#swc make money

[thefrogdalorian]

The Best of Both Worlds - Chapter Three

Din Djarin x Female Reader Modern!AU

❁ Series Masterlist ❁ My Masterlist ❁ Read on AO3 ❁

Word Count: 8323 Rating: General Summary: Your internet bestie arrives in preparation for the Star Wars convention you will attend together. Everything is set for the greatest weekend of your life! Until you arrive at the con and find yourself overwhelmed by all the crowds and noise. At least you have numerous incredibly realistic Mando cosplays to distract you from how stressed you feel, and there's one in particular which is uncannily accurate... Content Warnings: Reader struggles to eat due to nerves and feels anxious due to crowds. Also, not sure if it's really a warning, but there's some allusions to fandom discourse in this one, particularly how men in the SW fandom can behave towards women. So warning for fandom wank, I guess, but reader goes off on them ;) Author's Note: A very long update, wow. Honestly, this chapter was semi-autobiographical lmao. It was my exact response to how busy SWC was last year, even down to hiding under the stairs! Except I did not have a cool internet bestie (just my uncool irl bestie), nor did I stand up and speak in a panel like reader does. I did however see many amazing cosplays and the picture of the Din cosplayer is one I took there! :) Hope you like this one. Not sure for how long me updating every two days will last, but my mind is fully focused on this story for the moment, so who knows! Thank you once again to the wonderful @suresnips for being my beta! Couldn't do it without you ♡

3. This Is Why (I Don't Leave The House) [Reader's POV]

You could scarcely believe that the person you had spent so many hours of your life gushing over The Mandalorian with online, was really here with you in your little flat. Ria had arrived a few hours ago and you two had instantly gotten along famously. Somehow, it was as though you had always known her, even though this was the first time you were actually meeting in person. 

You had left your flat earlier in the evening with a mix of trepidation in the pit of your stomach and overwhelming excitement crackling like electricity as it coursed through your veins. The prospect of finally meeting someone who meant so much to you was both daunting and exhilarating. There were so many things that could go wrong, since you had never spent any time together in person and were unsure of your dynamic in that sense. There was pressure, too, particularly bearing the distance Ria had travelled from the U.S. in mind, plus the money you had both spent on ForceCon tickets. 

It was a big deal for you to invite someone over to your flat to stay with you like this. From morning until evening, the two of you would be in each other’s presence constantly. At least it was only for five nights… Ria was leaving first thing Tuesday morning as you had to get straight back to work. You quieted your nerves with the thought of how brief her visit would be, until a notification lit up your phone and made your stomach drop:

[thisistheslay]: 18:36: I’M HEREEEEEE!!!! 

Ria must be here at the station. You searched around frantically for her, trying to spot her amongst all the commuters that were barreling through the station. You realised, then, that you had no idea how tall she was compared to your own height. That was something you had never needed to know online. Finally, you spotted the brown hair and thick black glasses that you instantly recognised as your internet best friend’s, making her way towards the barrier and the incredible weekend of nerdy fun that lay before the two of you.

After approximately five seconds of being in each other’s presence, you knew that all your fears were unfounded. 

As Ria had fumbled with her phone to make the contactless payment and make her way through the gates, the way her face had lit up at the sight of you instantly allayed your anxiety. The bone-crushing hug she had pulled you into had helped too, it was hard to believe she was actually here with you. This hug was for all of the hard days you had endured, separated by many miles when the two of you had just wished you could wrap the other in your arms and be there for them. 

It struck you how poised Ria was in real life, too. At the end of the day, the two of you shared a pretty nerdy hobby, it would have been understandable if she was quiet and a little nerdy. But here your internet best friend was, pushing her way through the busy rush hour crowds and throwing the death glares of the commuters, mainly old men in suits, who had glared at the two of you for daring to embrace in the middle of the station hall and block their way from making it to the next tube. 

It always baffled you to witness how eager people were to push and shove their way through others for the sake of arriving at their destination just two or three minutes earlier. Somewhere along the way, it felt as though a basic human kindness had been lost in how Londoners seemed to interact with each other when it came to public transport. 

But that was a gripe for another time. Your best friend was here, you would not let anyone ruin that. As you emerged from the station and onto the street, you found at a loss for what to say, other than asking about her flight. Luckily, Ria filled the gap in conversation by incessantly babbling about her travels here and the shady characters she had encountered during her two layovers, as she chatted all the way back to your flat. All the guilt you had felt at having her make her own way here – you had wanted to meet her at the airport but work had prevented you from getting away on time – vanished as you saw how much confidence she possessed. Her bubbliness was almost overwhelming, you could scarcely get a word in edgeways. But secretly you were glad of it; ordinarily you found that you were a little awkward in the presence of people you had just met as you adjusted to their presence and their energy. Ria more than compensated for your social shortcomings and fortunately, your dynamic appeared as though it would translate from online into the real world.

Ria burst into your flat after you had met her at the station, full of enthusiasm, lighting every corner of your abode with the warmth and humour that had always been present online. It was incredible how much energy she had actually, considering the fact she had just endured a transatlantic flight. You marvelled at her energy levels, considering you felt exhausted after merely going to the shops. It was so amazing to have her here with you, though. 

You had laughed before meeting her about how bizarre it was that internet friends always seemed to know the most intimate details about your life, in a way that you never felt comfortable sharing with real life friends… but you had never seen each other’s legs! Yet, now Ria was here, legs and all. 

The two of you were inflating the air mattress for Ria to sleep on, keen to get an early night after so much travelling and how early the two of you would need to be up to make your way to the Dockside Convention Centre for the Con the following morning. You positioned the air mattress underneath the TV, on which you had just spent hours watching your favourite episodes of the show that had brought the two of you together. Of course, you had only intended to watch one episode. But with Mando, there was no such thing as only one episode. Once you started, you just couldn’t stop and you had ended up watching most of the second season. Both you and Ria agreed that the second half of it was incredible, but it was a bit of a slow start. Overall the pair of you preferred the first season, which was a pretty popular consensus amongst fans.

Ria had no qualms about her sleeping arrangements. London was an extortionate city at the best of times, but accommodation when ForceCon was in town – especially close to the convention centre – had meant that your offer to allow Ria to stay in your flat was the only way she had been able to afford to come. It was a debt to you that Ria was grateful for. You didn’t see it as any kind of debt though, you knew she would do the same for you. 

Plus, there was no way you could not offer to help her. If something as ridiculous as actually encountering Mando happened, she would never be able to forgive you if she was not by your side.

Ria had always been your closest friend since you had first met her online and you were so relieved that there had been no hint of awkwardness between the two of you. Ria had made herself right at home, and you had struggled to believe as the chatter and laughter continued that this was genuinely the first time the two of you had ever met in person. 

You watched in awe as Ria moved around your flat, her brown hair which she usually wore in a bob, now tied up ready to sleep. The glasses with thick-black frames were still on her face, a sure sign she would be scrolling on her phone, probably replying to people on her wildly popular blog, before she finally got some sleep. 

Now that she had changed into the tank top and shorts that she would sleep in, you could see more of the extensive tattoo collection she possessed, including a few Mandalorian tattoos. There was an outline of Mando’s helmet that was so well-done, it made you want to rush out to the nearest tattoo shop and get one for yourself. You knew there would be tattoo artists at the Con too, but you also knew you would inevitably chicken out.

With her confident nature and collection of tattoos, you were both in awe of, and utterly intimidated by your best friend. You thought, as you watched her climb onto the air mattress with a giggle, as it tossed her around, that Ria seemed so much older than you even though she was actually eighteen months younger! But that was the bizarre thing about being in your mid twenties, people either seemed to be fully formed adults or still more like teenagers. There was rarely any inbetween. 

You shouldn’t have been surprised that the two of you had gotten along so well. After all, you and Ria shared a similar sense of humour, had a similar taste in music (that wasn’t the Mandalorian soundtrack) and a love of books that had allowed your friendship to blossom into something more than purely an entirely Mando-centric friendship that you felt like you shared with some of your other online friends. It wasn’t as though the friendships were shallow or that you didn’t get on with them or anything, but you had just not spoken more deeply about other parts of your lives in the same way as you had to Ria.

“How’s the air mattress?” You asked with a smirk as you watched Ria toss and turn as the unpredictable surface tossed her around.

“It’s fine! Just a bit lively but honestly now I’m lay down, it’s super comfortable. I’ll be asleep in no time,” Ria smiled.

“Good,” You nodded. “Still can’t believe you’re really here. I thought about this moment for months but now it’s actually here, it’s surreal,”

“I can’t believe I’m here either. In this flat, which I’ve seen so many times on FaceTime. It feels so weird in the best way!” Ria laughed. “We’re going to have the best time this weekend.”

“We are. It’ll be incredible,” You breathed, trying to contain your excitement so that you would actually be able to get some sleep. The thought of being surrounded by so many fellow Star Wars nerds was electrifying.

“And don’t forget that panel tomorrow, when we finally meet Mando!” Ria exclaimed. “I’m sure he’s going to fall in love with me at first sight.”

“In your dreams, Ria,” You rolled your eyes playfully. “Goodnight, see you bright and early in the morning.”

“Goodnight bestie, I need to get my beauty sleep for Mando,” Ria added with a wink.

You shook your head with a grin on your face as you made your way into your bedroom, still utterly bemused by Ria’s utter conviction that the two of you were somehow going to encounter the man who was sworn to complete secrecy. You kind of admired Ria’s utterly unshakable confidence in the matter, even if it was a little delusional. At the end of the day, though, you knew it was all lighthearted. She wasn’t the type of person to try to hack into CCTV cameras or bribe the doctors and nurses at the hospital where a suspiciously-realistic cosplayer had surprised sick children. Ria loved The Mandalorian a great deal, but she also had other hobbies and interests. 

As you tried your best to convince your body that it really needed to sleep before the Con tomorrow, you were struck by how surreal this all felt. Tomorrow, you would travel to what would become, for the next few days, the nerd centre of the world. It was an event that you had dreamt of going to for years, where all of the latest Star Wars projects were announced. Yet, you had never imagined it would be possible to attend, due to how expensive a trip abroad would be. Luckily though, ForceCon travelled around regularly and the stars had aligned to make this possible for you. When it had been announced that the next one would be held in London, you knew you had to do whatever it took to be there.

After almost an entire year of anticipation, you knew that in just a few short hours you would be there, at the event where everyone who was anyone in the Star Wars world and the people who admired them were to be found. 

There was just one exception, though. Mando would never get to see how much the fans appreciated him. Keeping his identity a secret meant that he would never be able to feel the amount of love that fans held for him. Your heart constricted as you thought about it. Even though you had tried in vain to convince yourself that you didn’t really care that much about not knowing who he was, you thought it sad that the man, who was so beloved by people young and old, might never know how truly appreciated he was. You just hoped that one day, on his own terms, he would allow himself to feel some of it. 

It was a thought that lulled you off into sleep, underneath the large poster of Season One that hung above your single bed.

The familiar sound of the opening theme to The Mandalorian jolted you awake. With its rhythmic drum beat and melodic bass recorder, it was really the perfect alarm. What wasn’t so perfect, however, was the ungodly hour at which it had interrupted the peaceful slumber you were enjoying. You fumbled around, bleary-eyed in the early-morning light as your hand felt around the nightstand to turn it off, frustrated at being awoken. Until you remembered precisely why you were awake at five in the morning.

For a second you lay there and closed your eyes, attempting to compose yourself and stop the fluttering in your stomach as the realisation dawned upon you: It was ForceCon day!

Finally, after months and months of anticipation, you would finally get to have one of the best weekends of your life. The big day was finally here and you and Ria did not want to miss a single second of time there, hence the early start. The venue for the Con, the Dockside Convention Centre, was a considerable distance from the outskirts of the city where you lived in your rented flat, which somehow fell within your budget despite how close it was to the tube station. 

The journey to the convention centre was even further than your daily commute to the museum where you worked. The thought of a journey that would take upwards of an hour to start your day, before you had even contended with the crowds at the convention, was slightly distressing to you. But you knew that with Ria by your side, there was no doubt that you would be able to get through it.

Getting up at five meant that you had ample time to get ready for the event. Your outfit was comfortable and practical but still showed your nerdy side. It had been somewhat of a project for you in the run up to the convention, with a denim jacket that you had walked past in a shop window and fell in love with, decorated with various iron-on patches that were a nod to your favourite characters. You coupled it with a comfortable pair of black jeans that weren’t too tight – a must when doing as much walking as you were about to do this weekend – and your trusty favourite pair of shoes. 

You wandered into the main room of your flat, quietly watching as Ria sat on the small couch and expertly applied the finishing touches to her make-up. Suddenly, she snapped the handheld mirror shut and turned to face you.

“Are you ready for the greatest weekend of our lives?!” Ria asked enthusiastically.

“Yes… but no… but yes!” You exclaimed, still unsure how to process the rush of emotions that you were feeling about the day ahead.

“Let me just fill my water bottle up and then I’m ready,” Ria said as she jumped up from the couch and grabbed the titanium bottle that was covered with various Star Wars characters.You chuckled at that. Despite how effortlessly cool your friend seemed to most people, even you, it was reassuring to know that at heart, Ria was still a nerd.

After one last check that you both had your passes for the event, you grabbed the backpacks you had carefully packed the previous evening, between episodes of The Mandalorian, and headed out, to where a weekend of nerd heaven awaited. 

Waking up so early had meant that the two of you could take your time getting ready and then head out to the convention before the main rush hour began on the tube. Much as you loved your sleep and wanted to feel well-rested, being able to avoid the worst of the crowds was a deeply appealing prospect. Plus, you would have a chance to stop for breakfast closer to the convention hall and eat food that wasn’t horrendously overpriced. 

But as you sat there, staring at the sandwich you had ordered and barely taken a few bites of, you seemed to have a mental block when it came to actually finishing the thing. You wanted to, you knew you needed to get some food in your body to give yourself the fuel for contending with the crowds at the convention. Try as you might, though, your mind was not onboard.

“Too nervous?” Ria asked with a knowing smirk as she munched on some fruit.

“I guess,” You shrugged, feeling as though your stomach had tied itself into knots and was attempting to strangle itself. 

“You can always bring it with you. We’ll probably have to get in line and wait around for a while before we go inside. Perhaps you’ll feel like eating then,” Ria suggested.

“Yeah, good idea,” You smiled, suddenly feeling immensely relieved that you had someone else here with you. “I don’t know how I’d do this without you, Ria. Thank you.”

The two of you left the cafe with your takeout coffee cups and finally headed towards the convention centre. As you made your way towards the crowds of people, your stomach dropped as you noticed just how busy things were going to be. For the first few hundred feet, things weren’t too bad as you were sent down what appeared to be a wide, service road, built into the side of the convention centre with the masses of people who were all heading in the same direction as you.

You stuck to the side of the walkway, where you could see the roads and city below, and feel the fresh air on your face over the barrier that bordered one side of the walkway. As long as you could still see daylight and the crowds were moving, you were fine. Slightly stressed, but you could cope. 

However, the sight that greeted you at the end of the walkway was like something from your worst nightmares. It was your first glimpse inside the packed convention hall, where you had been so certain that you would have the greatest weekend of your life. But if it involved walking into something as stressful as the sight before you, you were not so sure that it would be the incredible experience you had built it up to be in your head.

As far as you could see, in the biggest room you had ever stepped foot in, there was an endless sea of people. The space was enormous and industrial, with a black floor and white sliding doors at the far left end that opened sporadically to let attendees into the main hall. You felt sick as you looked at it, you couldn’t survive more than a few minutes in that space, especially without knowing how long you would be there for. But no one you encountered appeared to have any idea as to how long you would be in this space. You were just glad that you had arrived a little before the doors to the con opened.

You had expected that, given that ForceCon was officially endorsed by Lucasfilm, it would at least be professionally organised. Instead, though, it seemed as though there were a small number of stressed out volunteers responsible for herding the attendees into a series of pens, with no security or leadership in sight. The poor workers looked incredibly stressed and overwhelmed by the influx of people.

“Ria, I don’t know if I can do this.” You mumbled when you noticed the crowd of people that you were being swept towards as the volunteers motioned for you to fill one of the pens. It seemed as though it would never end, as far as your eyes could see there were people. You felt panic rising in your chest, how were you ever going to get out of here?

“Just breathe, bestie. Breathe.” Ria said, placing her hand upon your back soothingly. “This won’t last forever, it’ll all be worth it. Think about the Mando cosplays! Look, there’s one over there!”

But it was no use. Not even the greatest Mandalorian cosplay in the galaxy would be able to comfort you now. Panic was rising in your chest, you felt overwhelmed by being stuck between two metal barriers in a pen full of people.

You tried your best to focus on her words as you took a seat on the cold, hard floor of the hall. The buzzing in your head was back, it grew louder and louder. You shut your eyes and stared at the floor, hands covering your ears as you willed time to go faster.

“Won’t be long now. I promise,” Ria said reassuringly.

How was she always so calm and composed when you felt as though the world was ending over a few people in a room together? It seemed almost unfair. But you knew that Ria would not want you to feel bad, she just wanted to make sure that you were going to be alright.

Mercifully, before too long, the con opened and you eventually began to move out of the enormous room. At that moment, you felt excitement bubbling up in the pit of your stomach as it dawned on you that you were about to enter Star Wars heaven. You glanced for the first time at the various incredible cosplays that surrounded you, in awe of the hours each person had dedicated to their craft.

Any relief you felt was short-lived, though. The main hallway was not much better. You couldn’t move, or stop to think. The crowd continued plodding down the hall towards a destination unknown. You were sure it was the busiest place you had ever been in your entire life. 

“Just keep swimming, swimming,” You chanted to yourself under your breath as a way to soothe yourself. 

You took deep breaths and concentrated on the rhythmic thudding of your feet as you stared up the ceiling and continued on your way. You instantly felt lighter, the beginnings of a smile traced across your features when you looked up and saw a giant poster of Mando hanging from the ceiling. If you could just make it to him, you would be most of the way down the corridor and then you would almost be at your destination: the main hall.

Focusing on the Mando poster helped and before you knew it, you were there, surrounded by a dizzying variety of stalls selling more Star Wars merch than you had ever seen gathered together in one place in your entire life. You thought you had a pretty impressive collection yourself – having a proper, adult salary had made it easier to give into your whims and purchase a variety of collectibles – but this was really something else. 

You were like a kid in a candy shop, mouth open as you wandered from stall to stall, taking in the wares of the various vendors. You felt like Mando the first time he visited Tatooine. He had wandered around just like you were, amazed by the variety of produce on display. Unlike Mando, though, you were unable to get even remotely close to the stalls. There was a throng of people gathered at each one. You were not the least bit assertive in crowds, you had no desire to engage in a battle with your elbows through a gaggle of fellow nerds for some slightly-overpriced collectibles.

“Shall we find somewhere to sit and catch our breath before the panel?” Ria asked, sensing your discomfort. For someone that you had only met face-to-face the previous evening, she was more perceptive than some people who had known you for years.

You headed out of the main hall, desperate to find any relief from the overwhelming noises and sounds that the thousands of people crammed inside the Dockside Convention Centre were currently creating. The first place that you noticed was a staircase. You ducked under the metal bar that surrounded the bottom of it and flopped down unceremoniously on the floor, finally feeling your nerves begin to settle as there was a physical barrier between you and the rest of humanity for the time being. Things suddenly felt a lot quieter and more manageable as the buzzing in your head began to subside. Ria sat opposite you, her blue eyes looking into yours concernedly.

“Ria, I’m sorry I’m such a nervous wreck. It’s just… it’s so much busier than I was expecting.” You admitted.

“Girl, shut up. This place is crazy. Like, the craziest place I have ever been in my entire life. I suffer with this shit too.” Ria admitted. “I think I’m just running on, like, the adrenaline of thinking about Mando being at that panel.” 

“Ria, he’s not going to be at the panel!” You laughed. “Please stop being delusional!” 

“Sure, there he is right now!” Ria giggled breathlessly as she pointed towards the main hallway, which had emptied somewhat since you had fought your way through it just a few minutes ago.

You had fully intended to make another jibe about Ria being delusional, but when you turned your head, the sight caused all coherent thoughts to leave your brain. You were transfixed at the sight before you. It was as though you had suddenly been transported a long time ago to a galaxy far, far away. The most incredible cosplay you had ever laid eyes upon was heading straight towards you. The armour itself was immaculate, the details on it really looked as if they were forged out of Beskar by a Mandalorian armourer. Of course you knew that screen realistic cosplays existed, you had obviously seen the viral footage of a Mando cosplayer visiting a children’s hospital a few months ago. But it was more than the armour that made your entire world pause on its axis. It was the way this cosplayer carried himself: the self-assured, confident swagger that you would recognise anywhere. The way his hands were held at his side, somewhere between relaxed and tensed, ready to put his finger on the trigger at a moment’s notice. For one brief, fleeting second: you could have sworn that the real Mando was actually walking towards you.

“Wow… that’s…” You stuttered, failing to find words that could capture your feelings towards the sight before you. 

“Um, excuse me! I’m the one who gets called delusional and obsessed with Mando, but look at you!” Ria said with a knowing smirk, clearly where words had failed… your face had betrayed you. “You’re getting flustered over a cosplay!”

You couldn’t even deny it. You were feeling more than a little flustered. It was the first time you had ever seen a Mandalorian in real life. Nothing could have prepared you for it, the presence that the man had, even from this distance. Watching the way he carried himself as he had swaggered down the main hallway had been intoxicating to behold. It was also the way with his T-visor, that you never knew exactly where his eyes were trained. They could be right on you or they could be looking right past you, you would never know. As far as you were concerned, he had picked you out from the crowd, his eyes focusing on you and only you as he walked down the hall. It was an electrifying thought, you felt little bolts of electricity all over your skin. You had half a mind to run up to him and beg him to bring you in warm or cold, he could decide, you really weren’t fussy. 

“Hellooooooo, bestie!” Ria said sarcastically, waving her hand in front of your eye line, which was still trailed off into the distance where the cosplayer had disappeared into the crowd. “Anyone home?” 

“Sorry.” You said, shyly. Now that the Mando cosplay had walked past, you had sadly realised that he was not making a bee-line for you to sweep you off your feet, you felt a little embarrassed. “I just couldn’t stop staring. That was an amazing cosplay.” 

“It was. Or maybe… it was really him!” Ria said, throwing her arms like a conspiracy theorist gif that your groupchat had sent one too many times. 

You both collapsed into full belly laughter at that. Ria was so devoted to the bit at this point that you just went along with it. You silently called a truce: you would stop calling her delusional, it was a fun joke that had distracted your anxious brain from the throngs of people that surrounded you, just beyond the metal railing of your refuge under the stairs. Despite the distraction, they had not magically disappeared.

“The Mando panel isn’t for a couple hours yet. Is there anything you want to do beforehand?” Ria asked, once the two of you had finally stopped laughing. 

“Uh. I don’t know. We could go and have a look around, find where the stages are maybe and then have lunch?” You suggested, not feeling like working your way through the hordes of people by the stalls again. 

So Ria and you did exactly that, getting your bearings and orienting yourself in the massive convention hall. There seemed to be so much to see and do, you were so grateful in that moment that you had splurged on four day passes. It would probably take you four days to walk around the entire thing! Your exploration of the centre meant that by the time the panel came around, you were grateful that you would be able to sit down, you were more than ready to rest your tired, achy legs. 

As you made your way into the room where the panel would be held, you went out of your way to thank the staff on the door. You knew most of the people who worked here were volunteers and a lot of the panel goers were looking straight through them. Manners cost nothing though, a simple “thanks” and a smile and nod were enough to make someone feel valued when they perhaps felt as though they were doing a thankless task. You couldn’t understand why more people wouldn’t take just two seconds to say thank you.

Your heart was thundering as you took a seat in the hall. For a strange moment, you felt as though you were back in a lecture at University. Everyone sizing each other up, wondering where to sit – should they leave a gap or get close to others, maybe strike up a conversation? Personally, you wanted to place as much distance between yourself and others as humanly possible and the thought of speaking to strangers made you freeze up in terror. But Ria, ever the extrovert, was quite happy to strike up a conversation with the guys next to you. 

They were fans of Mando, but you could tell pretty quickly that they were casuals. They did not have the deeper love for the show that you and Ria held. After a few minutes of sitting around, the people who were hosting the panel emerged, walking down the gap between the neatly-arranged chairs to take a seat on the long table that sat on a raised platform so everyone in the room was able to get a good view of them. The room was long but narrow and you and Ria were sitting around 10 rows back. As you glanced behind you, you realised that it had filled up rather quickly. You were glad that you had been here well ahead of the scheduled start time to ensure you got a good seat.

The guys running the panel began messing around with their laptops so they could get the powerpoint they had created on the screen. They were certainly not what you were expecting for this panel. You had expected it to be on a bigger stage, with more fanfare. But it was actually just a small panel hidden away at the back of the convention centre, up a flight of stairs that people might have missed. You had wondered, momentarily, whether you should get up and leave… Yet something was telling you to remain seated and stay. Just because it hadn’t been what you were expecting, didn’t necessarily mean it was going to be a bad thing. The audience seemed to be friendly too, a combination of people who you hoped would ask some thought-provoking questions and wouldn’t turn this all into baseless speculation over who the actor behind Mando really was.

When it got started, though, it soon transpired that this was not going to be the discussion you thought it was. The guys running the panel were sharing their views about Mando as though it was one of the online Star Wars podcasts that you avoided like the plague. There was little room for audience participation. The chair of the panel, a man with a backwards baseball cap on, which was slightly cringeworthy considering he must have been pushing fifty, was called Jeff. 

Jeff was very American, thrashing his limbs around exaggeratedly, imitating Mando’s fight style as his voice got quicker and higher pitched in enthusiasm for the tough warrior. Jeff and his colleagues were definitely the kind of people who watched The Mandalorian just to see him fight bad guys and kill them in cool, new ways. Obviously you enjoyed that too, but there was really so much more to the show and the character than just fighting. You wished that they could see that too, especially considering they were running a damn panel about it!

You were so utterly tuned out by their incessant ramblings that you turned your head towards the back of the room to indulge in a bit of people watching. Principally, to see if the two guys on your row that Ria had chatted to before the panel began were as bored as you were. It seemed that even they were utterly uninterested in Jeff and his buddies. You found that your relative boredom was mirrored on the expressions of numerous others in the room who were just as unenthused by Jeff and co’s surface-level analysis of the show you all loved. You felt at that moment that if you and Ria had somehow been able to lead a panel it would have been much more exciting.

You would have actually introduced some nuance and character analysis as the title of the panel had suggested would happen. Ria’s wild theory that this would be the place that Mando would reveal himself to the world had soon gone out of the window, too. Out of all the places in the world that he could choose (or not) to finally reveal his identity, a room tucked away in the far corner of the Dockside Convention Centre did not seem the most likely.

But your stomach dropped in the familiar way that it had when you were crouched underneath the staircase, catching your breath after the bedlam of entering the Con. 

It was him. 

The same cosplayer was back. 

He was sitting on the last seat in the row, two rows behind and opposite you, perfectly straight with his shoulders back, hands resting on his knees. It was almost uncanny, the way he held himself… it was so much like the way you had witnessed Mando sit so many times on the show. When he visited cantinas or sat in his ship, Mando held himself in an uncannily similar position.

You shook your head, mentally telling yourself to snap out of it – you were being ridiculous! If Ria was thinking these thoughts, you would tell her to stop being crazy. You were usually the grounded, rational one. For even you to be getting caught up in such delusional thinking, well that was truly concerning. Perhaps it was thanks to the early start and crowds. Either way, it seemed as though you were really losing it. 

You blamed it on Mando, all logical thought went straight out of your brain when it came to him. Of course the best Mando cosplayers would be here at this con. It wasn’t really him, but it sure was uncanny how realistic both the cosplay and way he sat was. Extremely uncanny. You didn’t have time to dwell on it, though… because Jeff was asking a question to the audience. One that you were keen to answer honestly and defend the character that you loved so much, with as much ferocity as if he was really listening to your every word.

“So, finally, we wanted to leave a few minutes for discussion about what the character of Mando means to all of you, here. You must be pretty big fans of the show to have found us all the way back up here!” Jeff joked, to a few laughs from the room.

You had gotten the sense since you had walked into this panel that Jeff and his buddies viewed everyone here with a baseline level of contempt. It was something that you couldn’t quite place your finger on, but you felt as though if a person did not entirely agree with his point of view, then he was not impressed by them.It was a shame, really, you loved hearing the opinions of others. Even if you didn’t agree with them, you always found out something new about yourself. 

Jeff had only just finished speaking, and already there was a steady stream of people flocking to queue at the microphone positioned in the aisle. There was nothing on earth that could motivate you to go up there, so you sat, with your arms folded, and leaned back into your chair. This would all be over in a few minutes. Then there would be a hopefully much more interesting panel about historical parallels with Star Wars, something you were truly interested in, that you wanted to check out with Ria. 

The first few audience comments were pretty dull. You disagreed with all of them almost entirely as they again reduced the concept of understanding a character to things such as seeing a face and knowing a name. Jeff just responded hollowly, thanking the speakers for their thoughts. But it did not provoke any deeper discussions like you had been hoping for. 

That was certainly a disappointment, but it was not a reason for you to lose your temper. You just felt slightly numb to the whole experience, wishing it was over as soon as possible and already plotting your route to the next panel. It was dull, but inoffensive.

That was, until the next two speakers boiled your blood with their assumptions and cruel jibes.

“When I first started watching The Mandalorian I loved it. I really thought Star Wars was back!” A man in a Darth Vader hoodie, who was probably in his late thirties, said proudly as he echoed the empty talking points that you had heard over and over since The Mandalorian premiered. You scoffed and rolled your eyes. This guy was clearly someone who thought that Star Wars was all bad now. He probably bought into all the theories that his precious sci-fi franchise had been ruined by women. He continued his tirade: “But now, it’s just the same thing every week. A hollow, emotionless tin can man strutting around from planet to planet, taking guys out. Like, it was cool the first few times but it’s just getting boring now. We need to see his face!” 

Your blood was slowly boiling as you heard all of these hollow criticisms of the show you loved so much. It truly upset you that a place you had believed would be full of fellow fans who would be eager to enthuse about the show alongside you and Ria had been nothing of the sort. Instead of the welcoming, open-minded environment you had expected, things had been wildly different, as the next speaker was about to prove once again. 

The next man who spoke had long brown hair. He was dressed in a Mando t-shirt and jeans. 

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the show and all. But I just feel like we don’t know that much about Mando. It’s as if we, as an audience, are being held back from connecting with him fully because of some diva’s selfish demands to keep his identity hidden!” The man exclaimed. Several people laughed and applauded. He was probably around your age but it stunned you how drastically different your opinions on the show could be. Perhaps he spent his time online in different circles than you. In fact, you were almost certain that you had seen these conspiracy theories about Mando’s actor pushed by people who swore it as the gospel truth, even though there was absolutely no proof of it. But he was not done yet, levelling a final cruel jab at the actor who played Mando: “Seriously, the guy who plays him must be such an asshole. Imagine having to work with that guy!” 

Your head was burning… that was too much. Once people got personal about the actor too, that did it for you. It was one thing to criticise the show, but to level insults towards the person behind the character, who clearly did not want his business in the public eye, was enough to compel you to speak up. 

Before you really knew what you were doing, you had somehow risen from your seat, stumbled over a few bags and outstretched legs and now stood in front of the microphone. Jeff looked at you expectantly, the eyes of everyone in the room were on you. Suddenly the gravity of what you were about to do had dawned on you, you felt your pulse thundering in your ears. But then you remembered what the previous guy had said about Mando, and you opened your mouth to launch into a passionate defence of your favourite fictional character of all time.

“I think tying Mando’s identity to his name and face is a pretty narrow way of viewing how we can understand who someone truly is inside and what exactly motivates them. I mean, I think I’ve connected to his character pretty well without ever seeing his face or knowing his real name. That’s because Mando has proved time and time again what kind of man he is. The way he has risked his life multiple times to rid the galaxy of threats and evil shows that he is committed to securing a brighter future, even if he is not around to see it. This man is willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Sure, we don’t know his name or face or a lot about his origins, but I think to us, that should prove that he has nothing but noble intentions. That human side of the man beneath all of the armour allows us to connect to him on a far deeper level than just seeing a face and learning a name ever could.”

Jeff began to thank you for your thoughts, using the same hollow phrases that he had used for every previous speaker, but you were not done yet. For the reason you had stood up to speak was not only motivated by the way people had spoken about Mando, the character. It was not just accusations against the fictional man that you were here to refute, but also the way that they had tried to turn on the man beneath the Beskar.

“Also, I know no one outside this room will probably ever hear what had been said at this panel, but I think attacking the character of the man who portrays Mando, simply because he wants privacy, is unfair. I think we should always talk about people, online and publicly, as though they can read or hear what we say. We don’t know why he won’t say who he is, but I trust that he has his reasons. Even then, he doesn’t need to have a good reason,” You argued passionately, noticing how the trembling in your voice had ceased the more you spoke. “Everyone is entitled to their privacy for the simple fact of wanting to be private. I just think that we see Mando go from planet to planet, connecting with locals and communicating with them respectfully. He leaves every place better than he found it… I wish more people would take those lessons from the show, too, rather than how skilled Mando is at fighting and killing,” You made a pointed effort to look straight at Jeff as you made that last quip about his fighting skills, but he just stayed slumped in his seat, hand resting under his chin, looking utterly bored. Your words had done nothing to get through to him.

You walked back to your seat, head down, trembling. Speaking that much in public had been a lot more than you would ever have expected yourself to be able to handle. Ria was staring at you dumbfounded, her mouth open in shock.

“Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?” Ria asked, astonished.

“I… uh….” You stuttered.

“Look, I knew you loved Mando, but that was insane!” Ria whispered excitedly, while beaming at you. “You defended him as if he was a real person, like he was actually here in the room! That was awesome, beyond badass! He’d be so proud of you, bestie.”

“Thank you.” You whispered, face suddenly feeling hot. You were sure you were visibly shaking after your public outburst. But it had been worth it, you had meant every word.

A few more people offered their thoughts but your head was still buzzing with the emotional exertion of public speaking, so you did not pay them much mind, even if they still repeated the same old tired arguments about Mando that you had just tried to argue against. 

Finally, Jeff drew things to a close and then it was time for everyone to leave. He had invited people to come and speak to him at the front after the panel if they wished to, but you were definitely not going to be taking him up on that offer. You had believed that anyone given such an incredible opportunity to speak about something they loved at an event as prestigious as ForceCon would be nothing less than delighted. But clearly, you were mistaken. Jeff had seemed utterly bored throughout the panel, not least when people he did not agree with had spoken. You were not a fan of him and his backwards baseball cap in the slightest. 

As the panel ended and people began to filter out, you glanced around to where the incredible cosplayer had been sitting. But it seemed that while you had been distracted by your emotional state after speaking so publicly, he had already made his way out. You were disappointed, you wanted to compliment him on his cosplay and maybe even get a picture with him.

Just being in his presence twice had been intoxicating, you had been unable to look away from him. When you saw him, it really felt like you were actually in the world of The Mandalorian. You had a strong desire to be near him again, but you were too late. The man was apparently long gone. But you didn’t want to dwell on that and ruin the rest of your experience. You still had three more days here. So it was time to get over your disappointment, even though you were still kicking yourself for not pointing him out to Ria.

As you made your way down to the main hall of the convention centre, you couldn’t help but feel your chest swell with pride when you remembered how you had spoken in such a surprisingly eloquent manner at the panel. It had really been so many steps out of your comfort zone, but you had proved to yourself that you could do it. This entire weekend, really, was out of your comfort zone. But so far, you were matching every hurdle before you. 

Perhaps speaking up at the panel would be the start of a new, more confident you. A you that was unafraid to stand up for what she believed in.

But then, the idea of a simple panel at a sci-fi convention being some sort of life changing experience was surely an absurd notion.

Wasn’t it?

Next Chapter

Taglist: @toxic-seduction

[watkinshove45]

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[schmidtboel71]

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[meandmyechoes]

so i went to the don brothers event yesterday

想說一點咚見面會

まあぁ　きのう、ドンブラーダースのイベント行きました。おさしぶりですね　もうキュウレンイベント一度行きましたことももう忘れてた　やっばいいものだな、戦隊が。

どういうわけで、そこはいろいろな人がいっぱいあるし、女の子は少ないね　そう思ってないけど、びっくりでもないです　寂しいでもない、また気弱いですから

Donbrothers started airing in my city yesterday and there was a kick-off event at the mall. It's been three years since we've had a sentai event. I missed RPPT and didn't care for Re/vice earlier this year, so it's been 4 years for me after meeting the Kyu/ranger 5 in person.

Just in time during my king/ohger fever, I was really excited for this. It's nothing big, just meeting some suit actors in an immersive toy commercial. I hadn't really prepared much for it since I don't intend on spending money for a photo ticket, but I'm still slightly excited because it's not just a simple walk around the toy store.

The event is in 3 parts. The MC introduces each member, they teach kids to henshin and do the OP dance. Then everyone gets to shake hands with them. After that is the photo session. The venue was small but it was so cool to see the DB suits in person. They actually made Kiji/brother the tallest if just by a little or costume magic. Inu/brother would sit on the floor to accomodate (and with how small the stage was, you could only fit 3 adults on there). Oni/sister was bubbly and waved at the crowd all the time. Saru was tasked with holding Tarou back who just randomly shoot the crowd all too much.

All the SA were in-character but it's still a bit unreal to hear my language coming out of their mouth the PA system. Sentai switched TV channels after... 27 years. So all the VAs sound foreign :( But it was very fun just watching them interact with the audience. I'm so happy they have a handshake session. I've never been to something like it, and only saw repos of the G-rosso ones. Of couse I don't expect the same level of character but it's still feel very nice to indulge in that 5 seconds of shaking everyone's hand before I stall the line. (The woman in front of me was full stan mode and film herself vertical with a plush (?) interacting with the actors to the MC's sideeye that she also stall the line and gave me second-hand embarrassment)

The atmosphere's pretty nice! With Donbrothers's popularity and this day being a landmark first, just as expected you get more adults than kids in the crowd. Quite an amount of those 30+yo men are fanpage mods/youtubers/photographers I'm sure. So say I didn't rehearse a lot about the event, but when I saw there are just a handful of women I'm like, ...やはり...

that's not to say the place was completely devoid of women. but of couse i didn't strike up conversations with anyone regardless of gender being how timid i am. good thing i didn't ACTUALLY wear a moffun shirt and just a lavender hoodie with butterfly earrings (spofw, 真夏にGokkan-boundingは大変だな) or i'll be even MORE uncomfortable on top of how hot it was.

so, there were two girls in front of me, who is your anime otaku look with colored hair, who speaks the other language, who mostly certainly belongs to that sect of the fandom that i'm constantly apalled by their incestuous preference and needless drama from superficial, narrow readings. Yes, I'm fully biased, but it's not like I'm that desperate to make friends, especially if i had to use a sentai that's not quite my 'only one' as a conversation starter. (however, KO could still have this problem, unless i start building another SNS presence, where do i get the energy)

I didn't exactly set out to make friends but I thought that would be an inevitability if I'm going to the summer con as Rita, and in preparation for SWC. And it's not like, I ONLY want to make friends of the same gender - the thing is, the local forum i'm interacting on is mostly men, and they are a bit better than the SW ones in terms of they do discuss the plot every week in details, but sometimes you read the most NSFW things on there that's just really uncomfortable. (Luckily there's a single person (whom i think also watch SW) posting Sentai among the Rider replies and I just post my wall of text to boost Senai discussion and disappear until next week) But like, if you look for women who are into toku, a large group of them are from up there and... it's like they have this whole different set of rules and traps that stems from pop star/idol fandom and their shipping rules and, guys, i'm into toku for the more old-fashioned stuff.

idk, i guess i just want to meet someone irl who watch toku with some media literacy and less fetish? Even some good old-fashioned 'boys will be boys' moment i'm happy to comply. That's why for local fans, I wanted to meet people IRL because certainly they won't say those fetish thoughts aloud... it could've been as easy as 'oh, so you like [sentai] too?' and i could go on from there... idk i guess i'll push that until the last minute when the plan goes live

welp maybe i should rewatch gagaga

all that said, i did talk to somebody if it's infodumping in a way. Two members of the staff were guessing which animal each ranger represents so I joined in. It was nice to be encouraged on the niche interest my family frowns upon every sunday morning.

Speaking of, I hadn't actually completed a thing for the Rita cosplay yet. I'm still scratching my head on the heat problem... Regardless, It's about time to snoop around and see anyone is going as KO with 1 month left until the con. It'd be a shame not to have a complete team :( Honestly I'm not afraid that I'll be the ONLY Rita (if I even finish it), but I'm scared about opening a group call... since I'm a novice... I don't even know on which day the veteran Suit cosplayers would show up...

[koleqigaxe]

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[eretzyisrael]

When Will a Stand Be Taken Against the Promotion of Murder? - by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

In civilized societies action should be taken against anyone who expresses the desire to commit murder. The Iranian government, Hamas, Hezbollah, various clerics, and other influential figures within the Muslim world, as well as neo-Nazis and other extreme rightists, openly proclaim their desire to commit murder or even genocide against Jews and Israel. Many in the Western world either refuse to heed these statements or actively support them. Many others relentlessly criticize Israel and remain completely silent about Palestinian promotion of the killing of Jews.

Civilized societies should not be silent when people state their intention to murder even a single person, let alone commit genocide. Many Western politicians and other prominent members of society do not seem to agree with this fundamental truth. In the non-Western world, many people have no inhibitions about saying, directly or indirectly, that they approve of murder in some cases and would personally commit it if the occasion arose. This is most easily seen when the potential victims are Jews. The leaders of Iran, for example, have spent four decades frequently and explicitly expressing their zeal to commit mass murder via the total destruction of the State of Israel. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has used familiar language to state this desire. Earlier this year he employed the phrase “final solution” on his website in yet another call for Israel’s destruction. Perhaps reminded of the phrase’s genocidal origin as the Nazi euphemism for the extermination of European Jewry, Khamenei later invoked a classic antisemitic trope by claiming that the extermination of the predominantly Jewish population of Israel would have nothing to do with Jews. “Eliminating the Zionist regime doesn’t mean eliminating Jews,” he said. “We aren’t against Jews. It means abolishing the imposed regime…Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Palestinians [would] choose their own government and expel thugs like [PM Benjamin] Netanyahu.” This Western-friendly waffling notwithstanding, Khamenei has made no attempt to conceal his true feelings. He has spoken of Israel as a cancer that must be forcibly cut out. In 2018 he tweeted: “Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.” Other leading Iranian figures have spoken out in favor of the destruction of Israel, some explicitly mentioning the leveling of Israeli cities. Yet Iran is allowed to remain an unhindered member of the United Nations. The Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas—elected as the majority party by the Palestinians in 2006—also openly and frequently discusses its desire to commit genocide against the Jews. This aspiration is clearly stated in its charter, which states: “Hamas looks forward to implementing Allah’s promise however long it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: ‘The [Day of Judgment] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!’” Senior Hamas officials occasionally call publicly for the murder of Jews. In 2019, Fathi Hammad, a member of the Hamas Politburo, urged members of the Palestinian diaspora to kill Jews around the world. Hammad said: “You have Jews everywhere and we must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing if God permits.” The Palestinian Authority (PA) provides generous financial payments to terrorists and their families. It thus creates a huge incentive for Palestinians to murder Jews in Israel. Nor are these pensions limited to the murderers. If Palestinians are killed in an attempt to murder Jews, the financial benefits they would have received accrue to their families. This amounts to a “pay for slay” policy—in other words, the PA actively promotes and encourages the murder of Jews. In 2019, the PA spent 570 million shekels (about $160 million) on rewards to terrorist prisoners. By August 2019, the Palestinian terrorists who in 2001 killed 15 Israeli civilians—about half of them children—and wounded many more in the Jerusalem Sbarro restaurant bombing had received more than $900,000 from the PA. In May 2020, the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah terror organization, Hassan Nasrallah, referred to the creation of Israel as “the establishment of this virus of an entity, this cancerous tumor amidst our umma.” He added, “Israel has no legitimacy to exist at all and must be destroyed.” Clerics and other influential figures within the Muslim world also call for the extermination of Israel and Jews. Some of these figures have a very broad and influential platform. In 2012, the cleric Futuh Abdel Nabi Mansur officiated at a nationally televised service at the Cairo Tenaim Mosque. The service was attended by then Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi. The cleric said, “O Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters; O Allah, disperse them and rend them asunder; O Allah, demonstrate your might and greatness upon them.” Morsi could be seen saying “Amen.” There is also prominent support for murderers elsewhere in the Muslim world. On November 18, 2014, two Muslim terrorists from East Jerusalem murdered six people at a Jerusalem synagogue, including a heroic Israeli Druze policeman. The terrorists were killed. The next day, Jordanian parliamentarians held a moment of silence for the murderers. They read aloud verses of the Quran “to glorify [the terrorists’] pure souls and the souls of all the martyrs in the Arab and Muslim nations.” The Jordanian PM, Abdullah Ensour, sent a condolence letter to the families of the terrorists in which he ”[asked] God to envelop [the terrorists] with mercy.” Neo-Nazis and other extreme rightists also call publicly for “death to the Jews.” Some have carried this out, as was seen in massacres at two US synagogues. In a similar case in Germany in October 2019, only a strong door stood between Jews praying inside the Halle synagogue on Yom Kippur and a man who had come to slaughter them. These murderous individuals, while very dangerous, have only local capabilities as yet and are thus not in the same criminal league as Muslim countries and major terrorist organizations that promote murder and genocide. Beyond the would-be mass murderers themselves are those who finance and promote them. Iran and Qatar make money available to Hamas that enables the group to finance its anti-Israel operations—money that it withholds from its own population to further its own ends. Several Western and other countries give money to the PA, a body that openly promotes murder. They claim their money is not being used to pay pensions to terrorists and their families, but they have no way of ascertaining this. The PA can use whatever funds it has available, including donor funds, to pay Palestinians to kill Jews. In the Western world, a variety of senior figures and bodies exhibit the opinion that when Jews are the target, the promotion of murder or genocide ceases to be objectionable. Some of them go so far as to directly promote the interests of the murderers. A striking example is former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who welcomed representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah to the House of Commons and called them his “friends” and “brothers.” Others include former US President Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2014, they co-signed an op-ed in The Guardian suggesting that Europe and the US should recognize Hamas as a political movement. They failed to mention that Hamas is an organization with genocidal aspirations. This was a showcase of senior human rights advocates promoting the interests of would-be mass murderers. The Dutch government advisory body Adviesraad Internationale Vraagstukken (AIV, or Advisory Council of Foreign Affairs) is in the same category. It issued a report in 2013 recommending contacts between the EU, the Netherlands, and Hamas. The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) wrote to Dutch PM Mark Rutte to disband the AIV for this recommendation, which would obviously come at Israel’s expense. The AIV’s recommendations were not accepted, but the organization was not disbanded. Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, does not bother to conceal his comfort with the extermination of the State of Israel. He said in an interview: “Iran wants to wipe out Israel. Nothing new about that; you have to live with it.” Another category—a major one—is those who freely criticize Israel but never mention the criminality of the major Palestinian bodies. They certainly never acknowledge those bodies’ open promotion of murder and genocide. If they criticize the Palestinians at all, they do so superficially and focus on other issues. One influential person who does this is US Senator Bernie Sanders, a Jewish politician who was a leading contender for the US Democratic presidential nomination. When he addressed the Israeli-Palestinian problem during his campaign, he spoke of the Palestinians’ dignity and called the Israeli government “racist.” European parliamentarians regularly criticize Israel while averting their eyes from Palestinian invocations of genocide and murder. In the Netherlands, at least one-third of the 150 parliamentarians have done this. In the Swedish and Norwegian governments the percentage is probably higher. Then there are those who unintentionally help would-be genocidal murderers. In 2015, then US President Barack Obama initiated the extremely flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran, which enabled the Iranians to sustain their quest for nuclear weapons with impunity and intensify their subversive and terrorist activities in the Middle East. In the context of this analysis one should also look at what is often called “Holocaust inversion.” This is exhibited by people who claim Israel intends to exterminate the Palestinians and/or that Israel is like the Nazis. In 2020, the Hungarian Action and Protection League commissioned a report by Hungary’s Inspira Ltd in which interviews were held with members of the adult population between the ages of 18-75 in 16 European countries. Twenty-four percent said they believe Israelis behave like Nazis toward the Palestinians. The main representative study before Inspira was published in 2011 by the University of Bielefeld on behalf of the German Social Democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Their research was undertaken in seven European countries. The interviewers polled 1,000 people per country over the age of 16 in the fall of 2008. One question was whether they agreed with the assertion that Israel is carrying out a war of extermination against the Palestinians. The lowest percentages of those who agreed were in Italy and the Netherlands, with 38% and 39% respectively. Other figures were Hungary 41%, the UK 42%, Germany 48%, and Portugal 49%. In Poland, the figure was an astonishing 63%. It is not only Europe’s leaders who have lost their moral grounding. These results reflect the profound moral decay of major segments of the population of the European continent.

[akilleromen]

LOOK if I get a chance to meet some of the thotties, and a chance I could be sandwich between two kylo rens at swc... IM GOING TO BE COLLECTING EVERY DAMN DIME I CAN SO I CAN BE SANDWHICHED BETWEEN TO KYLO RENS AND MEET SOME OF THE THOTTIES

Now excuse me I have a money pool to make on paypal.

[sweatcoinblog]

How does Sweatcoin make Money

How does Sweatcoin make Money

How does Sweatcoin make money to pay their employees

We decided to look deeper and find out what they say publicly on the money-making front. This is what Sweatco Ltd. shows on their website about how does Sweatcoin make money :

How does Sweatcoin make money – SweatcoinBlog

“We make money off our partnerships with brands in our marketplace and we are starting to establish partnerships with big…

[sportsminorityreport]

Conference Realignment 2021 as of Today.

I’ve written this article as kind of a supplement to ESPN’s cursory overview of realignment this year.   You can read their takes here.

SEC

Subtractions: none

Additions: Oklahoma, Texas

Future look: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt

Mark Schlabach devoted a lot of the SEC section to talking about when UT and OU would actually start playing in the SEC.  In general, conferences cut deals with departing schools to allow them to leave. That is VERY likely to happen with the Big 12 and UT and OU.  All Bowlsby’s talk of keeping them is just publicly negotiating the highest price possible....albeit in what appears to be the most damaging way possible for the Big 12.  

More to the point, it hardly seems worthy of dominating the SEC section when there are juicier stories by far.

So the SEC got UT and OU.

Be careful what you wish for.  OU has already learned this lesson.  The SEC will soon enough.

Nobody asks “Why did this all happen?” There appear to have been several reasons.   The TV partners didn’t want to early negotiate with the Big 12 on their next TV deal. That kind of freaked out UT and OU. That again kind of falls on Bowlsby and his past handling of negotiations.

Then there is UT’s “football problem”.  UT’s boosters ran out a black coach they didn’t like to plug in a white coach with a similar resume they did like.  

He was a good coach and the guy that they wanted.  

The trouble is little brother Texas A&M got Jimbo Fisher.  Texas A&M and Fisher almost made the 4 team playoffs.  UT’s guy wasn’t ever a threat to win the Big 12 conference.  He didn’t meet UT’s standards, so as much as the boosters loved him, he had to go.  That put UT into an even more awkward situation as they couldn’t get a coach they liked better than him to take their semi truck of money.

I thought it was very, very odd when they hired a good recruiter in the SEC and kind of a journeyman coach to take over the program, but it makes a lot of sense if you intended to move to the SEC and maybe muck up Texas A&M’s recruiting,   preventing the ascension of the Aggies into the next Alabama.

The fact that The Aggie AD was caught totally off guard on UT’s move was absolutely news worthy.  A&M nation was actively blindsided by UT and the only way that happens is if their beloved SEC was totally lying to them for a year.

Since the days of the SWC, A&M had dreamed of joining their spiritual brothers in the SEC and mining that recruiting bump to allow them to pass UT once and for all as Texas’s dominant football program.  UT, with the compliance of the rest of the SEC, just blew up that plan for all time.

And what about OU?  One can imagine UT’s “SEC BRAINTRUST” calling OU and telling them, “Hey the TV partners are done paying the Big 12 real money, so we are going to the SEC.   We want you to come with us, but you can’t say anything....”

OU had no interest in the SEC, but the Big 12 without UT and say West Virginia (as OU’s replacement) just doesn’t make much money.  Plus the loss of UT would really cost the Big 12 exposure in Texas and that loss of exposure could kill the solid recruiting that OU was able to turn into a consistent ticket to the playoffs.

OU leadership likely felt they couldn’t stay.  Plus they likely had the thought, “When are we ever going to have a coach who has this kind of knack for winning?  In the Big 12, we can’t get him the top 5 average recruiting class to compete for national championships, we are capped in the top 10-12 which may get you to the playoffs, but gets you out in the first round.   We tried to get the Big 12 to add Tulane to give us access to the louisiana/Missiippi corridor but our conference members didn’t agree. We can’t crack that recruiting ceiling. In the SEC we could get top 5-6 recruiting classes --- access to the key Louisiana/Mississippi recruiting territory --- and then break through.  We could properly capitalize on the Lincoln Riley era.”

Well we’ve seen that play out.  Riley recruited a dynamite recruiting class from California, strongly implying that OU should have made a second call to the PAC and moved to that conference on their own, effectively forcing UT to follow.  That way, they could have avoided the recruiting slimy brothel that is the SEC and used UT to convince the PAC to also add OU’s little brother OSU and UT’s now abandoned ally Texas Tech.

Instead Riley realized that it would be a ton easier to just be the coach at USC and recruit California.  And so the Riley era ends at OU with no playoff success anyway.

Does anyone think OU is going to dominate in the SEC with their new coach?

As a former UT student who despises bloated, corrupt, cheating conglomerates (not lost on me that I just also described UT) it makes me sick to think that UT took the easy way out and became a faceless powerless peer to Mississippi State.

But I also know the SEC.  And I know UT.  There is going to be a moment when UT complains about peers who aren’t really peers, like Ole Miss, Mississippi State, etc.  The SEC is going to tell UT to put a sock in it. And then the fun starts.

The SEC better hope that the admission of UT and OU doesn’t elevate Arkansas back into a moderate contender by restoring the razorbacks access to dfw recruits.  Especially if that hurts LSU. If UT, OU, Arkansas, and LSU are all not winning 10 plus games, you may see a new SWC emerge in fairly short order with those schools….and then the SEC era of dominance will end.

In fact if UT and OU are not at the top of this conference, it probably makes a world of sense for both to target LSU’s recruits to bring about this “end of times” scenario.

Be careful what you wish for.

The Alliance

Well now… The Alliance between the Big Ten, Pac-12, and ACC to generate shared supplemental revenue and shut down the expansion of the power conference ranks is fascinating.  Again, IMO all the wrong questions are being asked by ESPN.  And really by all sports media.

Big Ten

Subtractions: none

Additions: none

Future look: Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Rutgers, Wisconsin

Adam Rittenberg is quite a smart guy and immediately explains why the Alliance has value to his somewhat ignorant peers in the media and sports fans who laughed at it.  But again I think the explanation really isn’t as thorough as it could be.

In general terms, there is only a finite amount of money the TV partners are going to spend on college sports.  Everything since the downfall of the CFA can be taken as “The Haves” (The SEC as well as the Big Ten and their now fallen on hard times partner, the Pac 12) trying to take more and more of that TV money.   The haves would love to have seen the Big 12 go away, because then there are 8 fewer schools getting $40M a year and 8 more schools getting $6 Million a year in the AAC.

The Alliance is an effort by the Big 10 an Pac 12 to keep the neighborhood exclusive. Panicking conferences might expand the “true” power conference ranks.

The Big Ten could grudgingly tolerate the SEC’s football dominance as long as the Big Ten was making more money than the SEC and they were still at the top of the conference pecking order.  

But 3 of the 4 kings of the Big Ten have supplemental recruiting problems. Ohio State can recruit at a top 5, legit title contender level, but Michigan and Penn State are at the second tier around top 12 finish or so on average.  As OU showed, that level generally gets you to the playoffs but you get manhandled by the more talented schools. Nebraska cannot recruit at all in today’s Big 12.

Throw an extra 4 star recruit from Texas into the annual Michigan and Penn State recruiting baskets and suddenly the Big Ten has 3 legit title contenders and is competing head to head with the SEC in football for titles every year. It would also boost Nebraska’s recruiting back up into at least a consistent top 25 level and allow the huskers to at least dominate the western division as the Big Ten planned and give the Kings of the east a proper springboard championship game.

The Big Ten kind of wanted UT and the supplemental recruiting the state of Texas offered. And UT chose the SEC.  

That says the SEC just passed the Big Ten in the conference pecking order.  Now they haven’t ACTUALLY done that.   Missouri would still jump to the Big Ten in a second if a slot were offered.  Schools that care about academic reputation want to be in the Big Ten and their Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC).  

But UT IS a research power and STILL took the SEC offer.  

They know the value of the Big Ten and STILL chose the SEC.  

That burns.

And now the SEC is even better at football and will soon make more money than the Big Ten.

I don’t know how many rich people you know, but that kind of thing where they fall a step in stature to “rival” they think is inferior doesn’t sit well.

The logic was that there was going to be a push back.   The Big Ten would take some big schools from the West (USC,UCLA, possibly with Cal, Stanford, and some mix of Washington, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado to bridge the conference) turning their western division into a new Pac-10 2.0  or look to the East (Virginia, Duke, UNC, Georgia Tech) to correct that imbalance. Even a raid of the SEC was a possibility.

But instead the Big Ten formed an alliance with the PAC and ACC.

Why?

A lot of us realignment guys have been advocating for years that the Big Ten should trade late night content from the PAC for their network for early morning content from the Big Ten. Why?  Because each region’s SECOND favorite conference is the other.   This just increases the total pool of subscribers and can put extra money into both of their pockets and that just helps them with competitive balance vs. the SEC.

The Big Ten I guess has never felt benevolent enough...or threatened enough...to do this.  Until apparently now.

I suspect the idea among the Big Ten and Pac-12 was for the PAC to get UT (or failing that, the Big Ten to get UT). With Texas off the board, the PAC is screwed in the short term until the internet money pool (by most accounts a much larger wellspring of revenue than the eroding TV markets) opens up in a few years. The PAC is probably ideally suited to take advantage of that whenever that era arrives, as silicon valley is in their backyard right near their corporate offices.

But for now, the PAC needs time.

So now with hope gone, the PAC has to consider things the elite would never do...expanding their ranks with lesser entities.

BYU? A school that doesn’t even allow unfettered research?  One where their sponsors, the LDS, entered California politics about a decade ago to campaign against gay people getting married in San Francisco in order to score points with the greater religious right nationwide?

Boise State?  One of the worst academic schools at the FBS level?  And one in a hotbed of Mormonism?

Texas Tech or OSU?  Two schools in states that are wildly oblivious to the benefits of your top schools doing research? Not at all what the Pac wants in a conference member.

Now it is highly unlikely the PAC would admit any of those schools.  The PAC has always been a unanimous expansion vote conference, and all of those options are non-starters with Stanford and Cal --- key vertebrae of the PAC’s ruling academics and research valuing spine.

But the PAC is kind of desperate today.  The Big Ten couldn’t deal with the possibility of desperate times leading to bad expansion choices.

The Big Ten didn’t want to have to consume the research heart of the PAC-12.  That would eat up their membership slots up to 20 and the Big Ten still has their Notre Dame acquisition dream as plan A.

Which left the Big Ten staring at the ACC like a cartoon wolf staring at a lamb.

The Big Ten already has taken Maryland…  If you can take a few ACC schools ….and maybe get Notre Dame too….

The ACC since the loss of Maryland to the Big Ten, MAY have the most toothy exit terms among the power conferences.  The ACC is ESPN’s home for cheap and abundant sports programming that draws good numbers.

To steal from the ACC is to pick at fight with ESPN and Disney’s lawyers.

Maybe the Big Ten looked at an ACC raid today and thought,  “It isn’t worth the fight today.”   The ACC school are chronically underpaid by ESPN and seem to be considering fighting their way out of their contract.   If that happens, the pathway becomes clear to add ACC schools with no legal issues.

Additionally, the ACC is home to Clemson, which is the only weapon any conference has against Alabama today. Clemson is academically not quite at Big Ten status. Gutting the ACC could hobble Clemson...and that is not in the interest of any non-SEC school at the moment.

Getting into some kind of alliance with the ACC schools keeps Clemson strong and frankly builds a lot of goodwill for the Big Ten.

I truly don’t know if I am reading it all correctly, but I think that is probably a lot of it.

Now could the Big Ten raid the SEC?… Now things get interesting there. Missouri and Texas A&M were livid about the addition of UT --- but somehow ended up unanimously voting for it?  That seems like a scenario where the SEC explained the math….  UT +OU = 2x (TAMU+Missou) … And forcefully told them both to suck it up and vote for UT.

That cannot have been pleasant for either school.

The biggest “fuck you” move UT could make to A&M would be to join the SEC.

The biggest “fuck you” move A&M could make to UT (and the SEC) would be to join the vastly academically superior Big Ten, forcing UT to again follow them into a conference, and this time a conference that would force UT to acknowledge A&M as a peer...  What the Aggies have ALWAYS desperately wanted.

The SEC was and is Missouri’s distant second choice to the Big Ten.

Taking A&M and any other school out of the SEC pocket and putting them into the Big Ten pocket would once more have the Big Ten as the financial rulers of the FBS world and it would open up Texas as a much needed supplemental recruiting territory for the kings of the Big Ten --- Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and Nebraska.

But the reality is that the Big Ten may see Missouri as an acceptable candidate on their list, but there is quite a bit of historical behavior that suggests they aren’t HIGH on their list.   That the Big Ten may not want to give up a slot for Missouri when their preferred list has UT, A&M, Florida, UNC, Duke, and Notre Dame well above Missouri on it…

Frankly given what they need for supplemental recruiting A&M + Tulane may be a better pair on the Big Ten want list than A&M + Missouri.

The #1 rule about realignment that people forget is that it is all about who is at the top of your list when it is time to cast the expansion vote.  The Big Ten is probably the only conference that gets that.  If the vote was today, they might vote for A&M and Missouri, because as the SEC is too arrogant to envision some school leaving their conference, they don’t care about toothy exit clauses.  

It is the path of least resistance today.  So the Big Ten doesn’t want to have their vote today.  Hence the alliance.

ACC

Subtractions: none

Additions: none

Future look: Boston College, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, NC State, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest

David Hale’s breakdown of the ACC is quite strong.   He notes that that the ACC is both saved by their grant of rights deal and screwed over by it.  The ACC agreed to the deal to appease their Mouse eared corporate masters and for their troubles are chronically paid below market value on a long term deal that runs through 2036.  

They had thought to expand with high value media targets to force ESPN to pay them more appropriately…possibly UT and OU.  But that duo went to the SEC, so now the ACC is looking at a single large player who can do that….their “almost member”, Notre Dame.  

I think the ACC adding UT and OU to the ACC was always a pie in the sky fantasy.   Notre Dame is less so given the commitments the ACC extracted, but as Hale points out there is little immediate stimulus for Notre Dame to officially join as a full member.

One can think of one out of the box scenario that could land the Irish in the ACC  --- Talking to the Florida Gators.  Now I fully concede that Florida loves their rivalry with the Georgia Bulldogs,  but hear me out.

The State of Florida produces 300 FBS caliber recruits every year and only has 7 FBS schools.  That is a pool of roughly 125 FBS caliber supplemental recruits that have to leave Florida every year.  Florida in real terms is the battery powering SEC recruiting dominance.

The University of Florida is a grade A academic school.  The ACC is a grade A academic conference.  The SEC is not.

The SEC has one of Florida’s main rivals in Georgia. The ACC has 2 in FSU and Miami. The SEC as currently arranged just isn’t working for the Gators like it used to.

If Notre Dame AND Florida joined the ACC, Notre Dame would probably have the assets on hand to push ESPN to pay the ACC what it is really worth, because the schools that would profit most from Florida in the ACC are the ACC’s slumbering giants --- Miami & Florida State ---plus their current king Clemson, the Gators, and, maybe UNC and NC State, and, of course, Notre Dame.   Florida talent will gradually flow to them instead of the SEC.   You are talking about a scenario where the ACC could regularly have 5 or more playoff caliber teams.

Now financially that isn’t happening today...As long as the SEC has all the money, Florida isn’t likely to go anywhere.  But...The ACC has the assets to get paid a LOT of money if they can renegotiate with a little more star power.   If the SEC loses the money A&M brings to the table, the scenario gets a lot more theoretically interesting to Florida.

And there is no rule preventing the ACC from offering a deal to Florida AND Georgia that would also have the Bulldogs freebasing Florida recruits in the ACC playoff group. Georgia Tech is pretty high up on Georgia’s rival list too.

From a Big Ten perspective, the Big Ten doesn’t need to add Florida in this kind of scenario. If Florida ends up leaving the SEC  for the local and academically impressive ACC, that likely brings SEC recruiting dominance to an end and erases the relative recruiting problems at Michigan and Penn State.

Ultimately, if Virginia, UNC, Duke, and Georgia Tech end up in Big Ten,  I would not be surprised to see the stronger remaining ACC schools take a page from the creation of the MWC story and leave to create a new football based conference.

The ACC is a hybrid of football first and basketball first programs.

With the key basketball schools gone, I think it is entirely likely the football schools may want to recast their conference.

It is possible in that environment that the SEC might want to pair Va Tech and the big 12’s West Virginia. But it is also very possible in the post UT+A&M SEC, that WVU and Va Tech would not allow the SEC to maintain their new level of payouts. UT and others are not likely to support a pay cut for expansion.

Should a scism occur in that kind of post raid environment,  it would not be shocking to see the ACC football elite try to build their own mini- SEC, shunning basketball/academic schools in favor of locking down Florida as their supplemental recruiting territory.

FSU, Clemson, Miami, NC State, Va Tech, Louisville might be your core 6, maybe pulling in schools with good attendance likely to see a big bump in this kind of conference as well as good recruiting arguments, like ECU, UCF, & USF. West Virginia travels fans like a rockstar and would likely be in for that reason.

Pitt and Temple are lower attendance schools who would be smart targets to take the conference to 12 members should they want to get to 12, considering the rivalries those schools would offer if they want to go that far north.

North South

Louisiville Miami

Pitt USF

WVU UCF

Temple FSU

Va Tech Clemson

NC State ECU

Freezing out low attendance ACC schools like Boston College, Syracuse, Wake Forrest, (and potentially Pitt) for better supported programs pushing up the average attendance numbers could actually enhance the football schools’ media arguments of being a second SEC.

The remaining ACC schools would likely merge with the AAC.

Pac-12

Subtractions: none

Additions: none

Future look: Arizona, Arizona State, California, Colorado, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, Utah, UCLA, USC, Washington, Washington State

Kyle Bonagura’s review of the PAC is accurate but not exceptionally insightful. He is right to point out that the PAC never really got their shit together to add UT and OU and that now most of the super obvious options available to them are somewhat underwhelming.  

OU basically begged the Pac-12 to admit them and OSU years ago but the Pac membership foolishly declined because essentially both schools are marginal research institutions.  The right play was to add them and see the Big 12 crater in 2 years with UT carrying Tech into the Pac.  

They could have had their finances-saving UT wet dream, but they were incredibly, mind-blowingly stupid.  (And yes, I am probably talking about the leadership at Stanford and Cal.)

And now they have to deal with that fallout.

Given the PAC rejected OU and OSU, Bonagura probably grossly overrates the attractiveness of UNLV and Fresno State to the Pac.

But I think he may also underrate the attractiveness of San Diego State.  I’ll deal with that idea in a minute.

I think 2 school he should have mentioned are Colorado State and Air Force.  Those are an interesting play for the PAC in that they probably would generate more revenue to validate the 2 spots and do meet the PAC’s academic requirements.  CSU is a great research school and looks Pac caliber in a variety of ways.  Additionally adding that pair does make the PAC seem less distant to central schools.

At this point the PAC basically has to start their evaluation over without ideas of UT.  They have to re-evaluate the possibilities in their footprint and slightly beyond ….without thinking “UT is the answer”.

If they do that, there are a fairly good list of possibilities.

Texas A&M may be in play.  The Pac wanted UT because Austin is like the Texan version of California.  They are culturally similar.

College Station is like a Texas version of the deep south, except with a lot more military.  The Pac has never been especially enamored with A&M because of this cultural difference, and vice versa.   If you gave the Aggies a choice between membership in the SEC, Big Ten, and Pac Ten, the Aggies would chose the SEC first, second, and third.  But if you pressed the issue, they would grudgingly chose playing the SW teams of the PAC over the northern teams of the Big Ten.

Texas A&M fans are fanatics.  They will watch Washington State vs. Arizona if it will determine which exact minor bowl the Aggies go to.  They are, in real terms, what the PAC-12 absolutely needs out of Texas to make their TV finances work today. Fanaticism in large numbers.

If the PAC offered slots to Texas A&M and Texas Tech, that is an offer that would be considered by A&M.  In real terms, Tech wants to become a more respected school.  That means more research.  There are a lot of people who would love a PAC -12 invite in Lubbock, especially now that the Big 12 is diminished, because they know research is valued in the Pac.

Well A&M is a research power.   They DO fit the PAC preferred profile.

What would Tech do to gain that slot?  Well the PAC would want them to do more research.  The status quo in Texas has never supported pushing Tech as a PAC level research school.

So what if you changed the status quo?

What if Texas Tech humbly joined the Texas A&M system?  

It would greatly enhance the A&M brand in Texas and A&M could easily use their influence politically to change the Tech mission to be more research based.   It would be a PR goldmine for the Aggies in Texas and make a very compelling argument that they are the leader of Texas academics, not UT.

Additionally, the US news rankings are based largely on peer reviews.  In this way they are affected much like basketball power ranking shift when you get into league play.

Why is this important?  The Pac is a much stronger academic conference than the SEC and does a ton more research including cooperative research.  If UT is in the SEC and A&M is in the PAC….it seems likely that peer reviews would narrow the gap between the rankings of those two schools.(It would also likely lead to an increased appreciation for Tech in those rankings...and that would again be credited to A&M’s benevolence.)

What does A&M want more than anything in the world?  Not to be perceived as UT’s little brother.

If A&M had gone along with the original PAC-16 proposal there is a pretty good chance Johhny Manziel would have beaten Alabama for the national championship.

That cannot be lost on everyone at A&M.  The pathway to the playoffs is easier in the PAC than it is in the SEC.

A&M has traditionally been a second tier recruiting school prior to joining the SEC ---  Maybe in the Big 12 occasionally in the top 10 in recruiting.  

But consider how distinct the A&M brand is in the Western half of the US?  How many pro military schools are there?  How many outright defiantly conservative schoo\ols? Just like I live a life of quiet desperation as a liberal in single party, conservative rule in Texas, there are PLENTY of conservatives living lives of quiet desperation in the PAC footprint.  

A&M could literally own EVERY blue collar, conservative recruit in the western half of the country.  It isn’t difficult to imagine A&M pulling 3 of the top 20 recruits in the western US every year.  They could dominate in the west like UT never could.  They could have just as good a recruiting payload in the PAC as they do in the SEC.

In terms of finances, A&M + Tech more than fixes the PAC problem.

And that is just one pathway forward.

There is a very, very strong argument that that PAC is not more profitable because they are under represented in California.

Additionally as the conference is now 12 members there is the reality that the California schools want to be together in one division, but the Arizona schools don’t want to be frozen out on California recruiting.

If the PAC took that kind of “long view” on things, it could make sense to look at adding San Diego State (with their established ownership of fandom in San Diego) and (hold on to your hats) UC Davis with their access to top 25 media market Sacramento.

I’ll give you a second for your spit take.

Now that is quite a dip down for Davis, but they are an academic and research power very similar to the current California PAC schools.   You may want to say well why not add UCSD AND DAVIS if it is all about research and academics.  To which I would point out Davis, unlike UCSD, is not nested in the same yard as a strong FBS Cal-State School.   You couldn’t add Olympic sport only UCSD instead of San Diego State without thoroughly pissing off a good chunk of students in the Cal State System and that encompasses a LOT of Californians.

Davis is a very,very good academic school with good athletics with the lone exception that their football is rinky dink FCS football, nowhere near Pac level. The PAC could always add them as an Olympic sports only member with down the road privilege to join the PAC if they built a 50,000 seat stadium.   The old Big East offered a similar deal like that to UConn back in the day.  That is a way to wash off the stink of an FCS to power conference jump.

I think Davis could get Stanford and Cal’s votes where BYU and Boise State are unlikely to ever earn them.  San Diego State may technically be a lesser Texas Tech, but I think Stanford and Cal could concede on San Diego State to appease both conference politics and state politics.  I think the votes could actually be there for that pairing should the non-California schools push for greater access to California recruits.

If Davis built a 50K stadium, I have no doubt that the football starved people of Sacramento would fill it for Pac football games.  They would quickly become a viable Pac program.

Now that is a tough sell in terms of a PR hit for the elites of the PAC, but now is a time when a lot of realignment behavior is out the window.  It is also a time when conferences are digging down for FCS schools. If they were ever looking at a 5th and 6th team in California, now is the time to do it.

Given the leverage the Pac has in the state, they could likely strong arm the Cal-State system to allow San Diego State to rebrand as THE California State University --- the flagship of the system--- as the cost of admission.  That would ease the PR hit among the academics.

OR….

The University of Hawaii is a school that fits the Pac research profile as well as it’s cultural profile.  

When the Big Ten added Maryland and Rutgers, they were securing their access to the largest out of footprint sources of Big Ten out of state students --- Maryland and New Jersey. Hawaii is considered America’s access point to Asia.  The Pac 12 pulls a lot of students from Asia now.  Having late night games at Hawaii that you could sell in Asia would again be smart marketing allowing the Pac to sell merchandise, content, and recruit students more aggressively.

Hawaii is a small population state, but they are very entwined with Asia and have large enthusiastic population bases of Hawaiians in Reno and Las Vegas (in the PAC gap of Nevada) as well as Utah and other Southwestern PAC states.  They could spike support for the PAC networks.

Hawaii has long been “donor territory” --- feeding recruits to schools like Oregon, Washington, and BYU.  With the amount of Hawaiian and Samoan talent in the islands as well as potential UH recruiting grounds of Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, it seems likely that UH could very effectively compete in the PAC.

If you told Hawaii, “Build a 60K stadium and you are in the PAC,” they would build it tomorrow and fill it regularly.

Additionally, It wouldn’t hurt Pac recruiting along the west coast to tell recruits they will play 2 games in Hawaii in their career if they play in that Division.

Or...

There is also the possibility of a central stretch that doesn’t include Texas.  With Colorado, Utah, CSU, and Air Force, (as well as possible access to California) that PAC becomes a very attractive conference for former Big 8 members... and there are several with Academic brands the Pac & Big Ten elite would appreciate.  

It isn’t hard to imagine Kansas, Iowa State, and Nebraska in that PAC maybe even with Missouri moving west (--- Nebraska cannot recruit in the Big Ten and as such is a likely permanently under performing asset there.  That is not what the Big Ten imagined when they spent a conference slot to add NU. Additionally NU was booted from the AAU, so as the Big Ten only wants to admit AAU schools, Nebraska is now and forever going to be viewed as the worst of the Big Ten schools ---with an actual data point that is hard to dispute that supports that….Nebraska has reasons to consider such a move.)

The Big 8 schools were happy before Texas, they just lacked the big population states to generate TV money.  That’s why they created the Big 12. They would work financially partnered with the PAC footprint.  Reuniting with Colorado in this kind of Pac would be a comfortable home for them.

Would it generate SEC with UT and A&M numbers?  No, but Missouri might be the rare school willing to walk away for less (to soothe their anger with the SEC and not deal with UT again).

That combination would do a lot to fix the Pac financial troubles with more rivalries and fanbases across several of the new native footprint states.  Now does that create a geographically large inland footprint? Sure, but that is a problem for schools like Utah and the Arizona schools.  

The addition of your new California schools could allow the inland division to claim for their supplemental recruiting the California talent that goes unclaimed now or flows into the Mountain West Conference.

But... that is obviously a major expansion.  It is pretty clear that the alliance is an effort to stop major PAC and ACC expansion.   Still...one wonders if adding say San Diego State (or Hawaii) and Colorado State would be OKed by the PAC (and the Big Ten) today given that it puts the conference in a better position for future expansion possibilities.

Finally there are options in Texas which don’t involve UT or A&M that could still work financially for the PAC, but are likely significantly less appealing/ a harder sale to the California schools. I’m not going to get into that here because I don’t want to argue with anyone about it and really the PAC should pay me for that.

Big 12

Subtractions: Oklahoma, Texas

Additions: BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati, Houston

Future look: Baylor, BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech, West Virginia

Dave Wilson touches on a good point in noting the Big 12 finally has stability but I think falls a little short on painting the full picture.  The schools who were left behind want to be in a stable power conference and they recognize their schools aren’t any other power conference’s leading targets.  

For example, OSU couldn’t get into the PAC with OU carrying them….why would they think that Texas Tech could carry them?  The fact that it hasn’t happened seems to imply it isn’t going to.

Lets go back to my #1 rule in realignment.  That is, it doesn’t matter what principles say, what they feel about certain schools, or how deep seated that belief is.  What matters is what they need on the actual day when an expansion vote takes place.  When this expansion occurred Iowa State was rapidly imploding as the remaining Big 12’s football standard bearer.  All of these 4 schools are very solid in football and have been the last few years.

The fact that the schools coming in all outperformed at the exact right time,  ---all three ‘princes’ have had great seasons in the last few years, (plus Houston just made a trip to the final 4 in basketball) --- has done what the Big 12 exactly needed and allowed the Big 12 to still viewed as a power conference, while they await their future King (BYU) to use it’s power conference status to reassert itself as a recruiting power and become the conference’s “new Texas”.

The schools coming in have been desperately pursuing a Big 12 membership for the last decade and don’t really  care that the Big 12 isn’t as good as it has been.  The abandoned schools know that with UT and OU gone they will take a sizable media haircut, but they are still going to make a lot more than the $6-7M per school the AAC was supposed to get….

As I noted in a previous article, you need a school with legit media chops in order to ensure that the media partners negotiate fairly with you.  When UT and OU left the Big 12, The Big 12 like the AAC, didn’t have that. Now with BYU, they do.  The Big 12 was a kingdom without a King.  BYU was a king without a kingdom. They were a perfect match.

All parties in the Big 12 now value Big 12 membership.

Wilson also points to a Texas monthly article where Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby mentions that Boise State and Memphis want in. So much to unpack there.

I don’t get the media love of Bowlsby. He was clearly caught with his pants down yet again with the UT/OU departure  and so he goes on there saying, “Hey look, we had good schools wanting to join.” as some kind of face saving thing.

Look as someone who follows realignment, the “masterful rebuilding of the Big 12” amounts to him adding the exact same schools they were rumored to be on the Big 12’s final list ready to add right before UT allegedly skunked expansion last time--- the move that left Bowlsby in this position.

There is a compelling argument that if Bowlsby had pushed hard for realignment and these schools were added years ago, that Baylor, Tech, TCU, and Houston could have politically blocked UT’s embarrassing retreat to the SEC. And that OU would have had no interest in going….

Are they the right 4 schools?  Three of them certainly make sense long term, I think some questions can be asked about Cinnci instead of Tulane (who OU favored), but the Big 12 hired consultants who they paid so they wouldn’t have to think about this stuff.

But it is literally the exact same 4 schools they arrived at and then effectively pronounced “not ready” last time.

And Boise State and Memphis?  Do they seem like better candidates now than they were a few years back?  So much so that you should be bragging about them?

I’ll say it.  Fairly or unfairly, Bowlsby was viewed as a UT appeaser. Is this guy you want running your conference now that there is no UT or OU to appease? I think that is something that should likely be talked about.

I think they will expand, much to the chagrin of the other power conferences.

BYU is going to be a top 25 team for the next few years, but I think most recruiting followers would assume it is going to take BYU 5-6 years to ramp up recruiting and get back to being a conference king again.  

Fans at Boise State and Memphis think they are very likely to be invited in the near future.  I think it is fairly likely the Big 12 will expand by at least 2 in the next 1-4 years.

Why?

Do you really think Cinnci is an emerging football power who will dominate current Big 12 schools?  I sure don’t, any more than I thought Iowa State was the next OU.  Cinci does exactly what the Big 12 needed on the day the vote was cast --- it gave them football credibility.  What happens when these schools play a tougher schedule and are not overproducing?  2 years from now when OSU is running the conference in football with a 10-2 record, Cinci and USF are 8-4, and Houston is 6-6?  A credibility “crutch” will be needed again. The Big 12 likely hopes Boise State (and maybe they think Memphis in a weaker American) will provide it.

To me, I think that expansion is darned near inevitable.  The Big 12 will need to continue to appear that they belong in order to get paid like a power conference until the real BYU resurfaces and starts to dominate the conference.  I think Boise State and Memphis better win at football, because when the actual vote takes place, it is VERY likely the Big 12 will take the dominant 2 football programs in the non-power conferences.   That could easily be say….UTSA and Liberty, lol…

I hope by then The Big 12 will have better leadership when it comes to realignment decisions.  I WANT to like the new Big 12.  It is all about a group of schools fighting like hell to be a have conference when all the other haves no longer acknowledge them as such.   Conceptually I love that, but if the leadership doesn’t actually realize it and the membership doesn’t make smart expansion decisions that give them a chance to succeed….well, I am not on board with that.  I am not on board with “business as usual” in the Big 12.

I do think in general Wilson has made a compelling argument, if only a partially presented one. The Big 12 schools may end up being a lot poorer when this all shakes out, but they will still be a power conference, their members are not going to try leaving all the time, and they aren’t beholden to self-centered assholes anymore.

That’s a loss, but a loss you can totally live with.

Group of Five

American

Subtractions: Central Florida, Cincinnati, Houston

Additions: Alabama-Birmingham, Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice, Texas-San Antonio

Future look: Alabama-Birmingham, Charlotte, East Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Memphis, Navy, North Texas, Rice, SMU, South Florida, Temple, Texas-San Antonio, Tulane, Tulsa

I like Andrea Adelson, but again, I do not get the media love of AAC commissioner Mike Aresco.

Aresco let UCONN leave instead of addressing their issues, which significantly hurt his basketball product and now because he refused to push for expansion when his league was strong, he missed out on Colorado State and Air Force.    He actually apparently had both, but got cute and went after Boise State before the ink was dry. Boise State did what they always do to Aresco and screwed up his westward expansion.  Now he is starting over without his best football and basketball options.

Without his big three and no financial help coming as he failed to land CSU and the AFA, Aresco felt a need to piecemeal together football and big market adds.  That is defensible, but it is adding a lot of miserable basketball schools to what was a decent basketball conference.  The American will still likely make more media money than the MWC, but the MWC is clearly a much, much, better basketball conference today.

Mountain West

Subtractions: none

Additions: none

Future look: Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, San Diego State, San Jose State, UNLV, Utah State, Wyoming

I have the MWC ranked here because it appears that despite 2 school talking to the MWC (likely SMU and Tulsa) it doesn’t look like any American schools want to make that jump.   Additionally, the addition of UNT ro the AAC was a shocker.  It is highly likely that the MWC was kicking the tires on adding UNT for an entrance into Texas and blocking the MWC is what got UNT in the door --- probably against SMU’s wishes.

If at the lowest of moments, schools (UNT) would rather play in the AAC than the MWC, I think that suggests the pecking order stands.  It also suggests they know the money will be better.

I personally view the MWC conference as a regional FBS starter conference that is overperforming.  I don’t see that as likely to last.

In real terms the MWC is a victim of their own short-sightedness and self-centeredness collectively and they have a commissioner who reflects and magnifies that kind of thinking. All the member schools have rejected raids of big market FCS schools (UC Davis, Sacramento State, Portland State) or FCS schools with strong teams and strong statewide fanbases (Montana, Montana State, North Dakota State) over the years.

So they are are a collection of mostly smaller market teams with limited rivalries in the least populated part of the country.

They make $3.5 Million per school in TV money. That number will continue to very slowly crawl upwards for a little longer, but if Boise State’s Big 12 dream comes true, that number probably drops to about $2.5 million per school as the conference would lose their only significant media asset with no relief in sight because the membership is collectively small thinking.

Air Force wants to be in the American because they would likely expose the Air Force brand to twice as many people in the American.  (That is kind of the point of the academies playing sports.)

And that works both ways.  The AFA is probably worth several times what they are paid in the MWC to the AAC.   The AAC can imagine a future of owning all three academies and unlocking major TV value that way. To the MWC, which has zero ability to romance Army or Navy, the AFA is just a school.

AFA wants to go to go to the AAC with CSU. CSU has not been ready to go, despite being a conference outlier in what may be their worst possible conference home.  So the AFA has apparently been noting all their areas of displeasure with the MWC.

I think it is telling that CSU and the AFA had their bags packed for the American AFTER the American lost all their power schools to the Big 12. I think it is equally telling that they unpacked those bags after Aresco ill-advisedly went after Boise State.

If CSU and AFA had left, the MWC would have lost the state of Colorado --- a fairly large population state with fairly wealthy residents. Such a move likely would have reduced MWC payouts to $2.5M or so.  This is the problem with the MWC.  They are a bad day away from being the sun belt...and bad days are coming.

I find it puzzling that Bonagura doesn’t see that.  It wasn’t that long ago that UNM and CSU were alledged to be in talks to start their own central state conference. The thought was that you couldn’t make less money than the small market MWC. AFA may be beating the drum, but CSU can at least acknowledge that the MWC isn’t an ideal home.

CSU deciding to stay in the MWC was dumb. And more to the point that isn’t likely to be a final decision.  CSU has been listening to AAC overtures for years and the AAC has only gotten more compelling.   What happens if Boise gets their golden ticket for the Big 12?  If CSU is going to make 2.5M in the MWC vs. making say $4M to start in the AAC…? It will happen and soon. And SDSU will probably go with them.

And if the MWC has to renegotiate without their king (Boise State) and without 3 of their strongest media assets (SDSU, CSU,and AFA), their payouts could be the second lowest of the regional conferences.

Sun Belt

Sun Belt subtractions: none

Sun Belt additions: James Madison, Southern Miss, Old Dominion, Marshall

Sun Belt future look: Appalachian State, Arkansas State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, James Madison, Louisiana, Louisiana-Monroe, Marshall, Old Dominion, South Alabama, Southern Miss, Texas State, Troy

Bill Connelly wrote the reviews for the Sunbelt Conference and the CUSA. Like all of their writers he competently sees the landscape, but I think I can paint it with a little more color.   He is right that in the last round of realignment when CUSA was clearly higher in the pecking order than the Sunbelt, CUSA made the point of pursuing schools in big markets from the Sun Belt ranks (usually one in each state) without much consideration of how strong their programs were or how they work in the confines of your conference, with the apparent thinking, “this has to be good for TV revenue, right?” (It was not.)

I think it is worth noting that the Sunbelt was lead by long time WAC commissioner Karl Benson.  Benson was able to convince the sunbelt schools to do what he never could convince the WAC (now largely MWC) schools to do...Add dominant and well supported FCS football programs.   He added Georgia Southern and Appalachian State.  He also convinced his membership to take a chance on a school he believed was ready to break out in Coastal Carolina. (The WAC schools passed on adding UC Davis and Sacramento State when Benson pushed them.)

Having a commissioner with a long term perspective opened the door for the Sunbelt to hurdle CUSA in the conference pecking order for now and has them on the fringes of replicating the MWC’s success and generating better TV revenue than a base regional FBS footpring conference should.

It was clear to several CUSA schools that the Sunbelt is a vastly better football conference and one likely to get better – and that the Sunbelt was likely to make more money.

Conference USA

C-USA subtractions: Alabama-Birmingham, Florida Atlantic, Charlotte, Marshall, North Texas, Old Dominion, Rice, Southern Miss, Texas-San Antonio.

C-USA additions: Jacksonville State, Liberty, New Mexico State, Sam Houston

C-USA future look: Florida International, Jacksonville State, Liberty, Louisiana Tech, Middle Tennessee, New Mexico State, Sam Houston, UTEP, Western Kentucky

When the American was raided it came as no surprise that they would come for CUSA schools. But then Aresco blew his raid of the MWC, so he had to pull even more schools from CUSA.  With a lousy TV deal and uninspiring product, CUSA totally unraveled.  CUSA’s footprint had no coherency to it, so when Areco started blowing holes in it, a lot of CUSA members realized that the Sunbelt was a better home for them.

Luckily for CUSA,  the Sunbelt was only offering a few slots. As much as CUSA’s remaining schools might have wanted to save face and leave, there were few options available.

It got so bad that WKU tried desperately to drag MTSU into the magnificently unspectacular Mid-American Conference. This would have had CUSA down to 3 teams.

Then CUSA went on a desperate run, recruiting wart-ridden schools who were strong in football and actually very dedicated to the sport.  CUSA built a conference that was more tolerable to MTSU than the MAC where schools rarely make the top 25.

This lead MTSU leadership to take a public dump on the idea of joining the MAC.  The MAC predictably decided they would rather not just add WKU, so CUSA got a lucky bounce and retained both schools.

Today’s 9 member CUSA is a Frankensteinian creation which could either quickly implode or settle in as a fourth regional FBS footprint conference or make some smart decisions and quickly leapfrog the MWC and Sunbelt and resume their role as the second best national conference and second best conference in the group of 5.

They have a strange opportunity for a do-over after the last miserably executed expansion effort years ago.

Their expansion so far this year was weird but has to be viewed as a success as it got MTSU to return, dragging a bawling but very valuable WKU with them.  

This kind of total collapse of CUSA around UTEP got the Miners to finally allow NMSU to be in a conference with them.  This was a very smart and way, way, way overdue move by UTEP.

The addition of Liberty was a mixed bag. Liberty is rapidly becoming THE school for Evengelicals to rally behind.  Much like Catholics rally behind Notre Dame and Mormons rally around BYU.  I predicted this years ago and frankly my only surprise is how quickly this is becoming true.

Liberty may end up continuing to be a top 25 team most years and eventually average 35,000 to 40,000 per game in 10 years or so.  They could be the media darling of this new CUSA.

Sounds like a fantastic asset, right? Why weren’t they in an FBS conference?  Why did none of the stable conferences talk to them?

They weren’t because of the academic black eye they bring.  No FBS conferences had any interest in Liberty 2 years ago over that. Liberty isn’t interested in research and more their religious beliefs will always interfere with their academics.  Birds of a feather flock together.  Their academic brand is essentially toxic among the power conference schools.

But it looks like at this level,  at this moment of time, in this CUSA, their warts are tolerable and very much obscured by strong attendance in both revenue sports and what looks like a regular top 25 team.

Jacksonville State was a no-brainer, fantastic addition.  The only reason the Sun Belt didn’t add them is because they had a ton of schools in the state already. JSU is a peer of  App State and Georgia Southern in all ways and arguably is better than Troy or S. Alabama, the Sunbelt schools in Alabama.

Sam Houston State was a beneficiary of great timing.   They won an FCS football title at a time when CUSA had a giant hole in Texas in their geographical footprint.   I am not sold on SHSU as a well thought out, long-term add though. Despite strong football, they don’t draw flies in either revenue sport. Never have.  

If you drop the school into a population map with a 30 mile radius, you will see why.   Just not a lot of people around.  In terms of profile, they LOOK like an FCS school and maybe shouldn’t have left. They hit me as the second coming of Idaho --- an FCS power on the field only, whose program will slowly erode due to a lack of the fans and money you need to develop at the FBS level.

(I freely admit, I could be wrong.  Louisiana Tech has been a solid FBS school with similar assets.  I just am pointing out there are big red flags there.  I would not be shocked at all to see SHSU draw like 11,000 fans per game in football and 800 per game in basketball in CUSA.  That would be a major black eye for any FBS conference.  SHSU has a lot of work ahead.)

But today, they are the champions of the FCS and they offer the football cred that the Sunbelt needed to keep much more valuable assets MTSU (and ultimately WKU). So even if SHSU end up “going Idaho” in 10 years it was the right add for this moment.

MAC

Subtractions: none

Additions: none

Future look: Akron, Ball State, Bowling Green, Buffalo, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Kent State, Miami (Ohio), Northern Illinois, Ohio, Toledo, Western Michigan

Rittenberg had the unfortunate task of writing about the MAC.

The MAC entertained adding MTSU and WKU in an effort to increase their media attractiveness.

The fact that MTSU rejected the MAC for basically “the idea of a conference” ….with even higher travel costs…. tells you all you need to know about the MAC.

For 20 years you have been able to look at the MAC and wonder why --- for example --- they don’t vote out Eastern Michigan.  EMU has had chronic attendance and competitive problems and frankly while there are moves they could make to help address those problems that they have never chosen to make, it is very legitimate to question whether they just have a horrible hand that will never allow them to succeed at the FBS level.

For the past 10 years, North Dakota State has been wiping it’s ass with the FCS and a lot of Big Ten and Big 12 schools.

Would the MAC be more media attractive with NDSU or EMU?   Starting to see the problem?

The member schools would rather take the bus to EMU for a pointless game than have to add a flight each to play a school who very well may be the next Boise State.

The MAC was pushed by their more aggressive members to add UMASS, but then kicked them out because UMASS didn’t want to destroy their basketball program by putting it into a conference that had NONE of their native recruiting territories and no rivals.

The MAC at that point had a clear choice.  Add more Northeastern schools, expanding travel costs but opening up wonderful, lucrative markets, or booting UMASS because traveling there for football --- one sport --- was an unwanted expense.

They booted UMASS.

This is a regional beginners FBS conference where none of the schools with maybe the exception of Buffalo and Ohio appear to want to be good in both revenue sports. And none of them want to be inconvenienced and experience increases in their travel costs to add a school that wants to be good.

Schools see that.   That’s why schools don’t generally want to join.

The MAC offers stable mediocrity.

The MAC has marginal attendance.  The MAC wants to be a bus league.  Sadly for them, the networks don’t pay marginal attendance, bus leagues.

[racingtoaredlight]

THE DEGENERATE’S GUIDE TO COLLEGE FOOTBALL TV WATCH ‘EM UPS 2021: WEEK ONE, TIME FOR THE GOOD STUFF

This is by far the best “opening” slate of games we’ve had in at least a couple of decades. The great thing about having a bunch of cross-country, inter-conference, top 25 matchups in the first week of the season is that we’ll all have a clear expectation of every team involved and will mostly have those ideas flipped over by the end of the month. Answers to questions but wrong, you know?

That’s ok because, really, the whole college football season is that same cycle over and over. And we love it, don’t we folks? We love it more than dying unfulfilled and for no reason with nothing at all to show for it in the larger scheme of the world. College football is a metaphor for life which is just an elaborate metaphor for college football.

Blah, blah eastern times and websites. There have already been approximately one million games played this week with a few FCS over FBS upsets and, upsettingly enough, Kansas was not one of the losers. Whooooooooo! Let’s get it on!

Saturday, September 4

Fordham at Nebraska   12:00pm   BTN

Fordham +46.5 might be the safest bet you can make this week.

ULM at Kentucky 12:00pm SECN

What can you say about Kentucky being favored by 31 over anybody except that it seems incredibly overconfident. They aren’t ranked in the top 10 so I assume they either skip Bama this year or don’t play them until October.

Temple at Rutgers    12:00pm  BTN

In real time the scheduling is fine but these first handful of games feel like a punishment for me crowing about the general quality of this week’s matchups.

Tulane at 2 Oklahoma  12:00pm  ABC

These are the games that come back to win Heisman trophies for Oklahoma QBs later in the year. If the Sooners don’t beat the spread (-31.5) they probably shouldn’t keep their ranking next week.

Holy Cross at UConn  12:00pm  CBSSN

If you can still get UConn -4 anywhere don’t. Holy hell that’s bleak. 4-points at home against Holy Cross. It’s getting real close to time to turn the lights off on the Huskies football program.

Colgate at Boston College  12:00pm  ACCN

If the Toothpastes can just score more than 7 they will have outperformed expectations. If they score more than 7 and hold BC under 60 they will likely have beaten the spread. Chomp ‘Em, Colgate! (I don’t think that’s really their motto but it should be.)

Western Michigan at Michigan  12:00pm  ESPN

I could’ve sworn Michigan played last week and lost but maybe I’m just used to that.

Stanford vs. Kansas State (in Arlington, TX)  12:00pm  FS1

There have been times over the last 25 years where this would be a matchup befitting of a premium neutral site but this is not even close to being one of those years. Definitely not in week one, at least.

19 Penn State at 12 Wisconsin  12:00pm  FOX

Nobody will ever make it make sense that Penn State still has a football program, let alone a football program that puts some of the best athletes into the NFL year after year in a post-Sandusky world.

Army at Georgia State  12:00pm  ESPNU

I can’t be the only one that thinks if the troops put together a football team with the best training and facilities available they’d still get their asses handed to them week after week like they do in illegal wars of aggression.

Fresno State at 11 Oregon  2:00pm   P12N

Kayvon Thibideaux didn’t make the list of “freaks” this year in the Athletic and I can’t tell if I’m just wildly overrating his abilities or if there was some weird oversight due to him announcing that he’ll be playing more standing up on the outside than with a hand in the dirt. Anyway, he’s fun to watch when he’s just pinning his ears back and rushing the QB and Fresno State throws a lot so this could be worth a few minutes of entertainment in this weird in-between time slot. Though, be warned, early kickoff Pac-12 games do tend to suck.

Lafayette at Air Force  2:00pm Stadium

Air Force favored by 42.5. You don’t see that often.

Rice at Arkansas  2:00pm  ESPN+/SECN+

A beautiful reminder of the old SWC. Nothing else. And that’s probably not enough reason to watch this. Arkansas is probably pretty bad but I have trouble believing Rice is going to keep it within 20 of anybody on the road.

17 Indiana at 18 Iowa  3:30pm  BTN

B1G’s plan is to prime the polls early so their teams seem better later on. I’m not falling for it. These are two shit teams that will only look good within the context of the B1G.

14 Miami (FL) vs. 1 Alabama (in Atlanta, GA)  3:30pm   ABC

Miami’s starters are about as old as an average NFL team’s and they’re still gonna get run over by the Bammers. The Canes do actually have a decent stock of pro prospects right now but a lot of these guys were on the field against UNC last year watching as the Tar Heels put up 3,492 rushing yards. So it’s a bunch of middle aged mid-round prospects against a shiny new crop of future stars. Bama should just get an auto-bid for the playoffs at this point until they prove they don’t belong anymore. I’m calling it now: it’s fine, I had a bunch of chores to do around the house anyway.

Marshall at Navy   3:30pm  CBSSN

Ah, the AAC. So dear to my heart. I hated everything Navy did last year but last year was a mulligan anyway. This year might be, too, in the end but for now we can pretend it’ll go off without a hitch.

Miami (Ohio) at 8 Cincinnati  3:30pm  ESPN+

The Bearcats are the darling of mainstream coverage if you’re looking for a playoff Cinderella. Which usually means they’ll lose three games in the regular season and won’t even make it to their conference championship.

West Virginia at Maryland  3:30pm  ESPN

Wait, is this a conference game now? A future conference game? I won’t be paying close attention to realignment. This should be a rivalry of some sort but I can’t quite put myself at ease with WFV in the ACC and Maryland will never belong anywhere but the ACC.

UMass at Pitt   4:00pm  ACCN

Pitt being favored by 35.5 feels like a trap.

Louisiana Tech at Mississippi State   4:00pm  ESPNU

LaTech must be sliding backwards as a program judging by the +23 line. I got nothing else here.

Montana State at Wyoming   4:00pm   ESPN+

I’m intrigued by the screaming amateurism that this game projects. I won’t actually watch it but the way it will look like a 4k remaster of a game from the 60s is appealing on a spiritual level.

Central Michigan at Missouri   4:00pm   SECN

Fuck Missouri.

23 Louisiana at 21 Texas   4:30pm   FOX

The line has moved heavily towards the Ragin Cajuns since it opened. Texas is still a solid favorite but there is something here that I have not been paying attention to so if you want to dig a little you might find some relatively easy money.

Northern Iowa at 7 Iowa State  4:30pm  ESPN+

Iowa State, #7 in the preseason. What a weird fucking time we live in.

San Jose State at 15 USC   5:00pm  P12N

Clay Helton is still the coach at USC. That’s crazy. This program has been sleepwalking through the last decade and they’re still able to pull a #15 ranking because they only have one or two teams on their schedule with a relatively equal talent level.

Gardner-Webb at Georgia Southern   6:00pm  ESPN3

Campbell at Liberty   6:00pm   ESPN3

Liberty’s QB is this year’s unheard of draft prospect that every self-styled draft expert/prognosticator on god’s green twitter is touting as a first round pick. I don’t have an opinion on him because I generally feel gross watching Liberty do anything.

Nicholls at Memphis   7:00pm  ESPN+

Go, Tigers, go. I don’t actually have any expectations calibrated for this year’s Memphis squad. I saw Kenneth Gainwell made a 53-man roster for the Eagles and couldn’t remember him being anything other than a freshman. Time is cruel.

Missouri State at Oklahoma State   7:00pm   ESPN+

If Oklahoma State can’t hit for at least 60 in this game they aren’t real and I hate them.

Monmouth at Middle Tennessee   7:00pm  ESPN3

Ah, Monmouth, Monmouth! These chips are too spicy!

Texas Tech vs. Houston (in Houston, TX)  7:00pm   ESPN

The future of the Big 12 is the SWC, as it always should have been. Well, I mean, aside from the SWC’s tentpole programs. Ah, fuck, it’s so weird and stupid.

Syracuse at Ohio   7:00pm   CBSSN

I still love CBSSN but no thank you.

Southern at Troy   7:00pm  ESPN3

Fading fast.

Oregon State at Purdue   7:00pm   FS1

Fading faster.

Norfolk State at Toledo   7:00pm   ESPN3

I’m evaporating.

Central Arkansas at Arkansas State   7:00pm   ESPN3

Eyes are closing.

Eastern Illinois at South Carolina   7:00pm   ESPN+/SECN+

Snoring softly.

Baylor at Texas State   7:00pm   ESPN+

Snapping to just to talk about how evil Baylor is in general, aside from the horrifically cursed athletics department.

Akron at Auburn   7:00pm   ESPN+/SECN+

Back to sleep.

Abilene Christian at SMU   7:00pm  ESPN+

Snoring loudly.

5 Georgia vs. 3 Clemson (in Charlotte, NC)   7:30pm   ABC

Ah, shit, here we go! It is party time! On paper this is an insanely good “opening” week matchup. But this is also the game that I most had in mind when I wrote about how kind of useless this week’s games are for the season going forward. Clemson is in the DJ Uiagalelei era now and even if he’s better long term than I suspect him of being, he’s still bound to be raw against a Georgia team that might actually have more overall talent than Clemson right now. But if he shows out he’ll be an immediate Heisman darling until he starts throwing lawn darts for a few weeks in a row. It’s fun but meaningless.

NIU at Georgia Tech   7:30pm    ACCN

Trash.

Northwestern State at North Texas   7:30pm   ESPN3

Crap.

UTSA at Illinois   7:30pm   BTN

Garbage.

William & Mary at Virginia   7:30pm   RSN/ESPN3

Funny if William & Mary wins but probably just miserable all around.

Florida Atlantic at 13 Florida   7:30pm   SECN

I don’t often fall into the trap of daydreaming about mascots fighting but an owl fighting an alligator is too good to pass up. There are owls of some sort pretty much everywhere in the world so they have to cross paths in nature with a gator every so often. If you have any videos of an owl winning these fights, please share them.

Southern Miss at South Alabama   8:00pm   ESPN+

Hell, yes. I can’t fully explain why this shitbox gets me a little bit excited but it does.

Kent State at 6 Texas A&M   8:00pm   ESPNU

Always root against Jimbo. Don’t always bet against him but definitely always root against him.

Montana at 20 Washington   8:00pm   P12N

Now this is interesting brand building to me. I don’t think there’s much here for UDub other than an expected win but Montana has been a pretty good team in I-AA over the years. If they can run closer than the +24 they’ve been given it could boost their profile quite a bit.

Duquesne at TCU   8:00pm   ESPN+

I’m not falling for this one.

ETSU at Vanderbilt   8:00pm   ESPN+/SECN+

Vanderbilt is a 21-point favorite and I am telling you, gentle reader, that is a mistake.

16 LSU at UCLA   8:30pm   FOX

UCLA hasn’t been a top talent draw on the West Coast in the last 20 years for whatever reason. This is what I meant by USC sleepwalking. It feels like, to me, going to school in Westwood and playing home games in the Rose Bowl would be a bigger draw than University Village and the Coliseum. But maybe being able to walk to games is important to recruits. Whatever, LSU is going to fuck the Bruins up right there in the Rose Bowl so that’s not gonna help anything.

Bethune-Cookman at UTEP   9:00pm   ESPN3

This is as close to a bodybag game as UTEP can get, at least where they’re the favorites, but I will say this for BCU: their uniforms are usually pretty cool.

New Mexico State at San Diego State   10:30pm   CBSSN

This is that real MWC shit. Lovely to me for reasons I have not been and never will be able to articulate.

Arizona vs. BYU (in Las Vegas, NV)  10:30pm   ESPN

This game is Mormon as hell. If you know any Mormon football fans then they probably have an interest in this game. Bless ‘em, nobody else will have an interest but readers of Moroni sure as hell will.

Nevada at California    10:30pm   FS1

Hmm. Maybe. I doubt I can sink much time into it but I do like the overload of different dark shades of blue threads involved here if nothing else.

Utah State at Washington State   11:00pm   P12N

And here we have a ton of red, depending on alternates and whatnot.

Portland State at Hawaii   11:59pm   Spectrum PPV

A historic showcase for the run & shoot but I don’t know what either offense is supposed to be right now.

Sunday, September 5

9 Notre Dame at Florida State   7:30pm   ABC

Notre Dame is only favored by 7. Did FSU get a huge influx of talent that I totally missed or is the line just something nice in honor of Bobby Bowden? From what I know of these two programs from last year, the Irish should be at least a 3 TD overdog. Was Ian Book really all that great? I thought he was a good QB but I am thoroughly confused by what’s driving the odds on this one.

Monday, September 6

Louisville vs. Mississippi (in Atlanta, GA)   8:00pm   ESPN

Yehaw. What a weird way to close things out. Why aren’t the UGas and the Cocaine Tigers playing in this slot? The racist south is favored by 10 but, off the top of my head, I don’t think they’re actually any better than Louisville. Whatever, there’s close to a zero percent chance I even remember this game is happening.

[furbae]

https://sweatco.in/i/godzili

I’ve decided to rehome furbies for sweat coins. Note: it will take a lot of sweat coins, probably up in the thousands. So if you want a Furby but can’t afford one with real money get them with crypto!

What are sweat coins? SWC is a crypto currency you get by walking through the sweat coin app (link above and below) each coin is 1k steps. You can make a max of 20 a day.

I have decided to invest with sweatcoins. Once you hit 1k coins, not steps, message me and we can talk about what Furby you’ll get. It takes time and exercise but this is crypto not real money and if you walk a lot just consider that you’re walking to save up for a Furby. Message me if you have any questions and do what you do every day, walk, but get rewarded.

https://sweatco.in/i/godzili Join now and reblog to spread the message! I’m currently asking the community how many SWC would be equivalent to that of a furby and will update the post.

[ryther-writes]

SWC: Day 2

Write about something presently in your character’s life that is “worth it”.

“Well, what is it?”

The bartender had been pressing the question for a long while to Eran’thul, and he had always had a way to dodge it, a way to not answer such a personal question that came from a stranger.

Isn’t that what they’re supposed to be? Not my friend, but not a complete stranger either. A friendly stranger.

He wanted to tell the bartender off, to tell him that he shouldn’t be asking such questions of the half-elf. But he also knew that he could easily be cut off if he was so rude, and the night was still young. He had only had a glass or two of rum, and he wanted at least one or two more. The Dawnmender huffed, taking the last drink of the current glass he had. He raised his hand and pointed at the bottle that lay on the bar, but the bartender shook his head.

“I won’t be giving you another drink until you give me a straight answer. I promise I’ll leave you alone the rest of the night if you do.”

“That’s not very professional of you.” He shot back angrily. “I’m just here to relax for one single hour from all the chaos around me, but even in here I cannot find peace it seems.”

The bartender dared to laugh at Eran’thul’s words, shaking his head. “You think you can find peace here? I didn’t take you for a blind man. Look around you for a moment, and tell me if you think this is peace?”

And so the Paladin looked all around him, at the patrons, some who appeared to be shaken up, likely trying to destress from the situations they faced in recent times, while others kept their heads low and shot angry gazes at Eran’thul when he set his eyes on them. And still there were others who were drunk and merry, laughing and hollering with other folk, some of whom appeared to be embarrassed with the behavior of the company they had on this night. He then looked around at the bar itself, which appeared to be rather old at this point. Defaced and repainted several times over was the logo of the bar as well as various other symbols such as the Blood Knight sigil and the sigil of Quel’thalas itself. It was dirty, but not overtly so that it was disgusting. A perfect place for a cheap drink, which was what the half-elf had been aiming for. The bartender leaned forward onto the bar itself, shrugging at the Eran’thul.

“There’s no peace to be found here, friend. An escape, perhaps, but not one that I would consider very peaceful.”

Eran’thul turned back to face the bartender, a frown on his face.

“Perhaps not, but what’s the point of all this anyways? Surely you must have something better to do than ask someone who you barely know such deep questions at this time of night.”

The bartender laughed once more at Eran’thul. “You are the sole person who chose up to sit at this bar, and yet you share something in common with the rest of the patrons who aren’t as bold to do such a thing. You have something that’s worth it in your life. If you did not, you wouldn’t be in this bar at all, drinking some cheap alcohol at this time of night. You wouldn’t wake up every day to the chaos that surrounds your life. So what is it that’s worth it to you, that which keeps you going on a day-by-day basis?”

The Dawnmender gave a frustrated sigh, and he found himself in a state of faint disbelief as he actually found himself thinking over the question finally. Contemplation was a rare state for the Dawnmender, he didn’t try to get very sentimental with people. Not because of his dislike for them, but because he wanted to make sure there was still a sense of respect between them and those he interacted with professionally. Such was a hard thing to do once in a while, but generally it was easy for him these days to put that barrier between him and others.

Be friendly, but don’t be their friend.

An early lesson taught by his father, and one that he never truly forgot.

His mind raced with the things he valued. His talents, the talented people he managed to surround himself with, the money...but those were quick, entering his mind one second and then leaving the next. One item stayed for longer than the others, and even though he tried to pass it to think of another item, it returned time and time again. That which allowed some who knew him to consider him reliable, professional, and a valued voice. Yet something that others considered him rude, disrespectful, and a general nuisance. It was what enabled some to call him “honest”, while others referred to him as “asshole”. Something that scared him at times, like when Rainwood had brought around the idea that there might be others with powers beyond his dreams that were half-elves themselves, but the curiosity of it all drove him to edge closer to it despite his fear.

The fear of the truth.

And the truth, he realized, is what he valued most in life. It wasn’t until there was a solid knock on the bar that his attention returned to the bartender, and the bartender opened his arms up some.

“Well, what is it? You don’t have too much time to think it over.”

Eran’thul hesitated, licking his lips a few times and tapping his foot lightly against the stool. The answer was on the tip of his tongue, which only frustrated the Dawnmender.

Say it.

“Duty. My duty is what’s worth it to me.”

The bartender was still for a moment, and then he gave a nod of approval to the answer. “See? Wasn’t so hard. What was it that you wanted again? The rum from Booty Bay, right?”

“Aye. And make it on the rocks, too.”

Keep running from it. One day, you’ll find it.

( @azriah for brief ment.)

[cake-by-thepound]

Reflecting back to Sonequa's TTD couch sesh, cannot imagine anyone else other than Andrew Lincoln that would (should) be on the TTD couch with Chandler for the MSP. Or the originals Reedus and McBride? Would love for it to be Danai Gurira as well. Even an appearance by SWC? What do you think, who else might make it on the couch that night?

Aww, I didn’t even think about this. I’d love it if Andy were there. He’s only been on Talking Dead once (other than premieres) so I won’t expect it, but that would be really nice. And Danai, if she’s not too busy swimming in Black Panther money. 😄 I hope it’s a big cast party with Bernthal and SWC and everyone from the first episode, because he deserves that.

[onewcuckoo]

Because I almost never socialized on this blog before I didn’t feel confident enough to share my accounts from the times when I got to see SHINee during my almost 2 year-long stay in Korea. I kind of regret it now and it may be irrelevant already, but since it’s been a tough time for both OT5 and us fans, I decided to share a little, very small moment that up to a very recent time was almost the first thing that sprang to my mind when I thought of Onew.

This one happened at SWC5 in Seoul last September. It was my first and only SWC as for now, I was excited even though I couldn’t get tickets, so I went there on the morning of the event day and queued for 8 hours in the heat (always grab an umbrella for those things), only to finally get to the ticket box and find out that my wallet had been stolen while waiting in line. Naturally, I couldn’t get in, and all kind of madness ensued (retrieving the wallet was a mind-bending experience in itself but that would be a separate story). But mainly helpless sobbing among thousands of happy and excited fan girls marching past me with their merch bags.

I spent that night crying and accepted my defeat, but my sis scraped up some money and just transferred it to my not-lost card so that I could go on the second day because “You’ll sob about it forever”, and I repeated the queuing and got a ticket to the section to the very side from the stage, so that most of the time I could only see either their profiles or their backs when they went to the podium. I haven’t had many moments of pure happiness in my life, and that was definitely one of them.

They performed the first couple of songs, and I remember Jinki’s very wet face appearing on the screen. He was blinking hard and looked so tired I couldn’t help worrying a bit, because it was only the beginning of the show. But that’s not it yet.

You know how quickly those amazing concerts that you were looking forward to fly by? At least for me, they always become a blur, and what I remember is the joy, but all the details fade away, unless during the event I consciously make an effort to capture a particular moment in my memory.

Anyways, I have a bad eyesight even when I’m wearing glasses, and sometimes I couldn’t tell from afar which member was doing what, especially during the part where they all wore white suits, and Jonghyun and Jinki had a similar dark hair color. So, when I saw one of them running towards our side of the stage, I felt embarrassed because I couldn’t tell who it was. I thought it was Jonghyun, and strained my eyes to see, and the figure came closer and closer, skipping happily, like a kid running to their mom, and I was craning my neck so hard and - it was Jinki. His face just suddenly came into focus as he looked up at us smiling his big grin, and his bangs lifted in motion, and a white light was shining on his face, and I couldn’t even scream because I wanted to admire him in that bluish light and memorize him as he was at that second. I just liked how kind, open and full of light his face looked.

And this is it. This describes what Onew was - and still is - to me. After all, no one can take our memories away 💖

[sportsminorityreport]

How Louisiana Tech could save CUSA.

Louisiana Tech historically has desperately wanted to avoid being in the same conference as Louisiana Monroe. In this, they have a vested interest in keeping CUSA alive. 

So how do you do that as La Tech? 

As I mentioned last time, you either try to be CUSA v.5 -- a large footprint conference of schools that pride themselves on being competitive and do not accept the idea they are truly a conference “at the floor” of FBS where FCS schools can immediately join them ---- or you try to become the Southwest Conference v. 2 and rebuild centered around nearby Texas.

I would start by floating both proposals to MTSU, FIU, and WKU. Find out which they prefer.  If it’s not the SWC proposal, know you might have to out vote UTEP.

1)  Ask MTSU and WKU for time to rebuild and a willingness to work with you.

2)  See if you can get FIU to commit. FIU likely got left behind by the American because they only have a 20,000 seat football stadium at this point, but the original plans called for expansion in steps, ultimately ending at a capacity of 45,000.  It may be that further stadium expansion is temporarily stalled out, but they are still a gem in my book, especially for this conference. 

Having a football toenail in Florida, especially in Miami is good for conference recruiting.  Plus FIU has a high profile coach in Butch Davis today.  

If there is some bad blood between FIU and the Sunbelt and FIU doesn’t want to rejoin the sunbelt (or the sunbelt doesn’t want them), that is great for CUSA and I would argue for FIU.  I would make the case that our two options create great scenarios for FIU to replicate the success Miami had in the 80′s and 90′s.

I would argue for the other CUSA members to add at least one non-football Florida school to partner with FIU so CUSA schools that fly in to distant Florida can do at least 2 Olympic matchups in one trip (and maybe a non-standard 3).  Florida Gulf Coast and the University of North Florida are good long term candidates with decent sized arenas and enrollments who draw decent crowds (2000-2500 a game) in a modest basketball conference. They are good candidates to move up.

Make sure your non-football Florida school understands the cost for greater media exposure and tv money is that they will have to travel farther for a few years until the conference again evolves into a larger conference.

3) With 4 of the 5 schools on board you can probably add whoever you like regardless of UTEP’s potentially counter productive viewpoints.

If the goal is a new CUSA, the future TV revenue and the better academic affiliations lie in the northeast. You have to expand that way. In that instance, step 4 needs to be raiding the Mid-American Conference.

4) Raid the MAC.

The MAC may seem stable but there are a few schools that dream of more than being in an FCS entry level FBS conference. Those schools are all looking at Cincinnati in the Big 12 and saying, “that could be us.”

Those schools realize the conference-wide embrace of mediocrity in the MAC holds them down and that they will never jump from the MAC to the American.  They want and need CUSA to survive as much as the CUSA  schools do,

I would fish for interest in the MAC to be thorough, but I think it is highly likely that the interested schools would be the most academically impressive.  Buffalo, Ohio, and maybe Miami of Ohio.  That is the kind of academic spine we want to develop so we can project into the Northeast where there really isn’t competition in that mid tier (or low tier) of FBS conferences.

With the raids on CUSA , the travel is not significantly different for these schools overall and where it is, they can count on off-setting greater tv money.

Adding that trio would get us to 8 full members and 1 non-football member, but would likely enrage UTEP, who would take advantage of personal relationships with MWC schools to gain admission to the MWC.  As the conference would be moving north anyway, in that scenario that loss would be a regrettable but survivable one leaving  a 7/1conference with a reasonable footprint for projecting east. 

6) Invite St. Louis.

I would suggest trying to pry away regionally isolated St. Louis.  I would make the case on 4 grounds.

- The Hybrid conference CUSA  v. 1 was a much better home financially and for basketball than the A10 and CUSA is now again going to be a hybrid conference long-term.

- More schools will be taken from the Atlantic 10 by CUSA because CUSA has football money to use, making the quality of basketball home argument a wash at best.

- The new CUSA footprint is very, very good for St. Louis.

- If St. Louis wants to play football, CUSA will sponsor them as a startup at the FBS level.  This last point might be especially intriguing to the school.  

Being a regionally isolated non-football school is a not a secure existance.  Jumping immediately to the “healthy” middle class of the FBS world is a much more secure place to be, especially for a school with highly regarded academics (US News ranks them #103 in the top “National University” grouping).

There is no pro or college football in St. Louis and an empty NFL caliber stadium.  

Removing some ill conceived sections of seats could quickly transform that stadium from a failed NFL stadium into an exceptionally good FBS college stadium. The NFL fan base would likely embrace the return of football.

Doing an FBS startup at say the MAC level might be a hard sell, but doing so at a CUSA level might allow St. Louis to launch FBS football and see attendance results that mirror what UTSA saw, but unlike UTSA, they could dominate their conference in a few years.

I think St. Louis would bite, very possibly as an all-sports member.  I think they would be an asset either way.

I am going to guess they would play football bringing membership to 8 football members/1 non-football member.

7) Add UMass.

This would be painful for the former MAC members but needs to occur. 

UMass didn’t bring any value to a conference like the MAC, but UMass is a state flagship University and does have a statewide following in Massachusetts.  In a conference that can sell media markets, UMASS offers the Boston Designated Market Area.

UMASS is brutal in football today due to being banished by the lowly MAC before they established themselves at the FBS level, but would quickly improve in CUSA, where their recruiting would be better than the MAC schools.

The deal to join would be, “Sensibly expand your stadium to 28,000 in the next 2 years and you are in.”

UMASS is an academic peer to the better MAC schools I advocated pursuing (National University #66t) and they are reasonably tolerable in terms of basketball financials ---  large arena and draw decent crowds at a little under 3000 a game.  They are tolerable in a good basketball conference.

You add UMASS to show Northeastern schools you are committing to the region.  Additionally UMASS is already at an FBS level, so counterintuitively, there is less of a “loss of stature” adding a struggling UMASS vs. say the sunbelt adding a surging FCS member James Madison.

Count: 9 football members and 1 non-football members.

8) Add football only UCONN as a non-voting member.

Double down with two of the least competitive football schools in the FBS ranks? Yes, because there is opportunity there for a conference at the CUSA level.

The schools will want to poke UConn in eye and make them bring their Olympic sports in to gain football membership.  Basketball is clearly more powerful than football at UConn, so I would argue this is bad strategy.

UCONN football potentially brings a lot more media value to CUSA than UCONN will be able to extract as a football only member.  UCONN’s stadium is located in the NYC DMA as are many of their alumni (as well as some of UMASS’s alumni).

Adding UConn football gives the established teams an easy win today and gives Northeastern schools hoping to move up hope of competing with UConn and UMASS in a quick timeframe.

UCONN is a strong brand with a lot of fans in addition to being a prestigious school (National University ranked 63rd).

UConn has NOTHING to offer FBS conferences due to the collapse of their football program. This is where the elevation of UMASS stings UConn. There is lots of carrot to offer UCONN, but the elevation of UMASS is more than enough stick.

It’s one thing if both of these rival schools are failing at the FBS level.  It is quite another thing to see UCONN’s local rival UMASS rescued from the Abyss by CUSA and UCONN football still lost.

What would they give to escape that?

They fought hard internal battles to join the Big East.  I think they would rather shutter football before leaving the Big East, so you’d have to take less. 

I think that’s fine. 

Prior to conference play, every basketball team in the us plays about 12 out of conference games.  I would want a commitment from UCONN to play UMASS and the top 4 teams in CUSA basketball from the season before in home and home series in their OOC schedule each year. Men’s and Women’s teams. 

And to consider joining as a full member at a later date if the spirit moves them.  Eventually UConn may want to join as a full sports member, but it isn’t really required. That would spike up the CUSA basketball strength of schedule almost as if UConn was in the conference.

UCONN would always be allowed to attend meetings and voice their concerns, but it wouldn’t be fair to give them the same vote as an Olympic or full sports member and see their vote thwart expansion efforts, for example.

This would allow the conference to offset the Florida non-sports member with UConn football for 10 teams across all sports, but I think you would want at least 12 and more likely 16, 18, or even 20 members to have regionally sensible divisions that are not brutal to the Florida schools and enough content and markets to sell for good money.

CUSA v.1 had 18 members and brought a lot to the negotiating table.  CUSA v.2 saw the football members push out the basketball members and the TV money and basketball money dropped a great deal due to the smaller membership.  I would argue to emulate CUSA v. 1.

9) A further Raid of the Atlantic 10

The Atlantic 10 is a 14 member mid-major basketball conference comprised of 5 public schools, 8 religious private schools, and 2 non-sectarian privates.

To my view they are a weaker version of the Big East that smartly pulled in some strong public schools to supplement their base of religious schools. But the different types of schools means the member schools likely do not have the same goals.  

Still, it is an  impressive mid major conference... but as they are not pulling in the same kind of TV revenue the Big East gets, one that is vulnerable to raids from a CUSA level conference.

I think if CUSA takes a few schools, the Atlantic 10 is still going to end up with 10 or so religious privates and will still be making similar money and getting similar tourney results, so like the MAC raid, this is not a raid I would lose sleep over ethically.

But for CUSA pulling the larger schools, with their strong basketball crowds and larger alumni bases, into a conference that can leverage those assets better with the media companies, would be a big deal.

I think it would make a lot of sense to offer Dayton, Fordham (religious privates), Virgina Commonwealth, Rhode Island (Publics), George Washington, Richmond (Non-religious privates) Olympic memberships.

Dayton and Fordham might pass to keep the affiliation with the other religious schools in the A10, but they might not. Dayton is a bit of an outlier in the A10, like St. Louis.  Fordham is in NYC and has an enrollment quite a bit larger than the other A10 privates.  It isn’t unprecedented for religious schools to look at better financial opportunities.  

Dayton offers the 23rd highest average attendance in the nation.  Fordham offers a comparatively wealthy and somewhat numerically significant alumni base in the nation’s #1 DMA.

It would probably be a much easier decision for the rest. 

Rhode Island could look favorably at a promise of FBS football inclusion down the road if they met attendance and facility improvement thresholds.  Those might seem far beyond Rhode Island’s ability to achieve, but putting it out there and offering peer status Olympic sports immediately with academically higher profile fellow state flagships from the region would be compelling.

While a more lucrative Olympic home would be the biggest carrot, Football could be a possible carrot for the four Virginia/DC area schools. (I would select VCU, George Washington, and Richmond.)

Views on the merits of football change with every University president change.

George Washington for example hasn’t played football since 1966, but now conditions are the most favorable for that particular university than they have been in almost 70 years,  The Redskins have moved to a distant suburb/city.  RFK is about to be demolished.  The RFK site is less than 2 miles from their campus. It isn’t difficult to imagine George Washington, with an enrollment of over 28,000, in a city where the NFL team has essentially moved out, drawing an FBS reasonable 20,000 fans per game to a modest 26,000 seat stadium built on that site from their students, alumni and fans in DC.

School -  Enrollment - Basketball attendance - arena capacity - US News rank

Dayton - 11,200 -13,400 - 13,435 - National University #127

Fordham - 16,500 - 1900 - 3200 - National University #68

VCU - 31,000 - 7600 - 7617 - National University #172

RI - 16,900 -6100 - 7257 - National University #162

GW - 28,200 - 2600 - 4338 - National University #63

Richmond - 4000 - 6000- 7201 - National liberal arts college #22

(Should George Washington pass George Mason would be an acceptable replacement.

School -  Enrollment - Basketball attendance - arena capacity - US News Rank

 GM - 35,000 - 4000 - 10,000 - National University #148)

If they all accepted, that would get the new CUSA to 10 football playing members and 16 basketball playing members.

10) Add Delaware and William & Mary as a Olympic members from the CAA.

Ideally I think you’d be happy with both of these schools as full FBS members, but there is logic to adding them as Olympic members at the start.

William & Mary with a somehat small enrollment at just under 9000 and a stadium that only seats 12,359 would struggle to transition to FBS overnight, but Delaware is more than capable of making that jump quickly....So why handle Delaware specifically in this manner?  For credibility reasons.  You don’t want to directly pull teams up from the FCS ranks.  It is much more “presentable” to allow teams already in the conference with an FCS team to “upgrade” their football team.

Tell Delaware they can join the conference, but for 2 years they have to insist the offer is only as an Olympic member.  Then a public offer to upgrade can be made.

Under a previous Delaware president in the last decade, there were plans to upgrade their stadium to a capacity of 30,000.  You don’t make those plans unless you think you need more capacity and jumping to FBS is in the forefront of your mind.  Delaware simply hasn’t been offered the right FBS offer, so those plans have fallen by the wayside and alternate plans have temporarily shrunk the stadium to 16,730.

That said, it is a fairly simple decision for most university presidents to decide if they should be playing FBS of FCS ball if they are capable of turning out 20,000+ fans per game and essentially have an invite. Delaware was drawing 22,000+ a game in the last decade.

The conference you are building is much more financially lucrative for Olympic sports than the CAA for Delaware and Delaware can set their own schedule for upgrading for the most part.  They would join it for the better basketball opportunities and better TV money.

Delaware bridges your Virginia assets to the New York/New England teams and entices other teams you need to come forth.

School -  Enrollment - Basketball attendance - arena capacity - US News Rank Delaware - 23,300 - 2700 - 5000 - National University #93

William & Mary - 8800 - 4000 - 8500 - National University #38

count: 10 football 18 basketball.

11) I would also discuss the merits of a raid of the America East to add Stony Brook and Vermont as Olympic members, bur would be open to viewing them as “not ready yet”.

Buffalo is one of 4 “flagship” universities in New York.  Stonybrook is another although their embrace of athletics is decades after Buffalo’s.  Still they offer a good strategic “get”. They are a large and brilliant academic school and they have shown phenomenal growth as an athletic program on the football field and basketball courts and in terms of fanbase growth.  

They draw acceptable numbers in basketball, but the school would have to show a financial commitment to increasing those attendance numbers.  There is no reason not to see improved attendance in a vastly superior basketball conference.

It would not surprise me to see Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium expanded to 22,000 within a decade and Stony Brook filling those seats if a CUSA football slot was available upon upgrade.

Vermont is a strong basketball school.  The price of CUSA admission would be an expansion of their arena by 1000 seats and a consistent promotional pushes to fill those seats.

School -  Enrollment - Basketball attendance - arena capacity - US News Rank

Stony Brook - 26,800 - 2700 -  4160 - National University #93

Vermont - 12,200 - 3000 - 3228 - National University #117

but we will say that is a step too far today.

12) Add Villanova as a non-voting, football only member of CUSA in exchange for a scheduling alliance with the Big East.

It is no secret that Villanova anguished about the decision to follow their heart into the Big East.  They had hoped for an FBS invite.  I suspect they still want it so I would kick the tires on that for the exact same reason I would champion offering a football slot to UCONN.  It’s something they want that no one else will give to them.

I would offer the slot in exchange for something similar to the UCONN deal.  For making Villanova content and offering them a true FCS upgrade, I want the Big East besides UCONN to agree to a 5 year deal to match their best teams from the previous seasons against ours.  

For 5 years they would agree to schedule half of their pre-conference games against us in this manner based on the previous year’s results.

Their #1 finisher* would play a home and home against our #1,2,and 3 finishers.

Their #2 finisher* would play a home and home against our #1,2,and 3 finishers.

Their #3 finisher* would play a home and home against our #1,2,and 3 finishers.

Their #4 finisher* would play a home and home against our #4,5,and 6 finishers.

Their #5 finisher* would play a home and home against our #4,5,and 6 finishers.

Their #6 finisher* would play a home and home against our #4,5,and 6 finishers.

Their #7 finisher* would play a home and home against our #7.8, and 9 finishers.

Their #8 finisher* would play a home and home against our # 7.8, and 9 finishers..

Their #9 finisher* would play a home and home against our # 7.8, and 9 finishers. 

* ignoring UCONN

after that Villanova would just be on the same arrangement as UCONN.

Conceivably Villanova could upgrade their football program at the same time St. Louis added football as an FBS start up yielding 11 for football by say 2024 and 18 for basketball, with future FBS upgrades down the road.

The finial picture of a CUSA v. 5 with a focus on the Northeast.

football

La Tech , Buffalo, MTSU, UMASS, St. Louis, UCONN, W Kentucky, Villanova, Miami  (OH) , Ohio ,  FIU

No more than 11 teams for the first 2-4 years or so, allowing up to 10 conference games allowing every school to effectively recruit Florida with a promise of an in-state game every 2 years.

I think it would be wise if each football member agreed to pay a “tip” to FIU for bearing the very shitty travel.  (If it is worthwhile to FIU it will be for the same reason Miami paying in old Big East worked --- having a talent edge on it’s conference mates and then seeing that hyped due to big media markets up north. Butch Davis would probably get that. )

I think in short order Delaware would want to move up, taking some of the travel burden off FIU football. 

Olympic sports (travel partners)

Central Division      Northeastern Division     Southeastern Division

La Tech /MTSU  ----  Ohio/Buffalo ----  George Washington/William & Mary

St. Louis/W KY,   ----  Fordham/Delaware ----   VCU/Richmond

Miami  (OH) / Dayton   ----   UMASS/Rhode Island    ----   FIU/FGCU

The basketball setup would strongly outproduce ala CUSA v. 1.  This setup would boast an abundance of strong programs that would be relevant in an abnormally large number of big markets.  

[thecollegefootballguy]

2017 Top Games of the Week: Week 4

Hey folks, we’ve passed the midway point in September and the season is starting to get wild. I’m excited about some of these upcoming games because I think there’s a decent chance that a couple of upsets could occur and really shake things up.

Without further ado, here are the games of the week!

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Top Ten Games of the Week

10. Texas A&M 2-1 (0-0) vs Arkansas 1-1 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 41-29-3 Arkansas Last Meeting: 45-24 Texas A&M 9/24/2016

This isn’t quite the game I thought it would be going into the season. Both Texas A&M and Arkansas have clear issues and it’s highly doubtful that they’ll be competing in the SEC West. That said, the winner of this game can save face and put themselves back into relevance. The loser will have some serious questions to answer and an angry fan base to deal with. The Aggies have won five games in a row, each meeting these teams have played since A&M joined the SEC.

9. NC State 2-1 (0-0) at #12 Florida State 0-1 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 26-11 Florida State Last Meeting: 24-20 Florida State 11/5/2016

NC State isn’t as strong as the spin artists made us believe, but for whatever reason they always show up for these games against the ACC’s best. Florida State hasn’t played since Week 1 and could have figured everything out or have developed a bit of rust in the joints. Only one way to find out.

8. #20 Florida 1-1 (0-0) at Kentucky 3-0 (1-0)

Series Ledger: 50-17 Florida Last Meeting: 45-7 Florida 9/10/2016

Florida can’t move the ball and Kentucky has been surprisingly strong, so we might be looking at an upset. That said, the Gators have won 30 games in a row against UK, so the smart money is obviously on the UF.

7. #8 Michigan 3-0 (0-0) at Purdue 2-1 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 44-14 Michigan Last Meeting: 44-13 Michigan 10/6/2012

I’m surprised that this game has become this important. I really didn’t expect putting it on here, but here we are. Michigan’s offense has had some trouble. The same can’t be said for Purdue. The Boilermakers have looked much better this season and at this point look like they might go bowling in Jeff Brohm’s first season. It’s the first time these Big Ten originals have met in five years.

6. #1 Alabama 3-0 (0-0) at Vanderbilt 3-0 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 61-18-4 Alabama Last Meeting: 34-0 Alabama 10/8/2011

I can’t believe I’ve been lucky enough to put this game on my Games of the Week list. This is truly remarkable. You might not know this, but Alabama and Vanderbilt used to be (small) rivals with a yearly game, only ended when the SEC abandoned the second divisional crossover game. The last time the Commodores won was in 1984, good for a 22 game win streak on part of the Crimson Tide.

5. #5 USC 3-0 (1-0) at California 3-0 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 69-30-5 USC Last Meeting: 45-24 USC 10/27/2016

I also didn’t anticipate this being contested by two undefeated teams. Nobody expects Cal to win, of course, but the Golden Bears have played well and won two games they weren’t expected to win. Likewise, USC hasn’t looked good outside of their big win over Stanford. The Trojans have won the last 13 games in a row over Berkeley.

4. #4 Penn State 3-0 (0-0) at Iowa  3-0 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 14-12 Penn State Last Meeting: 41-14 Penn State 11/5/2016

Penn State has looked rock solid so far and the Nittany Lions are expected to run right over Iowa. The Hawkeyes didn’t put up much of a fight last year in Happy Valley, but this time the game is on their home turf. Iowa has a knack for knocking down high ranked opponents at home, just ask Michigan last year. If they can do the same this season, now is as good a chance as any. PSU has won the last three meetings.

3. #7 Washington 3-0 (0-0) at Colorado 3-0 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 10-5-1 Washington Last Meeting: 41-10 Washington 12/2/2016 (PAC-12 Championship Game)

We’re lucky enough to get a rematch of the PAC-12 Championship Game so early in the season. Washington has played well but they haven’t played anybody of import. We’ll get a much better idea of what this team is when they play Colorado. The Buffaloes have done surprisingly well in what was supposed to be a regression year and if their defense can hold on they can make things very interesting. The Huskies have won every game these teams have played since CU joined the PAC-12. The Buffs haven’t won since the 1996 Holiday Bowl when both teams were in different conference. 

2. #17 Mississippi State 3-0 (1-0) at #11 Georgia 3-0 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 17-6 Georgia Last Meeting: 24-10 Georgia 10/1/2011

If Auburn-LSU is the Tiger Bowl does that make this the Bulldog Bowl? Either way, this game got much more interesting after Mississippi State humiliated LSU last weekend. Georgia looks like the SEC East favorites since Florida and Tennessee are so anemic. MSU could throw a real monkey wrench in the East if they shut down UGA like they did LSU. These teams haven’t been played since the SEC expanded to 14 teams. 

1. #16 TCU 3-0 (0-0) at #6 Oklahoma State 3-0 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 15-10-2 Oklahoma State Last Meeting: 31-6 Oklahoma State 11/19/2016

This game will decide who challenges Oklahoma for Big 12 supremacy. Both TCU and Oklahoma State have looked very strong so far, and I would even say that the Cowboys even look like a Playoff contender. Like usual in this conference, this could be a shootout.

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5 Group of 5 Games of the Week

5. UCF 1-0 (0-0) at Maryland 2-0 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 1-0 Maryland Last Meeting: 30-24 Maryland 9/17/2016

Both UCF and Maryland look much better than they did last season. If the Knights keep their act together they could compete in the AAC East alongside South Florida. A win here would bolster their case for a potential NY6 spot if it comes to that.

4. Toledo 3-0 (0-0) at #14 Miami FL 1-0 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 1-0 Miami Last Meeting: 24-14 Miami 11/21/1987

Toledo is the best team in the MAC. Besides Eastern Michigan, the Rockets are the only undefeated team left in the conference. If they lose it’ll be a big blow for the league in the G5 race. Miami has only played one game so far, but they’re expected to be very strong.

3. Texas Tech 2-0 (0-0) at Houston 2-0 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 18-11-1 Houston Last Meeting: 35-20 Texas Tech 11/27/2010

Memphis has one, South Florida has one, San Diego State has theirs. If Houston wants to jump into the NY6 race they have to beat Texas Tech to keep pace. The Red Raiders have looked good so far, with an improved defense that should keep them from getting blown out (more than usual). I’m very pleased that these old SWC members are playing a game. It needs to happen more often. 

2. Temple 2-1 (0-0) at #21 South Florida 3-0 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 2-1 Temple Last Meeting: 46-30 Temple 10/21/2016

Last year this game decided the AAC East division. It may do just that again. The home team has won all three times these teams have played. The Bulls are still the AAC favorites, this is their first test. 

1. #22 San Diego State 3-0 (0-0) at Air Force 1-1 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 19-15 Air Force Last Meeting: 27-24 San Diego State 10/5/2015 (MWC Championship Game)

The last time these teams met it was to decide the Mountain West title. It went to the Aztecs, who won the next year as well, and are on their way to a third West division title. With their P5 games over, SDSU has to take care of business in conference in order to make a NY6 Bowl. They have been thwarted in years past because they’ve blown games against teams they should beat. Air Force looks like one of those potential upsets. Who wins, the Falcon run game or the Aztecs’ unique defense.

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Notable FCS Games

2. #11 Eastern Washington 1-2 (0-0) at Montana 2-1 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 27-16-1 Montana Last Meeting: 35-16 Eastern Washington 10/29/2016

One of the best rivalries in the Big Sky Conference, Eastern Washington and Montana play for the EWU-UM Governors Cup. Both teams are usually strong, though Montana has had a couple disappointing seasons lately, a win would help turn the momentum the Grizzlies’ way.

1. #16 Liberty 3-0 (0-0) at #5 Jacksonville State 1-1 (0-0)

Series Ledger: 3-0 Jacksonville State Last Meeting: 48-19 Jacksonville State 9/24/2016

The only game this week that could very well be an FCS Playoff preview. Liberty has a win over FBS Baylor already. Jacksonville State is rock solid and already has a win over a ranked FCS opponent back when they beat Chattanooga in Week 1.