Get ready to be bored with a bunch of statistics.

There are five conferences that don’t have a locked in bid to the BCS. If you go by the power ratings used by the BCS, those leagues finished 2007 in this order: MWC, WAC, CUSA, Sun Belt, and MAC.

What makes them different?

Obviously budget, fan support, exposure, coaching, recruiting, etc all have an impact. But what about things they can control?

Non-conference scheduling is in the hands of the schools (some exception for the MAC which coordinates non-conference scheduling and the power of ESPN counts as well).

So what can we learn from looking at the schedules?

1. None of the five do well against ranked non-conference opponents.

2. In games against teams from the teams with auto-qualification to the BCS (”AQ” leagues), the difference in success between C-USA, MAC, Sun Belt, and WAC is nominal. Only the MWC excelled in those games finishing one game under .500.

3. The MAC had the best winning percentage of games against FBS schools not from an AQ league but played a smaller percentage of its games against those schools. The other four, one win or one loss could have shuffled the order.

4. The two lowest rated leagues #5 MAC and #4 Sun Belt played a higher percentage of games against AQ teams. MAC highest, Sun Belt second highest. The two highest rated leagues #1 MWC and #2 WAC played were also in that order for lowest percentage of games vs. AQ teams.

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Thank you Derek Dooley.

You brought some entertainment to the off-season. Normally all the off-season news focuses on the same thirty or forty schools that get all the attention.

Dooley recently got to add the title of Athletic Director at Louisiana Tech to go with the head coach title. Being a brash young coach is one thing. People sort of expect coaches to make comments from time-to-time that don’t fit within the structured, publicly well-mannered customs of athletic administration.

Athletic administrators work with one foot in the world of athletics where “smack talk” of some degree has always been part of the landscape. The other foot is planted in the university culture where presidents, chancellors, and administrators never speak openly ill of another institution when a microphone or blabber mouth is known to be present.
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You may not remember this but I’ve got a thing about the division format and the seeding of the conference basketball tournament. I also don’t care for snide comments by media shills for the rich conferences.

I know there may be oh two people left who visit the site regularly who don’t realize that I really, really, really hate the current system.

Funny thing is, that it has always been assumed that the coaches want that format because it makes them look better. For example finishing first sounds better than finishing third or fourth or fifth.

It has backfired for Darrin Horn with at least one member of the South Carolina media.

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It was nice to see the Sun (Belt) rise in the NCAA Tournament with USA’s at-large berth and Western’s run to the Sweet 16.

The timing could not have been better.

For most of its existence since the American South and Sun Belt merged, I-A or FBS football programs have been the minority in the conference or a bare majority. Asking schools that do not play football or who do no play FBS football to spend basketball earnings on a sport they do not play is a challenge. A challenge that is even tougher when the schools benefiting are cross-state rivals.

Now the 13 member Sun Belt has 8 members currently playing FBS football, Western Kentucky wraps up transition this year and will be a football member in 2009. South Alabama plans to be a football playing member by 2013. Of the 13 members 10 either play football in the Sun Belt or are working toward that goal.

A few years ago the leadership at Western Kentucky and South Alabama after having earned a combined four NCAA basketball units would have questioned the wisdom of the money they brought to the league being used to assist football when Western was playing I-AA or FCS football and USA wasn’t playing football at all. Today they would have to see such spending as an investment in their own futures.

What sort of impact could an additional boost of revenue of around $600,000 a year over six years have for football?

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As you possibly have noticed over the past few years, I enjoy a good rant.

UALR Women’s Basketball Coach Joe Foley does too and more importantly he’s been getting results on the court. That’s a great combination in a coach.

Coach Foley and his team currently hold a half game lead over Arkansas State. If they defeat Louisiana Monroe on Saturday they win the Sun Belt West and will not only clinch the #2 seed, they will clinch the second best record in the Sun Belt.

If UALR loses at ULM, the Trojans fall into a tie with Arkansas State. The two teams split the regular season. The next tie-breaker is to compare winning percentage against the highest seeded team and proceed down the order until someone has an advantage. They both lost their single game against WKU and both won their single game against MT. Next would be ULM, ASU split and a UALR loss would be a split as well. Both defeated USA. Next would be either North Texas or FIU. ASU defeated North Texas twice, UALR won its only meeting. ASU won its only meeting with FIU while UALR split. That would end up giving ASU the #2 seed as division champion.

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Ten days ago I wrote advocating the end of divisional play in the Sun Belt.

The passage of  ten days has made the case for scrapping divisions even more compelling.

Right now Western Kentucky and South Alabama are tied for first in the east and for regular season champion, with USA holding the tiebreaker. They lead Middle Tennessee by three games with six games left and lead the next closest teams by 4.5 games.

Unless both collapse and Middle Tennessee hits a big run, the battle in the conference is between a pair of teams tied at 11-1. At stake is the regular season championship, a guarantee of at least an NIT berth, a first round bye and top seed in the conference tournament. Most likely the loser of this stretch run finishes with the second best record in the conference and falls to the third seed.

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Scrap the divisions.

I’ve not been a fan of the divisional format since scheduling does not follow a true divisional format where everyone plays home/home within the division and then single round-robin outside. The quirks that come with an odd number of teams get magnified when it is layered on top of a divisional format

Last season Arkansas State and Louisiana Monroe tied for third best record in the conference but by winning the tie-breaker Arkansas State earned the #2 seed in the tournament over Western Kentucky who had finished a game ahead in overall standings.

This year the same scenario is brewing.

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We hear about America being the land where you can dream big and anyone can grow up to be president or head of a major company. It’s basically true yet it happens for only a tiny fraction of people. Why some and not others? Part of it is just plain ol dumb luck, but a huge part of it is thinking big.

There has been a malaise dragging down the Sun Belt, and it at times has been fostered by the worst people possible, coaches. Former UALR coach Wimp Sanderson fielded some good teams but he preached two lines that I think many in the Sun Belt never challenged because they believed those lines.

The first was that our schools are so consumed by the shadow of the bigger name programs within our home states that we cannot garner much support and the support we gain will have to be from people who pick a Sun Belt team to be their second favorite. Obviously we stand in some pretty big shadows. Four of the last five national champions in football were won by schools located in Sun Belt country as have the last two champions in men’s basketball.

Can we draw our own fans?

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The New Orleans Bowl faced a sparse crowd but the game was a success for ESPN.

The R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl pitting FAU against Memphis was the most watched New Orleans Bowl since the inaugural game drawing 1.6 million viewers.

Overall of the 32 bowl games the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl was 26^th among the bowl games in viewer-ship.

A number of bowl games had outstanding years in drawing viewers. The Capital One had its largest audience since 1998. The Chick-Fil-A Bowl drew the second largest ESPN bowl game audience since 1990. The Holiday Bowl audience was up 7% and was only behind the Chick-Fil-A among ESPN games this year. The Music City and Motor City each drew their largest audiences since the first games. Champs Sports and Meineke Car Care Bowls drew their best TV audience ever. Las Vegas Pure Pioneer had its best television audience since 2002. The Poinsettia Bowl doubled its tv viewers over last year. Pappajohns.com drew the second largest ESPN2 bowl audience since 2002. Each BCS game on Fox won that night’s ratings, the first time that has happened since the BCS began.

Games drawing a smaller audience than New Orleans:

-The television audience for the ESPN2 telecast of the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl was slightly larger than the audience for the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl matching East Carolina and Boise State on ESPN.

-The NFL Network is still struggling to find a television audience as the Texas Bowl pitting Houston and TCU drew a fifth of the television audience despite being a great success at the gate.

-The Humanitarian Bowl matching Georgia Tech and Fresno State also on ESPN2 drew less than half the households of the New Orleans Bowl.

-Another NFL Network telecast, the Insight.com Bowl pitting Oklahoma State against Indiana drew slightly better than a fourth of the households brought in by the New Orleans Bowl.

-The International Bowl in Toronto on ESPN featuring Rutgers vs. Ball State drew a slightly smaller television audience than the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl.

- The GMAC Bowl in Mobile drew about two-thirds of the television audience of the New Orleans Bowl for its Tulsa vs. Bowling Green game.

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Some thoughts in the wake of the BCS Championship game.

* I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it. I’ve been to the playoffs been to the bowls. The bowls are more fun. Having the extra time for fans to get to the game makes the difference.

* The BCS Championship is actually fan friendly. LSU and Ohio State received more tickets for sale to their fans than the two Super Bowl teams will receive. That makes for a great atmosphere.

* The lesson that should be learned from this bowl season is that schedule matters. Hawaii hurt itself all night when receivers retreated to try get breakaway plays. That’s a bad habit learned from playing inferior opponents. Playing a weak schedule teaches bad habits. It was visible in the play of Memphis, Arkansas, Illinois, and Ohio State.

* Several times during bowl season you heard chants of S-E-C. Their fans get it. The teams may enjoy kicking each others head in but a commitment to excellence across the board pays dividends. Look at the Mountain West, two dreadful teams and the rest good to really good and they finish with a 4-1 bowl record. SEC 5-2 record with one really bad team in Ole Miss and a blah Vanderbilt. The SEC’s only losses were Arkansas (dreadful non-conference slate, coach turmoil) and Florida (distracted by the Heisman hype). The Pac-10 went 4-2. The league has three crummy teams and their losses were UCLA (coaching turmoil) and Arizona State who fell all the way to the Holiday Bowl after appearing to be BCS bound. The conferences with horrible bowl seasons (Big 10, ACC, CUSA, MAC, and WAC) were loaded with mediocre to bad teams. If you don’t have to be good to be a contender, it’s hard to be good. The ACC champ lost to arguably the Big 12’s third best, MAC champion lost to the Big 10’s ninth best, CUSA to the SEC’s 8th or 9th best, Big 10 at least lost to the SEC champion but outside the first quarter appeared out-matched. The Sun Belt fielded only three bad teams this year, if there is a burning desire for success it will show in non-conference play and hopefully in ticket sales and bowl opportunities.

* Plus One seems to be gaining traction and it sure looks like the best compromise between playoff and bowl proponents at this point. The money would be nice, but more importantly it keeps the regular season meaningful, saves the bowl tradition, yet puts more teams in the title hunt. More teams in the title hunt should mean more teams willing to travel to boost their credentials, that is good for the game.

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