TexGator

When the TV rights are running $30M+ per school, you can do it. The TV money alone is more than any Southland school has as a total budget. Plus, P4 schools have alumni and fans everywhere. May not be able to give them 30K fans for UCLA going to Maryland, but their fans on the East Coast and Great Lakes areas will still come out of the woodwork. Now, does it suck for Volleyball to be likely leaving on Wednesday to play a Thursday/Saturday pair of matches? Yes. But they'll manage- so many classes are online anyway that they'll not miss too much class. But all of this is just the nature of college sports now. I'm surprised the SLC hasn't been able to come up with some "Official Gameday Stop of the Southland Conference" since they're talking up that they've got the shortest trips... monetize that to encourage people to road trip it. 7-Eleven, QuikTrip, Murphy USA, Buc-ee's, TimeWise... there are plenty of potential partners and it gives your schools another shovel of money.

No thank you.

Welcome In (or Back In for the Jacks) to our new conference brethren! SFA- I know it may not seem like a step up, but as a school that also made that move to the WAC, I can tell you that our foundation in Southland is much stronger. You'll love that the new commissioner is forward thinking but also loves to build up what's already there. With 2 of your 3 biggest regional rivals here, I hope you see quick success in increasing the number of people through the turnstiles as you will, I'm sure, save millions in travel costs and feel like the Southland is on better footing than when you left it! Vaqueros- It already has felt like y'all were our partners in crime, so to speak, with the UTPA Broncs having been in the ASC and Sun Belt with the Cardinals. It's going to be a lot of fun having y'all with us and I hope that rivalry with the Islanders becomes something to watch blossom. Your joint membership in the conference will hopefully be something you enjoy as I'm sure those trips out to Utah were a little taxing on everyone and were discouraging your fans on travel options. Now, while most of the conference isn't "close" for our RGV friends, annual games in Corpus and the Alamo City will hopefully build up the excitement about your program.

Speaking of decimating UNO:

And a pitcher who put up some great JuCo stats and followed his pitching coach down to Beaumont. Love it!

Hitter from UMBC- and he's got some good stats- a .963 OPS last year, .900+ for his college career. Primarily a 3B.

UNO and HCU are going to be decimated, from what I'm hearing. I really like both those pickups, btw.

Pretty solid players. Let's hope they and others help take the team to the next level.

It'll be interesting to see who they go after. Trev Alberts has definitely put his imprint on the Athletic Department with all the changes he's made. Heefner at DBU makes sense but I think they'll try to go after one of the other SEC coaches or an ACC coach like Holland from Duke, Bakich at Clemson, or even try for Vitello at Tennessee.

Scuttlebutt I've been hearing: - None of the guys in the portal that haven't announced a new school are closing the door on returning to Beaumont - No one is taking calls from other Southland schools, out of respect for the program, their teammates, and Coach Davis (to me, that's a testament to Davis' leadership that they don't want to double-hit the Cardinals program) - They're not recruiting as much as selecting portal guys, including from other SLC schools; pretty easy to pluck from a school like HCU since they were 9th in conference and then hired from within... if I had offers, I'd take that as a sign they're not serious about investing in the program, and thus, in me

Well, let's be honest. Their ability to play games is 2-3 months shorter than it is down there. Their schedule has to end by October 1st and doesn't get to start until mid-March. So the players are easily a fully puberty year behind Southern and West Coast players by the time they hit college. Then, they get to college and have to spend most, if not all, their non-conference schedule down here... with the school spending money on travel and not getting revenue from: - Home games - Your internal game broadcast (yeah, Disney will pay to air it on ESPN+, but you don't get revenue from "Hometown Ford" sponsoring "Your Drive of the Game" or the local ADT installer with the "Home Defense POTG") ... and instead spending about $200/day per player on room, meals, travel, etc. Amazing to say about the "Mighty Big 10" but we probably can offer the guy more money and he already has relationships with players.

This just further reinforces that the Big 10 is not a serious baseball conference. It's conceivable that the 4 schools being added from the Pac-12 finish 1-4 in the conference and are the only ones that qualify for the NCAAs. But this is a really good hire.

They are at the top. If you win the Commissioner's Cup, you're at the top. I think O'Malley's leadership is different. He has bigger plans but isn't going to go for hollow moves like the WAC departure where there were grand pronouncements to create an 11th FBS conference, but not actual plans. I trust his plans and that he's not going to vastly expand the budget w/o it being able to pay off.

The snubs for postseason play in Men's Basketball and Baseball reinforce that Lamar and other the power players of the Southland need to start throwing their weight around and start trimming the fat. We have a lot of dead weight in the conference that doesn't care about their Athletic Department as a whole. - Thinking 1000 fans + tickets for basketball = a good turnout - Football crowds that a lot of 4A high schools would be ashamed of - Facilities that are multiple tiers below the top of the conference We've achieved Step-1: Creating the Assistant AD for Corporate Sponsorships position. Let's hope some partnerships develop that can open up more opportunities for student-athletes. Step 2, though, is tougher: Showing up to make Provost-Umphrey, Neches FCU, Vincent-Beck, and the other facilities a HCA that no one wants to deal with. We have good coaches. We can draw some great talent. All we're missing are the results. Winning the Commissioner's Cup shows we can get to that next level- the place that Texas was in the Big 12 last year. We don't have to have a $200M budget like they did; we just have to be a tier above everyone in the Southland... for now.

This reinforces that Lamar and other the power players of the Southland need to start throwing their weight around and start trimming the fat. Far too many Southland teams think small: - 1000 fans + tickets for basketball = a good turnout - football crowds that a lot of 4A high schools would be ashamed of - facilities that are multiple tiers below where the top of the conference are But the Cardinals also need to start getting their fans to turn out where we're the universal envy of the whole conference. Creating the Assistant AD for Corporate Sponsorships position is a good step to raising the funds to make sure we can play the game in this new world of college sports.

So glad to see the page is back!!! WooHoo!!!!!!!!!!