue sports. I think similar institution as wsu with vet school, and strong financial commitment to improving.

usu solid to good bball. Have won regular season or mwc tourney 3 or 4 of last 7 and been tourney runner up a few times. Won the mwc in football a few years ago.

Remaining
UNM cross country and can have good bball at times. Football is a mess.
Sjsu can field decent football once in a while. Terrible bball.
Unlv said no
AF, academy so hard to tell on this one.
NV has been mostly dysfunctional in athletics. 7 to 10 years ago good bball.
WYO decent football. Unknown if that can continue without Bohl. Pretty much dysfunctional everywhere else.

I think it sorts itself out pretty easily based mostly on performance.
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I agree that if you rank athletic departments by how good the programs are within the department you end up with something like what you have written...I think you are way off on CSU though...vet school doesn't matter at all to athletic department performance. I would argue that everything behind SDSU is pretty flat though...BSU and SDSU might run away with it because of their national relevance in football and basketball but the difference between whomever you put third and last isn't gigantic. Also...it would shock me to the core if Olympic sports was more than an afterthought in these discussions.

Do you agree that the only thing that was remotely in the University's of Wyoming control that could have helped them get an invitation or be included in a higher echelon of college athletics was higher performance by UW Football program along with middle of the pack MBB results?
 
307bball said:
The pathway to mattering in college sports in 2025, for Wyoming, was to have had a much more competitive product than it has accomplished. Sadly..the long term planning that was done at UW back in the 90's allowed facility construction to become primary. That was an error. We are seeing the results now.
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I was invited twice by the UW Athletic Department in the early 2000’s to participate in a fan forum to discuss how to increase fan engagement.

The things most fans came up with were lame such as:

“I can’t attend a 12 noon kickoff because I want to watch little Johnny play soccer.”

“Don’t have any home games during hunting season.”

“Don’t have home games during high school football playoffs”.

“Not interested in the FCS or MAC opponents.”

“Recruit more Wyoming high school players.”

I told them both times that they could never placate everyone paying attention to those kind of suggestions. My position loud and clear was put a winner on the field. I pointed out that basketball grew in attendance as it was successful. Win and expect to win and the fans will want to be there.
 
307bball said:
I agree that if you rank athletic departments by how good the programs are within the department you end up with something like what you have written...I think you are way off on CSU though...vet school doesn't matter at all to athletic department performance. I would argue that everything behind SDSU is pretty flat though...BSU and SDSU might run away with it because of their national relevance in football and basketball but the difference between whomever you put third and last isn't gigantic. Also...it would shock me to the core if Olympic sports was more than an afterthought in these discussions.

Do you agree that the only thing that was remotely in the University's of Wyoming control that could have helped them get an invitation or be included in a higher echelon of college athletics was higher performance by UW Football program along with middle of the pack MBB results?
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csu did make the tourney 3 of last 4 years. We have 3 in 25 years (if you count first 4).

It's probably a pretty fine line but that's a metric they beat us in. We were better in football but still largely 4th or worse.

For your last statement I would reword as the thing that was totally in our control was football and bball success. The failure of those is largely, mostly, maybe entirely why we find ourselves overlooked. The failure of those was entirely within our control. So yes, I agree.
 
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