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San Diego State AD John David Wicker Calls Move To AAC “Non-Story”
Moving football and dumping other sports somewhere else
Contact/Follow @JeremyMauss & @MWCwire
Aztecs looking to be a MW member for a while
Rumors of San Diego State and Boise State heading to the American just might have been overblown. In the report from Yahoo, there was a one-line blurb saying that the Aztecs and Broncos were in talks with the AAC.
Also relevant is that the AAC has already engaged with Boise State and San Diego State about potentially joining. It’d be naïve to not brace for another round of realignment at both the Power Five and Group of Five level.
San Diego State athletics director John David Wicker dismissed it as a “non-story” when speaking to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“Even if this was something we wanted to look to do or were interested in doing, it’s a nonstarter because we can’t put all our teams in the American and there’s no viable alternative on the West Coast for the rest of our teams (if football went to the AAC).”
San Diego State at one point was going to be in the Big East for football and join the Big West for the rest of the sports. Now, it seems like that is not an option and it could be due to the step down in play and specifically for its basketball team that has made the NCAA Tournament in eight of the past 11 years (we are including 2020 as SDSU would have earned an at-large bid.)
The Big West is considered a low-major conference and is ranked around the 20th best conference out of 32, whereas the Mountain West is in the backend of the top 10. The league is behind the Power 5 football leagues and in the neighborhood but usually behind the AAC, Big East, and Atlantic-10. The Aztecs going to the Big West would really hurt its basketball brand.
Going to the AAC even for all sports is basically a lateral move in terms of competition and money once considering the costs in sending the teams to the Central and Eastern time zones on a consistent basis. The move is not
Wicker is not standing pat and said he is always making phone calls and maybe the AAC is talking to San Diego State but at the moment Wicker says “nothing is imminent.”
The thinly sourced Yahoo report may just be that because conversation happens all the time, which is what Wicker said.
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