Originally Posted by Sea Bass
Dayton wants to join the the NBE which does not want them.
The real question is how to move forward. Joining the AAC would merely be treading water.
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I would wait for 2 or 3 years, can't remember which, when the AAC's contract has expired. Currently, the AAC's contract has more money made on a per school basis and gets more games on ESPN networks. This past season, they had UC v. SMU on a Thursday night on big ESPN. This would mean more visibility and dollars for us.
While the AAC's next contract structure is TBD, we can still take a guess based on the what it will likely entail based on the following factors. 1.) The current contract was agreed upon in a time of distress when they were not even sure the conference would live the length of the entire contract as potential Big 12 expansion was looming. Also, this qualified as a mismatch of various schools, would not blame anyone to not wanting to join for this reason though. This naturally lowered the value of the contract due to the instability. 2.) Also, Wichita State and Navy were not accounted for in the current contract. I believe Wichita State I don't need to explain why on this front. With Navy for their football, they had a separate contract for televising the home games on CBS Sports and were thus not included in the contract. Kind of like ND and the ACC except ND plays other sports in the ACC and they aren't in the conference for football but still have the contract with NBC. With the value of Navy football and the fact that Wichita State is a media darling, that would have to inherently increase the value of the conference right off the bat. 3.) ESPN is going to loose a good chunk of content due to the fact that they are loosing half of their media rights to the Big Ten. This means more spaces for sports to fill. Yes, ESPN is loosing more money than what they would like but they could pay the AAC or any smaller conference really, more money and still have made cuts to their contracts, from a monetary sense since they would be still paying less money that what they would with half of the Big Ten.
With that said, the one thing the A-10 does have going for it is the fact that they do have a distribution model for NCAA credits that have 75% distribution for the school in the tournament. However, in order to benefit from the concept in the A-10, UD would have to make the tournament more times than not.
With AAC's movement with WSU today, the AAC showed that it is to some level serious with basketball. I suggest that when the AAC's current contract gets close to expiring that UD should be trying to reach out and listen to the talks. I consider us to be a big enough property to place some sway in the negotiating table. Make the move if we believe that the contract is more advantageous. I personally beleive that the AAC has more upside than the A-10 for the next 8 years, when the Big 12 has its GOR expire.
