The last 6 posts make the difficulty here rather clear. More questions than answers. I'll add a couple of opinions & factoids:
1.) I'm old enough to remember the SW Conference before SMU's death penalty. SMU was not #6 in the Texas market then...if they are today...and had no trouble recruiting there. IMHO it has been their absence from a P5 conference that has put them there today. Put them in the PAC (or the B12, for that matter) and they will be back. Whether we want them is a complete other story, but as part of the PAC they would bring TV eyeballs and a bit more Texas recruiting appeal.
2.) UNLV is a poor choice if academic or research parity (with the related academic reputation) is desired. They are an outstanding choice if a sports destination (which, by the way, they would be for every Men''s and Women's sport we play) is the goal. And they are somewhere in between for the other factors. If we ever go to 16 teams, they will be one of them, and if we decide not to add anyone east of Colorado, then if we go to 14 they will be one of them. The only questions are whether we want to get that big, and when, and whether Fresno comes first (again, a separate discussion).
3.) For all the noise about SMU, I have not heard much on the board about Tulane. A high quality university in yet another good to visit town...possibly the only town that could compete with UNLV for visitor appeal. If we ever went to 16 teams and had both Las Vegas and New Orleans as destination cities, I'd be good with that. And I have no interest in SMU by themselves. They would need a more natural geographic rival, and picking up another university with a medical school in a prime tourist destination seems desirable...if and only if we move eastward.
4.) I think a major appeal of Fresno is that between FSU and SDSU (on top of Cal & Stanford & the rest of the PAC) they have a ton of alums in the LA basin. It looks pretty obvious to me that FSU would bring more added TV eyeballs in greater SoCal than UNLV. With SC and UCLA bailing out, we'll need to shore up the TV market in our largest market area, and I think FSU would do more of that than UNLV. Yes, UNLV brings the Vegas media market, which is not tiny....certainly larger than Fresno's home area. But FSU has to have a lot more alums in SoCal than UNLV...at least based on my personal experience...so this is not as easy an analysis as it appears on the surface.
5.) Finally, for me at least, the major wild card is Air Force. If we go to the even number of 14 in the west or 16 including SMU/Tulane, we still need one more team to go with SDSU, FSU and UNLV. San Jose is a solid school but brings little in a media market that already has Cal and Stanford. Air Force has a number of unique aspects (including one of the largest interested fan bases in the US, which again means eyeballs), and nobody can question their academic standing, regardless of their research focus. We could probably get game opening flyovers for free (insert smiling emoji here)! As the added team to go with SDSU, UNLV & FSU, Air Force strikes me as the most appealing.
