QUOTE(froginaustin @ Jun 2 2010, 01:47 PM) [snapback]567263[/snapback]
In the decision to invite or not to invite BSU, the devil is the details-- of course if one of the details is UU out of the conference, then everything I'm about to type counts for very little or nothing.
FOURTH (and this is TCU-selfish, I admit, but so what), will conference revenue go up enough so that our share of the increase is sufficient to pay for sending our non-revenue teams to a remote venue? I've heard Boise has a "nice" airport. So does Springfield, Missouri. But the flights in and out are relatively infrequent and expensive.
This really isn't that big of an issue. Excluding the revenue sports, how much would this increase our travel? Boise doesn't do baseball, men's swimming & diving, equestrian or rifle, we don't do women's gymnastics or softball (yet), and for a lot of sports, there isn't a lot of intra-conference play outside of the conference tournament. The MWC doesn't sponsor regular-season championships in golf, cross-country or track & field (sports that mostly involve multi-team tourneys all over the country), so we don't have to face Boise in those if we don't want to. Basically, that leaves us with women's volleyball, women's soccer, men's and women's tennis and women's swimming & diving, where we would have to travel up there every other year. Considering that we already travel all over the western U.S. for these sports, I don't anticipate adding Boise would make that great of an impact on our expenses.
Also, keep in mind that, geographically speaking, we're the outlier in the MWC while Boise is pretty close to the core of the conference. Sure, it's a lot easier to get a flight to DFW (or Love), but Boise is close enough to some MWC schools for a bus trip or a short regional flight.