In all of the AAC discussion I am shocked at the talk about Southern Miss and Marshall being candidates, or even the best candidates. No question that both have done well on the field/court in C-USA, but USM’s former AD talked about how he had to make a choice about power washing the black mildew off their football stadium or paying for scholarships. He paid the bills, and then got the hell out of there as quickly as he could. Of course he went to ECU only to learn that they have no money either.
Marshall is even more interesting. I saw a story about the opioid problems in Huntington, WV on 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago. Their addiction rate is 8 times the national average. The population in Huntington has been dropping steadily since 1950 and today is about half of that high mark. It doesn’t surprise me that Marshall’s enrollment is declining, and I suspect as the use of coal is reduced or banned the demise of that area will only accelerate.
These two schools are the last girls left in the bar at closing time, and hoping someone is wearing beer goggles.
Fans are saying they are the best candidates because they have the best football history in current CUSA. Fans only care about football and think that is the only or major factor in who a conference chooses.
Historic or even current football performance doesn’t hit the top three of what AD’s and U Presidents will be looking for in this. Might not even be a top 5 consideration.
Donating to the 49er club has been mentioned as a way to support this initiative. I have gone lean over the last 4-5 years due to my frustration with the past regime. I have since started slowly moving back in the other direction with Hill and what he has done to this point.
However, I’m gonna kick it up a notch right now. This point in time is the absolute best time to put our money where our mouth is.
I had hoped there was a comment section on the online donation site where I could flag my donation as being in support of the AAC…but there is no such section. I plan to still make a nice additional donation for the cause and I’ll just use social media with a hashtag of some sort.
What kind of hashtag can we call agree to use to show that we just made/increased our 49er Club donation for the cause???
Something that hasn’t been addressed, if they are likely going to be independent in 2020, how are they possibly going to have a full schedule? That’s 8 games to replace and with how far out football schedules it’d be extremely hard to do.
It may be that Uconn uses the scheduled games a few years out as bargaining chips to mitigate the $10 million exit fee. Those games could be used as OOC games for the AAC members. This could probably be done whether Uconn remains independent or affiliates with a conference somewhere.
Just doubled my prior donation for the 2018-2019 athletic campaign.
I’ve been holding back because I had no faith that my money was being used to properly progress the program. I believe in Mike Hill and he’s gonna get what I was holding back.
It’s interesting in the pic on that article it says he cant see AAC taking us, unless we finish JRS expansion…that’s after ripping alot of schools on the list. This gives me hope that when we lay out the plans we have, things could change real fast.
So in reference to the conference change talk, these numbers put the average AAC attendance last year just under 29k. Would love to see those numbers at JRS
… Only saw those rain coats one time.