Cincinnati averaged 35,067 fans last season in a down year. If the numbers were anywhere near 20K, it would obviously be reason for concern.

Last year there was a game against Oklahoma in Paul Brown Stadium which skewed things big time. They had 31,000 in other games. And while it was a down year, it was coming off of their best season ever. Nippert Stadium only holds 35K fans.

They don't have the stats on the NCAA site sorted, but they ranked 71st in 2008 (31k fans), 75th in 2007, 90th in 2006 (20k fans on average), 84th in 2005 (22k average).

It's definitely a cause for concern. Cincinnati is a great bandwagon city, so they can get fans for a year or two when the team is hot, then abandon their teams if they drop off. 20k fans is pathetic as hell, and they had that 5 years ago. Occasionally they can get a bump from a team like Oklahoma or Ohio State coming to town, they move the game to Paul Brown Stadium, and inflate their attendance numbers for the season.

Just to compare to the other teams you listed, WVU had 60K fans in 2007, Pittsburgh 33K, 53K for USF, 38K for UCONN. Besides WVU, these really are fringe teams. When Kentucky can get 2x the fans you have on average, that's not a good sign.

Yeah, I know they got extra fans for the Oklahoma game, but that's no different than what happens bubble teams like Baylor and Vanderbilt who get road fans flooding into their stadium on a regular basis, usually with the added benefit that they're located much closer to those visiting teams' campuses. If anything, Cincinnati's attendance figures would go up significantly on a move to the super-conference system playing the likes of Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan every season. Also, comparing Cincy to Kentucky's not fair since Kentucky's already a lock. Here's the attendance figures for the bubble teams I listed (of which FIVE would have to qualify for one of the teams I listed to not make the field of 64):

Baylor: 40,043
Iowa State: 45,395
Northwestern: 36,449
Indiana: 41,953
Vanderbilt: 33,269
Virginia: 45,459
Wake Forest: 30,474
Syracuse: 40,064
Air Force: 40,093
Navy: 32,653

Isn't the most relevant factor how many cable subscriptions you're likely to bring in? Or is that not the thought anymore?

Given the way the B1G is structured and run, I wouldn't mind Texas joining at all. Should it ever happen, it will be nothing like the Big XII was in terms of the administration and such, and our dismal record against Texas can only improve at this point.

Well, the 64-team thing's a fun hypothetical, but it's not ever going to actually happen anyway. It's too strictly regimented for a bunch of independent-minded conference commissioners to actually follow and it would force a bunch of viable FBS programs out for no reason. If I were to guess what the FBS looks like in 10 to 15 years once the dust has cleared and things have settled down a little, I'd guess it would be something like this:

Pac-16
Big-14 (previously Big Ten)
SEC (14 teams after adding Florida State and Texas A&M, but no one else)
ACC (12 teams)
Big East (12 teams after absorbing a lot of upper-level mid-majors to keep a conference championship game and AQ status)
MWC (12 teams after picking up the leftovers from what was the Big XII and maybe a couple teams from C-USA)
Conference ? (Some sort of mish-mash league for the leftovers from the WAC, C-USA, MAC, and Sun Belt that manage to maintain their FBS status)

And yes, I'd guess there would be a few independents left. A playoff simply consisting of the Top 4 teams in the BCS standings regardless of conference affiliation will be much simpler to push through than some gigantic reorganization of the FBS that cuts its size in half and will likely be the first step. Then it will eventually morph to an 8-teamer with a couple at-larges to go with the AQs which are automatically filled by any independent in the Top 8 of the final standings. Notre Dame and Navy will stay independent, and honestly, I think there's a great chance Texas will be in this category as well. In the day and age where a school can have it's own television network, I think there's too much money to be made as an independent for an elite level school to want to pass that up unless they're already in a major conference where they have traditional rivals. I can't imagine why Texas would want to give that up to risk ending up 2nd banana to USC in the Pac-16 once the Big XII falls apart.

Wow. Part of me asks why 45 thousand people would watch Iowa State try to play football every weekend. The other side of me says, what else is there to do in Iowa? (not that there is anything to do in Oklahoma, except football)

Please, what is there to do in Alabama or Tennessee or Ohio or Ann Arbor or any god damn place besides Florida and California. 45,000 people in and around Ames support their university and team just like people everywhere else.

lol at grouping Ann Arbor in with those places

Cincinnati is maxing out their pathetic stadium at 35k. All of these bubble teams are already higher. Baylor's stadium can hold a lot of people, and averaged 40k last year. And Baylor is definitely a bubble team in this situation.

Cincinnati might benefit from a lot of visiting fans taking over the place. Basically what keeps Indiana and Northwestern at respectable levels.

The point is, they are a bubble team, along with a lot of the schools you mention here. That's why I think it's worth eliminating the non-bubble teams on both sides, then really thinking about the ones closest to the bubble.

Actually, only 7/10 bubble teams are higher and the only one of those 10 bubble teams that's been to a BCS game in the last decade is Wake Forest (average attendance last year: 30,474). Cincinnati's been to two BCS games in the last 4 seasons and has had 3 10-win seasons during that timespan. And again, if Texas hadn't been gifted an extra play against Nebraska, Cincinnati would have played for the national championship two seasons ago. This isn't exactly ancient history. I feel like the on the field product has to count for something in the process, and you can't just throw away a national championship level team for a cellar dweller just because said cellar dweller has a little bit larger stadium. There's really no way that you can justify putting 5 of the 7 bubble teams with higher attendance than Cincy in over them given the huge difference in recent success.

Baylor never ever sells out their stadium, even when A&M and Texas come to town. They tarp their endzone seats, covering up 5,000 of them, and still don't have a capacity house.

Someone in the Big East has to make a BCS game. It's not like they were good, they were just the least crappy team in the Big East a few times.

National Championship level team? LOL. No. I guess you forgot to watch the Sugar Bowl when you saw what happens when they played a National Championship level team.

The point is Cincy is a bubble team, not that they clearly aren't (either above or below that).

The stadium stuff is about predicting future success levels. If you don't have good fan support, you aren't going to be anything more than a flash in the pan. They can build a good record by playing terrible teams. If they played a gauntlet, they'd be the same cellar dwellar that Baylor or Indiana is.

How does Texas and A&M not fill the stadium? It's only 50K. It's <2 hours from either campus. That speaks almost as poorly on Texas and A&M as it does on Baylor.

Even in Sagarin predictor which is about the least flattering metric you can find for them, Cincy was ranked #14 to finish the season in 2007 and #15 in 2009. In Wake Forest's big year which I believe is the best year of any of the other bubble teams, they didn't crack the Top 30. (I didn't check every single year for every team so don't crucify me if that's wrong, but I did check Navy who was the nearest competitor and their best Sagarin finish was #36.) There's no question that Cincy has been much, much more successful on the field than the other programs and even if they weren't good enough to win a championship, merely the fact that they were still in competition for one on the final weekend of the regular season 2 years ago is enough that you can't banish them from the FBS completely.

Yeah, I checked the attendance for the Oklahoma game last year to see if it was artificially bringing up their averages, but they only managed to draw 36,000 (!) for the Sooners. They've got some pretty ugly figures for all the built-in advantages they have.

I don't think the Big Ten expands to 14 without either Texas or Notre Dame. What other team could they add that will bring more than it takes away given that the candidate is likely to come from Big12, ACC, or Big East.

Run good for 2 seasons, become powerhouse.

They weren't in competition for it. They had no chance. The entire argument is they are somewhere between 50-80. Do you disagree with that sentiment? If not, what are you arguing about? I don't have Wake Forest as anything other than a bubble team. Same with Navy, Baylor, etc... Northwestern is probably in better shape, but not by a huge margin. At least they have beaten a top 10 team in their history. I am curious now that I brought it up. What is the highest ranked team Cincinnati has ever beaten? Also, what is the highest ranking a team that they have beaten has finished the season? I'd have to guess it's no better than 15.

Even Aggies are smart enough to stay away from Waco.

loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool someone has never been to Waco

These are the ranked teams they've beaten since '06 since that's what's easy to check in the Steele preview:

2006: #7 Rutgers
2007: #21 Rutgers, #16 UConn
2008: #24 USF, #20 West Virginia, #20 Pittsburgh
2009: #21 USF, #14 Pittsburgh
2010: none

Rutgers finished the 2006 season ranked #12 in the AP poll and Pittsburgh finished the 2009 season ranked #15 in the AP poll so both those teams satisfy both of those qualifications.

Confirmed top tier powerhouse.

but we beat the powerhouses that are Rutgers and USF!!

Never said they were a top-tier powerhouse. Just that if in the course of the last 5 years, a team has:

-reached 2 BCS games
-finished in the Top 15 of Sagarin predictor twice
-had 3 10-win seasons
-beaten 8 ranked teams (yes, I missed one the first time around)
-come within a bad call of reaching the national championship

then that team probably deserves to keep their FBS status should the current structure change and be replaced by a 64-team division made up of 4 16-team superconferences. Again, I'm just saying they should be one of the Top 64 teams ahead of teams like Vanderbilt and Iowa State. Geez, why does every single statement have to be so controversial around here?