- February 3rd, 2022, 11:47 am
#639395
With Ian notoriously playing things close to the vest, there are other ways to find out what is going on in regard to plans for the transition to CUSA. The AD at NM State handled a question on the recent CUSA meeting in Dallas on a podcast that has proven to be very enlightening:
Yeah, it wasn't much. I left from Nacogdoches, Texas to Dallas on Sunday. And we had a dinner with ADs, some of the campus CEOs, there were some sponsors there, and some of the Conference USA leadership. On Monday, we met and a big topic of discussion .. there was a television committee for Conference USA and I was one of the people on it. And we were going to analyze, there was a few groups that Conference USA has considered hiring, just like the WAC did and every other conference does to represent them in the upcoming television negotiations. So we heard multiple proposals. Then everybody kind of got to say their piece on who they though might be the best firm to represent us. OK.
The second discussion was hey we are at nine, where do we want to go from here? Do we want to go to ten or stay at nine? What does everybody think? That vote will be taken by the existing membership of which we are not. But they certainly wanted to hear what we had to say. And pretty early on in a free flowing discussion we said, "Hey, look. It would probably behoove us to get a consultant, a media consultant on board, and then ask them. Hey, this is the question we ar grappling with. Nine or ten? Here are the institutions that could be a tenth full member or football-only member and how do you see that affecting these negotiations." I think that is the smart play. We also said we wanted to hear from Dave Brown. I have talked about Dave Brown a bunch of times. He is our scheduling guru for gridiron and football. And I know with a football landscape is the SEC going to go to night conference games? What do you think will be easier? What do you think will be better for our league? A 9-team football league or a 10-team football league. So we want to hear from those two experts before we take that next step as a conference and really getting into it. But I really think that will take place soon.
And then the other thing we discussed is with the new schools, some of the sports might need to find a new home. For us, mens tennis, womens swimming and diving. Right now we have to have six in the league. Would we merge with another league? Would we join another league? Would another league give us those sports? So similar to like in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). You know swimming & diving. Well NAU is in our conference. We would just accept them as an affiliate member. In mens soccer, there are a number of affiliates. Incarnate Word and Air Force, etc. What have you, I believe. So we have affiliates and there would some sports. And that was pretty much it before we hopped back on the airplane and went home. But it was good to see everybody face to face. This was the first time that I met the new AD at Florida International. It was the first time I had met the Jacksonville State Athletic Director. So I think it was good to make those connections and see each other in person.