Looking at UConn and UMass's messy situations, here is my question to fellow Seawolves fans? What is our main sport, football or basketball?
If football is our main sport, then we should be improving ourselves so that if there is a realignment in the northeast/mid-atlantic region, we are ready for jump to FBS along with JMU and Delaware, whether to an eastern CUSA division with ODU and UNCC, or to an eastern MAC division with Buffalo. Highly doubt an AAC invite. Also to keep in mind that joining any of these conferences will push our athletic expenses through the roof. The travel cost to Texas teams in CUSA won't be sustainable. MAC might be more manageable but will they expand after the failed experiments with UMass and Temple? Is being independent an option, like UMASS?
If basketball is our main sport, then perhaps multi-bid A10 should be the goal while football stays FCS? Except a few outlier (SLU and Dayton), most of the teams are in the east coast.
What is our athletic department and university board's vision?
The current CUSA situation is untenable long term and there is likely going to be a split. I wouldn't rule out us being considered to be put into that eastern half. Travel to Texas and Louisiana for games isn't likely something we'd need to worry about.
The reason the MAC experiments failed is that Temple was a former Big East member with Big East ties that got them back into that conference when appropriate, and UMASS didn't want to sacrifice their spot in the A10, a better basketball league than the MAC. We'd be a natural rival for Buffalo, and short of an AAC invite, wouldn't be a flight risk. We're much more likely to stick around than Temple or Umass were.
Can't answer for the university but the focus should be on basketball. A university like SBU will never be able to elevate its football program to a point of national prominence where it attracts hordes of applicants, faculty, and donors as a result. However, it does have a chance of fielding a basketball team that makes it to the Sweet 16 or even higher. Of course for that to happen, it has to first move to a better conference.
I think you're both correct. SBU's location does lend itself to being more of a basketball school, however, I don't take that to mean we should abandon football. Having football,
good football does make us more attractive to conferences like the AAC down the road or even higher conferences than that. The game is changing, but for the foreseeable future, football still drives the realignment bus. Fielding a competitive team will be important.
I would still be prepared to expand Lavalle to 20k+ should an invite to a suitable conference come along. We could upgrade basketball today VIA the CAA or A10 if an invite came along without impacting football. That's really something we ought to look at.
If an eastern/mid-Atlantic G5 conference formed, I think we'd be stupid not to upgrade at that point as we'd be at the higher level with greater exposure, playing some of the same CAAFB schools we're up against now. Every public school of our stature save for a couple is FBS, I say we join them if an opportunity came up.
What I don't think makes sense is putting everything in a conference that makes no sense geographically just for the sake of being FBS. If we could do
football only in the current CUSA, Sun Belt (not happening but not crazier than us in the Big South), or MAC, while keeping everything in the AE, I think that's something we should seriously consider, but putting basketball and everything else in any of those conferences right now doesn't really make much sense to me. Possibly the MAC, but to be honest, I'd rather play Maine and Binghamton in basketball than Bowling Green and Eastern Michigan.