I think we all need to wake up to reality. What more could they have done? Seriously? What can you do to cause a casual football fan to make time to watch UNC-C vs UTSA? We don't even care about these teams and we are in this conference. At some point the product is what it is. Bad. Most of the teams in the is conference don't even have fan bases and the networks know that.
There has been talk of al-a-carte programming for a couple years now. The networks overspent on conference deals and before long all you're going to see on TV are the prime matchups. What the internet feeds are going to be there for is to service other fan bases. Much like back when we were in FCS before the arrival of that ESPN Regional Channel. I forget what they called it. Heck it might have been ESPN+. What did we have before that THN? Keith and Sonny calling the games. About the only people that watched it were Herd fans and people in the region.
College sports has spent itself back in time. Most programs cannot keep pace. Unless the playing field is leveled, college football is going to look a lot like it did in the 80s to early 90s and maybe before that.
The only way Marshall or any team is going to get exposure is to win, make bigger bowls, and not only make but maintain in the top 25.
Mike Aresco has managed to distract America, at least ESPN, into thinking a bunch of leftover schools from an often debated "BCS conference" along with several directional schools from an even lesser conference, into something worth a billion dollars.
If he can do that with aging cable...imagine streaming.
Granted, and he knows this, the AAC is still quite far from being anywhere near a P5 conference, but he doesn't care...enough to brand the AAC a "P6" conference.
Again, this is a collective of schools that got rejected by the Big 12, who sought someone to bring in, really any value, that couldn't even top...Iowa State? Not even top, just be on par.
Aresco likely said, "look, you need to spend money, lots of it. We need to 'act' like a P5 conference. We need to believe we're one of them." Which the committed programs have done.
In return, they're all over the place.
I'm not saying CUSA is gonna call itself a P7 conference or anything, but Judy hasn't marketed CUSA having an affiliation with the NFL network that any other commish would. I'd market the hell out of that! I'd put the NFL logo everywhere I legally could during a broadcast. I'd actually talk to FB and ole Zuckerberg and ask about marketing the teams with more exposure. What can FB so, what can we do? Does she even know how FB works?
Most of all, I'd tell every AD they need to step their game up. Get creative, do whatever you do, but make your programs better. Spend money on them, hype them, give students a reason to go to games.
Judy doesn't give the conference a sense of urgency and a need to market itself more. She'll never shake down the AD's to make them actually spend money and get creative in marketing themselves to their own cities/states.
Thats whats killing CUSA, its a boat race with no wind, sails, paddles, or engines...everyone's just sitting there floating to the finish line...and Judy's there, clapping her hands like Jason Garrett.