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MEGA Conference Realignment and lawsuits Megathread: Stories, Tales, Lies, and Exaggerations

Ageee
Cryptical Envelopment said:
I was on Team B1G at first, particularly for the academics and like-minded universities (to some extent) but I just can't get over the geography of it all.

We really want to play a cold weather midwest schedule in football, where the majority of our road games are 1000+ miles away?

I randomly picked Maryland as an example. This year their B1G road schedule is (with flying distance from Miami):

@Michigan State (1195 miles)
@Ohio State (992 miles)
@Northwestern (1189 miles)
@nebraska (1405 miles)
@Rutgers (1068 miles)

Blech, and brrrrrr. And add 30-50%~ more miles if you're driving.

Same for basketball, we'd be at a decided disadvantage where we'd travel like 5x farther each season than the other conference members. Wears ya down.

We want baseball to be in the B1G? What in the heavenly ****. Not even going there.

And lord, how in the **** are the girls and other sports going to deal? 1000 mile flights for the volleyball team?

The travel burdens will add up, IMO.

The SEC makes a lot more sense to me. You want to play where you recruit, and the SEC footprint is where the most top talent in the country is, and it's close to us. A lot of recruits and their families want to be able to get to road games, etc. Not to mention the SEC teams wouldn't be able to recruit against us with "SEC! SEC!" nonsense.

If the SEC is able to add say, Miami and UNC to start, it elevates its academic reputation somewhat. Vandy, UNC, Miami, UF, UGA, and TAMU is a formidable top tier.
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Agree on the travel. But the same for USC and UCLA, no? Makes no sense, especially when other sports are factored in.

Maybe a conference move is FB only, and remaining sports remain in a basketball-centric ACC? Nah…
 
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TemplarCane said:
Ageee

Agree on the travel. But the same for USC and UCLA, no? Makes no sense, especially when other sports are factored in.

Maybe a conference move is FB only, and remaining sports remain in a basketball-centric ACC? Nah…
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Yes but USC and UCLA are in a pickle. They too are in a dying conference, and the SEC and B1G, the only two conferences that are going to matter, are equally ******* far away for them. They don't have a better option.

Miami is already in an SEC state. We geographically fit right in. And we even have a built in rivalry already to boot!
 
Cryptical Envelopment said:
I was on Team B1G at first, particularly for the academics and like-minded universities (to some extent) but I just can't get over the geography of it all.

We really want to play a cold weather midwest schedule in football, where the majority of our road games are 1000+ miles away?

I randomly picked Maryland as an example. This year their B1G road schedule is (with flying distance from Miami):

@Michigan State (1195 miles)
@Ohio State (992 miles)
@Northwestern (1189 miles)
@nebraska (1405 miles)
@Rutgers (1068 miles)

Blech, and brrrrrr. And add 30-50%~ more miles if you're driving.

Same for basketball, we'd be at a decided disadvantage where we'd travel like 5x farther each season than the other conference members. Wears ya down.

We want baseball to be in the B1G? What in the heavenly ****. Not even going there.

And lord, how in the **** are the girls and other sports going to deal? 1000 mile flights for the volleyball team?

The travel burdens will add up, IMO.

The SEC makes a lot more sense to me. You want to play where you recruit, and the SEC footprint is where the most top talent in the country is, and it's close to us. A lot of recruits and their families want to be able to get to road games, etc. Not to mention the SEC teams wouldn't be able to recruit against us with "SEC! SEC!" nonsense.

If the SEC is able to add say, Miami and UNC to start, it elevates its academic reputation somewhat. Vandy, UNC, Miami, UF, UGA, and TAMU is a formidable top tier.
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You make a good case..

although I think the travel is manageable in football for 4 or 5 conference away games a year.

But much tougher for all the other sports.
 
Travel is only a problem if you're poor, and if you're poor, you'll be disqualified for ... other reasons.
 
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Cryptical Envelopment said:
I was on Team B1G at first, particularly for the academics and like-minded universities (to some extent) but I just can't get over the geography of it all.

We really want to play a cold weather midwest schedule in football, where the majority of our road games are 1000+ miles away?

I randomly picked Maryland as an example. This year their B1G road schedule is (with flying distance from Miami):

@Michigan State (1195 miles)
@Ohio State (992 miles)
@Northwestern (1189 miles)
@nebraska (1405 miles)
@Rutgers (1068 miles)

Blech, and brrrrrr. And add 30-50%~ more miles if you're driving.

Same for basketball, we'd be at a decided disadvantage where we'd travel like 5x farther each season than the other conference members. Wears ya down.

We want baseball to be in the B1G? What in the heavenly ****. Not even going there.

And lord, how in the **** are the girls and other sports going to deal? 1000 mile flights for the volleyball team?

The travel burdens will add up, IMO.

The SEC makes a lot more sense to me. You want to play where you recruit, and the SEC footprint is where the most top talent in the country is, and it's close to us. A lot of recruits and their families want to be able to get to road games, etc. Not to mention the SEC teams wouldn't be able to recruit against us with "SEC! SEC!" nonsense.

If the SEC is able to add say, Miami and UNC to start, it elevates its academic reputation somewhat. Vandy, UNC, Miami, UF, UGA, and TAMU is a formidable top tier.
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Travel distances to Big East schools were roughly the same as they’d be to Big 10 opponents, fwiw.

Our closest opponent was VT, ~900 miles away. Furthest was BC, over 1400 miles away. In between, we had WVU, Pitt, Temple, Rutgers, and Cuse.
 
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CaneInHeelCountry said:
Travel distances to Big East schools were roughly the same as they’d be to Big 10 opponents, fwiw.

Our closest opponent was VT, ~900 miles away. Furthest was BC, over 1400 miles away. In between, we had WVU, Pitt, Temple, Rutgers, and Cuse.
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Yeah it sucked! : ) Lots of complaints about long flights, winter travel delays, time away from class, expense. Certainly a fair point, and it's a feasible thing, like USC/UCLA traveling to the B1G is feasible, but joining the SEC gives us relief from all those hardships. And most importantly, IMO, is the recruiting aspect I mentioned.
 
Cryptical Envelopment said:
Yeah it sucked! : ) Lots of complaints about long flights, winter travel delays, time away from class, expense. Certainly a fair point, and it's a feasible thing, like USC/UCLA traveling to the B1G is feasible, but joining the SEC gives us relief from all those hardships. And most importantly, IMO, it the recruiting aspect I mentioned.
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It really doesn’t give us that much relief, imo.

We’re hampered by the fact the you have to go 350 miles to even get across the FL/GA line.

Miami to Athens is almost 700 miles.
Miami to Tuscaloosa, almost 800.
Miami to Knoxville, almost 900.

Aside from Gainesville, those would be our closest trips.

Bottom line is most fans would still be flying to games, and the team travel time and expense wouldn’t be much different.
 
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Alex Del Piero said:
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I know we are going to get there eventually - and I say this as someone who uses streaming services for 90% of what I watch (non-sports), but I would really prefer if the streaming services don't pick up games. Not only b/c I don't want to have to subscribe to a million different services in order to watch games, but if you are trying to switch back and forth between games, it is a lot easier to do that with cable or youtubeTV (what I use), directTV, etc. Having to switch between apps and then load the game you want makes it a lot less easy to switch back and forth.

Yes, I realize that this is definitely a first world problem
 
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Shogungts said:
It's not just being poor, it is a disadvantage to your team as well.
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I could see it being an advantage if we had a potential pool of available opponents within a 300-500 mile radius.

But we don’t. We’re ALWAYS going to need to travel at least 7-800 miles several for the majority of our games, regardless of our conference affiliation.

And unless we remain in the ACC, we’d need to travel at least one time zone away a few times a year, regardless of SEC or B10.

I understand that weather factors into thing—and agree that playing November games in Ann Arbor or Columbus would likely be a helluva lot colder than playing in Baton Rouge or Columbia SC, for example.

But I think the travel distance angle is being a bit exaggerated.
 
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CaneInHeelCountry said:
Travel distances to Big East schools were roughly the same as they’d be to Big 10 opponents, fwiw.

Our closest opponent was VT, ~900 miles away. Furthest was BC, over 1400 miles away. In between, we had WVU, Pitt, Temple, Rutgers, and Cuse.
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Yeah, we played in cold weather plenty of times in the Big East. Also, remember that it’s only cold in those parts of the country starting in November as well, Sept and October are usually pretty **** nice for football. Also as it pertains to travel time, it’s all based on flying. Not much difference between an 1.5 hour flight and a 2.5 hour flight.
 
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CaneInHeelCountry said:
It really doesn’t give us that much relief, imo.

We’re hampered by the fact the you have to go 350 miles to even get across the FL/GA line.

Miami to Athens is almost 700 miles.
Miami to Tuscaloosa, almost 800.
Miami to Knoxville, almost 900.

Aside from Gainesville, those would be our closest trips.

Bottom line is most fans would still be flying to games, and the team travel time and expense wouldn’t be much different.
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That's driving miles, right? I gave air miles. We all fly a ton, flying up to Bama, UF or UGA is a lot less stressful on the body (cramped, air pressure, dehydration) on an athlete. And the annual expense across all sports, especially non-rev... plus cold weather locations, games, delays... we did it with the Big East. Not new territory. It kinda sucked. UM wasn't thrilled I know that.
 
Cryptical Envelopment said:
That's driving miles, right? I gave air miles. We all fly a ton, flying up to Bama, UF or UGA is a lot less stressful on the body (cramped, air pressure, dehydration) on an athlete. And the annual expense across all sports, especially non-rev... plus cold weather locations, games, delays... we did it with the Big East. Not new territory. It kinda sucked. UM wasn't thrilled I know that.
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All I’m saying is that it’s not like a 3 to 4 hour flight puts that much more strain on the body than a 2 hour flight. We’re not talking about flying 6-8 hours with a few layovers to the west coast, across multiple time zones,

I understand UM complained about it quite a bit when we were in the big east. But times were much different then—Particularly financially.

When you’re scraping for pennies in a crappy conference, of course you’re going to complain about having to pay thousands of dollars more for each flight.

But a move to the B10 would surely allow us to absorb any extra cost.

All this is to say, I still think you’re overplaying the issue of distance.

If we take that out of the equation, it’s really just a matter of personal preference.
 
Yoyo82 said:
You make a good case..

although I think the travel is manageable in football for 4 or 5 conference away games a year.

But much tougher for all the other sports.
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This is the ONLY case to be made, with the additional fact that joining the BIG does nothing to aid our recruiting. There is no case for that conference over the SEC for Miami athletics. A vocal minority of our fans are stuck on it for reasons that I can't entirely wrap my head around.
 
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