Do you have any support for those conjectures?
They can schedule each other OOC should they choose. They go to the same bowls for the most part, don't they?
3. Can see maybe but the geography is so distant and all can be seen on ESPN anyhow...
I can see maybe the two conferences making a "challenge" date or two, see what interest that attracts before jumping to a conference. I'd imagine that's an expensive operation you're talking. They'd still have their separate administrations, adding an additional layer on top.
first of all your model drops 8 programs from the 2 conferences. That alone would be chaos, especially considering SMU is one of the best programs in one of the two revenue generating sports.
This coast to coast travel would be financially devastating when you factor in the non revenue sports. Most these athletic departments are running in the red to begin with.
espn already has all these teams at a very favorable price. They wont be willing to pay more. look what happened with the big12 expansion, it was more cost effective to pay the current big12 members a little more than it would have been to give programs like UC a big pay raise.
it wouldn't improve bowls or playoff opportunity as both are currently already shut out of them so theres nothing to leverage. They'd be better off beefing up schedules with P5 ooc games to improve their chances.
OOC games are often scheduled a decade or more in advance. Schools hope for quality opponents when the games are actually played. A strong conference offers more of a guarantee regarding strength of schedule.
The bowl alliances could shuffle immediately with the merger, and if this conference is seen as having quality enough it could regain the former-BCS Bowl bid that the Big East held for many years - I do not see a legitimate reason for why it would be denied.
The MWC's TV contract is worth about $18m annually (
source) or $1.2m per school.
The AAC's TV contract is worth about $36m (
source), or $3m per school.
Now, we can look at the markets potentially involved here (the programs listed in my original post are by no means a "final incarnation" of mine):
Cincinnati (UC)
Dallas (SMU)
Denver (CSU)
Hawaii (UH)
Houston (UH)
Las Vegas (UNLV)
Memphis (UM)
Orlando (UCF)
Philadelphia (Temple)
San Diego (SDSU)
Tampa (USF)
BYU (Utah/national)
Navy (national)
Air Force (national)
Then you have name recognition programs: Boise State and UConn.
Before you laugh at this, you may need reminding that this appeared to be the direction the Big East/AAC wanted to go during realignment as they courted BYU, Boise State, TCU, and San Diego State in addition to the other western teams they ultimately gained. I do not suspect they would be entirely against trying again.
As far as TV money is concerned, the Big East was rather pathetic when it came to its TV deal for football, but they lacked the markets and coverage that this new conference would have. Would this new conference score big time money? No. The ACC, Big Ten, SEC, and Big 12 rake in about $20m per school. This conference would have a lot to prove before it can begin to dream of that sort of payday for its members. But even a modest $6m per year per school would earn AAC schools double and MWC schools 4-fold.
As far as ESPN's interests are concerned, I would be surprised if they saw this as a bad deal. If they do, I think NBC would be game.