Lets get an official NNN vote

I wish our admin would s*** or get off the pot. Either make a 10 year pledge to an FCS conference (we can pay the penalty if an FBS comes calling). Or declare our FBS fast track intentions and start whoring it up for CUSA. Either way make a commitment and quit looking like a bunch of fucking scrubs playing “My First Conference”.

I believe some of us dislike CHP so much that they have seen indications of us planning to stay FCS that aren’t there or aren’t that strong.

You are right, people care about the D1-AA playoff champion. I don’t even know if they cared when it was only 1 championship. Either way, we aren’t winning the whole thing anytime soon and regular folks would barely care about a playoff berth.

What more do you need them to do? They’ve said it before. They’ve passed up on full membership in the CAA.

Why do we need to shout it from the mountain tops about what we are doing? How do you know we haven’t already whored ourselves out to CUSA behind closed doors?

I mean, sheesh, just today or whatever Phil basically said “we layed one of our cards down too early.” Just calm down. They look like scrubs to you because they haven’t called you and told you the deal in plain words. Do you really think they took all that time deciding to get the team, took all that money, hired the awesome staff we have so far JUST to have no plan already on what we are going to do?

I hope you’re right, bust.

I think we’re being softened up for the “welcome to the CAA basketball” speech.

I do strongly disagree with the job CHP has done. I can’t deny that. However I don’t think I’m imagining him making comments about us being FCS for more than a few years. Am I wrong? It’s happened before. Actually, it happens all the time.

Didn’t he say he would be dead and buried before we expanded our stadium? I don’t know of many FBS schools with a 15,000 seat stadium.

I’ll say it again, the market hates confusion.

CAA all sports is not the end of ze world. In fact, I think a change of scenery could do us some good. The Atlantic Ten experiment has not worked out. Might be time turn over a new leaf…in the best FCS Football conference in 'Murica.

Just some food for thought.

Grass could be greener on the other side…

Didn’t he say he would be dead and buried before we expanded our stadium? I don’t know of many FBS schools with a 15,000 seat stadium.[/quote] No. Before ‘we have 40,000.’ You can be FBS with <40k seats.

I think this is similar to saying “The American experiment has not worked out” if George W. Bush was our first president.

Didn’t he say he would be dead and buried before we expanded our stadium? I don’t know of many FBS schools with a 15,000 seat stadium.[/quote] No. Before ‘we have 40,000.’ You can be FBS with <40k seats.[/quote]

Yes, but you don’t expand 5000 seats at a time when you have plans in place for expanding to 40k.

I think this is similar to saying “The American experiment has not worked out” if George W. Bush was our first president.[/quote]

What teams will you miss in the A10? Xavier, maybe? Only because they are a “national name” now And we’ve only beaten them twice (in our two worst years).

And what teams from the A10 will miss us? Possibly Richmond, only because they have our number every year and we are a bus-ride away.

We have brought nothing to the basketball table since joining. We dominate other sports cause schools in the A10 dgaf about track and baseball.

We fit the CAA profile: geographically, philosophically, with schools of similar size and scope.

I get the bids vs bids over the years argument…but we haven’t been getting ANY of those bids…we must get our program turned around regardless of the conference!

And football, which we started to “protect” basketball, is the sport that drives the bus, and our admins are learning that the hard way.

The CAA is a two and three star with the rare four star recruit kind of conference. We are a two and (mostly) three star with the rare four star recruit kind of school.

I don’t think it’d hurt our recruiting at all and to me that is all that matters.

If offered the chance, I wonder if App State would move to CAA? It wouldn’t be a step up to FBS football, but it would put them in a conference with more like-minded institutions.

[quote=“jfickett, post:32, topic:25469”]I get the bids vs bids over the years argument…but we haven’t been getting ANY of those bids…we must get our program turned around regardless of the conference![/quote] This is the only part of the argument I really care about it. Us not getting bids is our fault, not the league’s. When we do get good, we would be better to have more chances at a bid, which we get in the A10.

What teams will you miss in the A10? Xavier, maybe? Only because they are a "national name" now And we've only beaten them twice (in our two worst years).
Honestly Xavier, Dayton, and Temple. And now Richmond a little. And GWU is kinda fun to hate sometimes. And UMass and Rhody a teeny bit.

It’s been said over and over on here regarding other things, but dear friends - perception is reality. We don’t exist in a college town bubble. We exist as the largest university in a top 20 metro, and we have to accept it, and act appropriately.[/quote]

Would the average person in this top 20 metro area realize that the A-10 is better than the CAA in basketball? I really don’t think they will.[/quote]
No.

When effective leadership and clear communication are absent, confusion is usually present.

I agree, but that really isn’t the fault of the conference. Same thing would have happened if we had joined the CAA instead of the A10.

I get the bids vs bids over the years argument...but we haven't been getting ANY of those bids...we must get our program turned around regardless of the conference!
Yeah, but I think this is easier if the conference is stronger. The A10 has been a stronger conference overall than the CAA by far (B-ball) even if you included Fordham, LaSalle, etc. We were worried about one bid for several years in the A10, but that would be every year in the CAA (remember the uproar over VCU even making it in the last spot this year, and they were a good team!).

I think most of the fans are hoping that Major is the guy to turn the program around. The assumption is that recruiting will improve if he does, and that we’ll start reaping more benefits of playing in a better conference. The A10 isn’t ideal for a number of reasons, but I think that at least for basketball it provides the best chances for the program to be resurrected.

When effective leadership and clear communication are absent, confusion is usually present.[/quote]
This whole time most of us have wanted clarity. We’ve wanted leadership. It’s why I wanted a coach so soon, we weren’t getting leadership.

The thing is, in most times the lack of any show of leadership or presence was on the basis of “we don’t want to show our hand too much, we might tip off potential conferences” and now we need to respond to that very thing.

I don’t know what Lambert and his staff are telling recruits about their futures now. Hopefully it is something more than “we don’t know what we don’t know”.

I hope there is a plan.

I don’t get too bent out of shape about the conference affiliation news. Keep in mind the same crowd that’s making such a big deal about it are the same ones who said we would never get football in the first place.

I am surprised the process has been so public to this point…

Sure it may be alittle more difficult to schedule games but I’m excited about the teams we’ll be playing over the next two years when we’ll be an Independent.

Just remember in two years we’ll be playing in our very own on-campus stadium that will be one of the finest FCS facilities in the country!

I do have one request… if you’re delusional enough to think we’ll be playing in the Big East in the next 10 years… PLEASE stay off the other message boards!! You’re making us all look bad!

GO NINERS!

When effective leadership and clear communication are absent, confusion is usually present.[/quote]
This whole time most of us have wanted clarity. We’ve wanted leadership. It’s why I wanted a coach so soon, we weren’t getting leadership.

The thing is, in most times the lack of any show of leadership or presence was on the basis of “we don’t want to show our hand too much, we might tip off potential conferences” and now we need to respond to that very thing.

I don’t know what Lambert and his staff are telling recruits about their futures now. Hopefully it is something more than “we don’t know what we don’t know”.

I hope there is a plan.[/quote]

Even if we have a plan, the key in jumping to FBS is to be a part of someone else’s plans.