{"id":4010,"date":"2012-06-14T20:33:14","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T00:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=4010"},"modified":"2012-06-15T17:27:24","modified_gmt":"2012-06-15T21:27:24","slug":"what-we-want-to-know-about-the-1m-dollar-caa-exit-fee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=4010","title":{"rendered":"What We Want to Know About the 1M Dollar CAA Exit Fee"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the exit fee, here are my thoughts.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Here are the questions I want answered before fully ranting. \u00a0I feel bad jumping on RTCCAA (Reporters that Cover the CAA), but sometimes I wonder whether they’re thinking at all or if they’re just under orders from their mostly small-town (or small-credibility in the case of the RTD) papers to report the dumbed-down version of things. \u00a0For those that don’t know, the CAA President’s voted this week to raise the exit fee for leaving the conference to one million dollars even, presumably to dissuade further defections. \u00a0Most hardcore fans clearly see this as an absolute signal that we are stuck in the low-rent district that is the CAA (and rapidly becoming a ghetto if rumors of VMI, Hampton, and Coastal are to be believed though we don’t buy into that uninformed RTD trash as stated above).<\/div>\n
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1) Who voted on behalf of JMU? \u00a0Was it Rose during his last week as Prez or Alger or a proxy for one of them?<\/div>\n
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2) How did JMU vote? \u00a0If we were an overruled Nay, that would say as much or more than the vote. \u00a0This answer alone probably says more about what the JMU Admin itself actually thinks of the Dukes chances of moving up regardless of everything else.<\/div>\n
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3) I’ve heard numerous times that the CAA Football Conference has separate bylaws from the CAA Conference. \u00a0Presumably this applies to things like entrance and exit fees as well, since obviously there are current and possibly future football-only members. \u00a0Does this mean a team, for example, I don’t know, JMU!, could leave in football alone if such an opportunity presented itself (i.e. a new FCS-to-FBS conference) without paying the full freight on the exit fee?<\/div>\n
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4) Finally, it would be nice to hear a little more about what how the NBC Sports Network meetings went a few weeks back. \u00a0If they’re willing to honor the contract despite the high-profile defections, or even discuss increasing the deal, that certainly eases some of the pain of staying in a CAA that at least currently, appears to be much weaker than a few months ago.<\/div>\n
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While there is certainly a set of answers to these questions that would leave me madder than an Alpha Phi with an empty bank account at an Anything for Money party, there also seems to be more to this decision than simply the 1M. \u00a01M is a big number, but the gamble any school makes on a move to FBS is so much larger than that figure that down the road, this won’t be the make-or-break aspect of the decision. That said, it doesn’t look good, not good at all, especially if JMU voted for this.<\/div>\n
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Lastly, WHY IN THE NAME OF EVERYTHING HOLY IS THE DECISION TO STAND BY THE CAA’S OWN RULES AND KICK ODU’S UNGRATEFUL, DISGUSTING ASS OUT OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP PICTURE NEXT YEAR STILL UNRESOLVED?!?! This is a no-brainer. \u00a0I don’t really give a crap about their now-homeless, non-revenue sports that CUSA doesn’t have staying or going in the CAA (though it seems a dangerous precedent to allow them to make their bed and not have to lay in it and it certainly could create issues in the future when ODU could conceivably have far greater athletics revenue at their disposal than other CAA schools). \u00a0In the words of the brilliant Walter Czobcek, “there are rules here, doesn’t anybody give a shit about the rules?!”<\/div>\n