C-USA / MWC Merger and its Impact on Utah State University Football

The world’s biggest college sports conference is coming your way in about 18 months.  Spanning from Hawaii to Central Florida, its 24 members will be strewn across the USA.  Yes sports fans, Fresno State will be in the same conference as Southern Mississippi.  East Carolina will be a conference rival of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.  Get out the popcorn for these intra-conference rivalries!

So where does this leave Utah State University and its WAC affiliation?  Better off.  This 24-team atrocity is doomed to failure, just like the 16-team WAC experiment flamed out after just two years back in 1998.  USU is better off sitting on the sidelines for this one.

There was this interesting commentary on the C-USA / MWC Merger by Chadd Scott last week.

He proposes for smaller D-1 schools, that rather than trying to compete with the Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC and the likes, they instead create small, boutique conferences …with every team within driving distance. 

Not only would it cut down on travel costs, but it would create more local rivalries.  Does anyone at USU feel strongly when Louisiana Tech rolls into town?  Wouldn’t it be more likely to rev up the engines if Boise State, Idaho State, Utah State, Wyoming, Colorado State, and Air Force Academy were its own conference (and possibly BYU if they were to let them do their own TV deal)?  If a D-2 regional conference had Weber State, Utah Valley University, BYU-Idaho, Southern Utah, Westminster, SLCC, and possibly Dixie? 

Of course, the major college football world is driven by TV money, and the big dollar signs that the top conferences are getting is what is driving the C-USA / MWC merger.  But it won’t work.  Ohio State v. Michigan, USC v. UCLA, LSU v. Alabama…those conference matchups are much more compelling for television than Marshall v. Nevada, New Mexico v. East Carolina, or Alabama-Birmingham v. Colorado State.  The TV deal this new super-conference ends up with won’t amount to much more (if not less), than the current TV monies those conference members now receive.

Just to test this theory, I looked at the attendance figures at Utah State University for the past 64 home football games, dating back to 2000.  Here’s what I found, which supports the “boutique conference” concept:

Average Attendance (All 64 games):  16,507

Avg. Attendance – Boutique Conf. Teams (14 games):  20,826 (+26%)

Avg. Attendance:  D-2 Regionals + Univ. of Utah (9 games): 22,712 (+38%)

And here is the average attendance by longer-distance conference opponents over the years (San Jose State, Nevada, N. Mexico State, Louisiana Tech, Hawaii, Fresno State):  23 games:  12,708 (-23%).

For schools like Utah State, it’s about butts in seats, not TV money.  And when Utah State hosts a more local opponent, there is, on average, an 8,000 person positive swing.  At $25 / ticket, that’s $200,000 more ticket revenue per game…over six home games, an increase in over $1 million dollars.

For Utah State, the best move is to focus on scheduling as many “local” rivals as possible; wait for the implosion of the C-USA / MWC, then be ready to propose the following new boutique conference:

Utah State

Colorado State

Idaho State

Wyoming

Air Force Academy

Boise State

BYU

Then, if Utah State focused its non-conference schedule on including every year two of these:

Weber State

Southern Utah

Utah

That would leave 3 or 4 other non-conference games with which to try to schedule from the “power” conferences. 

The school would make more money, incur smaller travel costs, and fan interest would increase.  Win-Win-Win.

Eric D. Schulz is the co-director of strategic marketing and brand management at the Jon M Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Prior to joining the University, he spent five years as Vice-President of Marketing for the Utah Jazz (NBA); he previously was VP of Marketing with the XFL Football League, and served as a general manager in minor league baseball. He can be reached at eric.schulz@usu.edu.