If you haven’t already read my previous article, I submitted a FOIA request for conference realignment related documents from both Appalachian State & Georgia Southern. I received Georgia Southern’s documents today.
But after receiving the documents, I got an e-mail from Georgia Southern with additional documents that were not discovered in time to physically mail. There is a time limit associated with responding to a FOIA request in the state of GA, thus why they didn’t wait. Since my FOIA request specified that digital copies were acceptable, they e-mailed these additional documents.
In this e-mail, Georgia Southern’s AD Thomas Kleinlein received a “SBC EADA Fact Sheet” (Sun Belt Conference – Equity in Athletics Data Analysis - Fact Sheet) from Karl Benson the Sun Belt’s Commissioner. It basically compares financial numbers of a bunch of schools.
Kleinlein then forwarded it to someone named Jeff (within the athletics department?) asking for amplifying info on each school. It seems a bunch of the text of the e-mail was withheld by the school, unless Karl Benson’s email really did just say “and the sport expense data” and that’s it.
The fact sheet itself is the real jewel here, because it comes from Karl Benson and lists every Sun Belt school, then has the words “Potential Members” followed by a collection of school names. Note that I have no idea if these schools are SERIOUS candidates, but at the very least, these are schools that being somewhat considered.
This is the original copy of the attachment: SBC EADA Fact Sheet.PDF
Note that the date of the attachment is only today’s date because it was forwarded to me today from their lawyers. The date of the email was Dec 21, 2012 @ 11:31AM.
The schools it lists are:
Appalachian State
Delaware
Georgia Southern
Idaho
Illinois State
Jacksonville State
James Madison
Lamar
Liberty
Missouri State
New Mexico State
Richmond
Sam Houston State
Towson
UT Chattanooga
I follow Sun Belt expansion as close as anyone in the game. Most of these are the usual suspects. Some of these are schools, like UT-Chattanooga and Illinois State, I thought only people on message boards were talking about. But apparently the Sun Belt is actually considering them as well. Other schools like Richmond & Towson seemed to come out of left field for me, but make sense in a way.
For those of you that wanted some kind of smoking gun/official invite, I’m sorry. I just requested the FOIA and this is what they gave me. I hope you find it interesting. Check back soon for more documents from my FOIA request.
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Great work on uncovering this stuff which kind of confirms what a lot of us GSU fans were thinking/hoping was going on behind the scenes. You should do a FOIA for Benson and the other Sunbelt ADs as well!
[...] second set also included information from Commissioner Benson that revealed basic budget data on current Sun Belt members plus 15 potential candidates. I [...]
[...] potential expansion plan for the Sun Belt. Next, I posted a document from Karl Benson which listed all of the potential candidates for Sun Belt [...]
Any numbers for the baseball and softball programs?
Not in the FOIA request.
Those numbers are a bit scetchy in places. How can Ark LR have 8million in revenue when both their basketball programs loose money and barely total 2million? They are showing almost as much revenue as a football playing member.
Thanks for all your hard work. I really enjoy the site.
The FOIA approach was pretty clever.
The numbers that JMU, Liberty, and Delaware put up are impressive for schools of their size. They would immediately raise the revenue bar for the Sun Belt. I wonder what the numbers look like for TN State? Nashville would be a great city to have onboard in the SB. It could be the hub for the north half of the conference.
With the success of App St. and Sam Houston…I can’t understand why the numbers aren’t higher for each of those programs. And I should probably throw Geo. Southern in there too. Their numbers are pretty low as well. App State numbers aren’t bad…just lower than I would expect with all the attendence figures. Maybe travel is taking a bigger bite than expected???
Now that we know 15 of the 20 teams…that KB referred to recently in his comments…I would have to guess that the remaining 5 would be basketball schools that could help raise attendence and bball revenue within the conference. I find it hard to guess on these 5 because there are so many schools to choose from.
I do believe that it would be good for the Sun Belt to have four basket ball(non football) teams. As long as they choose the right ones. VCU seems like a big, well positioned school? Team them up with Richmond and that could really add a big market to the conferences TV revenue not to mention RPI rankings.
I am uncertain though, as to whether the SB can pull teams from conferences such as the A10 or MVC. From what I recollect…the SB has been turned down by a number of teams in the recent past. Anyone remember who those were? Fla A&M, Mo St, others, …???
Liberty University has 19 sports that are already Div1, no one else can say that. Liberty has $900,000,000. that’s million dollars in cash. There football stadium is set to be expanded to 60,000 seats or more. They have a 4 tier ESPN network wired Press Box, a 10,000 seat basketball arena, a brand new 2500 seat baseball stadium, a full size indoor hockey rink, and 8000 acres to expand. With the Chancellor being UVA law graduate Jerry Falwell Junior, they have a shrewd business man to lead them into the future…remember Notre Dame was a small Midwestern Catholic College in the mid 20th century. BYU same thing out in Utah. Quotes–from consulting firm Liberty has hired to help with the invite–Since 1990, Bill Carr, the principal of Carr Sports Consulting of Gainesville, Fla., has advised and counseled more than a dozen major universities on the transition from lower-level football to the top tier. Of Liberty, one of his latest clients, Carr said: “They are a quantum leap ahead of any other school we’ve worked with. Liberty is the best prepared and has, by far, the most resources. It’s simply a matter of time until they get there.”
Liberty at Notre Dame? Liberty at Louisiana State?
“Hey, I never thought I’d see Boise State in the Big East Conference,” Carr said. “Virginia Tech was on the outside looking in for a very long time. Now they are a bona fide member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. It’s a volatile time. Anything is possible. People make their own place now.” What an awesome addition they would make to any conference. Go Flames