CAA Statement Says CAA Will Not Be Issuing a Statement on Conference Expansion
The 2012 CAA Football Media Day takes place Wednesday at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, Maryland. CAA commissioner Tom Yeager can read the tea leaves and clearly understands that the one topic on everyone’s mind will be conference expansion. So he went ahead and issued the following statement.
As we turn our focus to the 2012 season and the upcoming CAA Football Media Day, I wanted to provide an advance statement regarding conference expansion to minimize distractions from the more important activities of Media Day.
Even prior to the announced departures this spring, we had been quietly exploring possible membership realignments. To the extent that we can maintain the confidentiality of the discussions, we have endeavored to do so to protect the interests of all parties involved. We will continue to maintain our confidentiality and will not comment about particular institutions. In the end, we are confident that the league will continue to grow its legacy as the preeminent FCS conference in the country.
We are excited about the 2012 season and the record coverage our new national television partner the NBC Sports Network and our syndicated regional partners, the Comcast SportsNets will provide our fans, teams and student-athletes.
In short, don’t hold your breath folks. Yeager and the rest of the CAA powers that be will not be using Media Day to issue conference invitations. They won’t even be dropping any hints about potential invitees. Instead they’re relying on the old Judge Smalls technique of “you’ll get nothing and like it!”
While we (and loads of others) are poking fun at Yeager for this, it’s actually a pretty smart move on his part. While fans are anxious to hear about potential new conference schools, the CAA has nothing to gain from leaking anything at this point. Conference re-alignment is a tricky thing and it would only make things tougher for Yeager is he showed his hand now. We’re as anxious as everyone else to hear what teams will get invitations to join the league. But Yeager is right that the focus of tomorrow’s Media Day should be on the 2013 football season. It should be. We just have our doubts any official statement is going to keep folks from asking the expansion questions.
