Towards the end of non conference play, I took an RPI snapshot of where the A-10 might stand after a number of realignment scenarios. Turns out, I jumped the gun a little bit and used data where the A-10 was at its peak. This of course skewed my numbers a bit to the positive side. I thought it might be time to have a second look at the how the realignment scourged A-10 would stack up heading into the 2013 home stretch.
Let's do a quick reflection. Most of the conferences I looked at stayed about the same. The only ones that swung drastically in the last two months were the C7 and Conference USA in the positive direction. Going in the other direction A-10 sank quite a bit moving from 4th to 9th in a scenario that only looks at the 2015 realignment picture as we know it right now.
| 1 | ACC | 0.5858 |
| 2 | Big 10 | 0.5835 |
| 3 | MWC | 0.5847 |
| 4 | Catholic | 0.5706 |
| 5 | Big 12 | 0.5664 |
| 6 | PAC12 | 0.5613 |
| 7 | Big East | 0.5494 |
| 8 | SEC | 0.5486 |
| 9 | A10 | 0.5468 |
| 10 | MVC | 0.5326 |
| 11 | WCC | 0.5289 |
| 12 | CUSA | 0.5077 |
| 23 | CAA | 0.4719 |
I ran the same scenarios I did last time. First was worst case where the A-10 loses five teams including VCU to the C7 and UMass to the Big East. We would've ranked 10th in that scenario in December, we would rank 11th now behind the WCC now. Next I looked at what the A-10 would look like if Richmond left and VCU stayed. Then and now, we moved up one spot. Finally, I looked at what would happen if Creighton ended up in the new league and UMass stayed in the A-10. This time I also added Tulsa to the Big East. We jumped to 7th in that scenario before Christmas but we only get to 9th now ahead of both the Valley and the WCC but a fair bit behind all of the football conferences.
I think it would be fair to call this second look a little more representative. It's not an absolute predictor nor is it complete. However, it's still not horrible and the league is not going to fall off the cliff like a lot of people expected it might. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that only 4 teams leave the A-10 and the C7 only become the C12 max. Rumors are circling about 14 and VCU is getting more frequent mentions. Thanksfully, so is Siena. At the end of the day, the league will take who and how many Fox Sports tells them to take and that will be the schools they think will make them the most money long run. The new rumors have me a little concerned that my old worst case scenario could get worse. Even then, I don't see the A-10 falling much further than we already have.
