tyndal23 wrote: ↑October 27th, 2022, 1:43 am
It is G5 - name the teams that travel well that aren’t going P5 in 23...we just “sold out” our very first home game. Once again, we are a nationally scattered fan base just getting our National alumni to tune in even on streaming tv, most have another P5 team they root for. Without playing and winning 4 or more P5 teams over a 5 plus year period, we aren’t building a “travel fan base”. Hugh said we were pretty much “forced to join CUSA” due to shifting climate. That may be true ( or not) but don’t kid yourself by thinking CUSA leapfrogs us anywhere in to a National Brand vs a P5 heavy Independent schedule would have. Name 1 scheduled home game you are excited to “fly” or drive 4 hours plus in next 5years. Suppose we do “dominate CUSA” and make a 12 team playoff in next 5 years with lowest SOS of all conferences. What next tier G5 Conference “invites” us to come dominate them? No recent conference realignment decision has been made based on “ performance”. Maybe our new president decides to double campus capacity and our student body gets us to 40k stadium ( minimum for Big 12 ) and our natural/evangelical national following tunes in for the Streaming TV numbers for our Boise St type records ( vs CUSA ). All that takes 10 years minimum. Hopefully I am dead wrong and everything “ just grows” , But not one on this board has laid out how G5 “anything” supercedes the growth potential we have/had as an Independent other than “ our hoops and baseball” will be in tougher conferences.
Our attendance in the lending tree bowl game was the smallest in that bowls 22 year history not including the covid season. It had half the attendance as the previous all time low attendance and that bowl has been all G5 schools throughout its history to include 20 appearances from MAC schools.
Our 2019 cure bowl game was the lowest attended cure bowl in its 5 year history up to that point. Again that bowl is exclusively G5s. We are wanting better bowl games but keep setting records at bowl games for lowest attendance. Not a good look for a school with our aspirations. I hope it doesn't become a long term pattern.
You keep saying we can't build a national brand in C-USA like BYU didn't become a national brand in the WAC and MWC. They were already a national brand before they became independent. Boise state also became a household name in the WAC before later moving onto MWC. Other programs have shown we absolutely can significantly grow the brand in C-USA.
Also basketball might not be a huge factor in conference realignment but if we are talking about scheduling tough and building a national brand why are you content playing against bellarmine and North Florida if we can be playing solid competition that will fill the arena like NMSU? Gonzaga is proof that we absolutely can build a national brand through basketball but history says we should at least be in a mid major conference if we want a shot at any kind of sustained success in the ncaa tourney. At this time and place its time to move on from the P5 equivalent independence dream at least until circumstances change again.