Worlds Colliding

If you've been to NightBEAT since it made the move to Winston Salem, you may have noticed a group in the stands or in the lots, usually clad in gold, taking in the show.

They were the Blue and Gold Marching Machine of North Carolina A&T State University, and this year, they'll be part of the show.

A&T sits across the Triad from the show's home at Wake Forest, and boasts the largest, most prominent marching band in the area. They'll be teaming up with the team from Carolina Crown who puts on the event to add value for all attendees, and the Aggies are sure to win some new fans from the drum corps-centric crowd.

Many will note the seeming incongruence of an HBCU band at a DCI show. Frankly, that's the beauty of it. Fans of any facet of the marching arts should be able to enjoy the entertainment that features A&T, 11 World Class corps, and SoundSport program Thunder of Roanoke. And pump the brakes if you're thinking the Aggies are a fish out of water. While unmistakably and undeniably an HBCU band, the Blue and Gold Marching Machine has shown that when they incorporate corps style elements, they're damn good at that too. There's no telling if the Aggies will give you what they do best, or switch their swag up for a feature to show that they can get down whichever way they please.

Searching For an American Hero

While UConn's move to the Big East wasn't driven by football, it won't be without gridiron implications.

For UConn, their football program becomes homeless, as the American Athletic Conference has already made it clear that UConn is not welcome as a football-only member. UConn may find itself in the same boat as its fellow New England flagship, UMass, who has been a Division I Independent since parting ways with the MAC in 2015. Since the MAC is the only other conference that makes geographic sense, there's a good chance UConn remains independent - if they remain FBS at all. UConn made the move to the FBS ranks 20 years ago - ironically, at the behest of the Big East Football Conference - but has an overall program history dating back to the late 19th century. If UConn returned to the championship subdivision, they wouldn't be the only recent program to do so. Idaho made a similar move after the dissolution of the WAC left them homeless, and at that point some wondered if the changing landscape of major college football, including the widening rift between the haves and have nots, would have others follow in their footsteps.

On the other side of the equation, the American is in a position to pick its next move, perhaps with some goading by ESPN. Unlike other defections from what was then the Big East, losing UConn doesn't leave the conference any weaker, and the die has already been cast with regards to access to the sport's power structure. The American has a few options: Stand pat at 11 football members, add a football only member (potentially complementing with a non-football member), or add a new member in all sports.

Keeping 11 members may be the strongest position, provided two things. The first is that their newly negotiated contract with ESPN remains in place for the schools that remain, ensuring each a larger piece of the pie. The second is that the American gets a waiver to host a championship game with fewer than 12 members, though this may simply be a formality. Should the AAC go divisionless, they can choose, as the Big 12 does, to match the two two strongest programs in the championship game, improving the resume of the victor. While this likely still will not result in a playoff berth, it can strengthen the AAC's case in the event they are in contention with any other Group of Five conferences for the New Year's Six spot.

Should the AAC seek to add a football only member, Army is the most viable option, if they'd consider it. Adding Army makes the Army-Navy game a conference matchup, allows the conference to beat its chest about truly being the American, and still operates within some semblance of geography. Air Force further spreads an already geographically expansive conference, and while they have their own planes, that Tampa to Colorado Springs road tilt has to be a doozie. BYU, while the strongest independent option, offers similar geographic challenges, and of course they made the active decision to go independent less than a decade ago. Adding a football-only member also calls the question if they also adda member in all other sports. While the AAC's position of the sixth best conference in football is pretty well cemented, their place in the pecking order in basketball is less firm. A successful basketball pairing would have to make sense for the American while also improving the fortune of the incoming member, something that poaching from the likes of the A-10 wouldn't do. Short of getting a team from the Missouri Valley - Loyola-Chicago's recent Final Four run made noise, but was an outlier - there's nothing that truly fits the bill. Further, I'm hesitant to once again sow the division between basketball schools and football schools that tore apart the old Big East.

If the conference chooses to expand, it will likely have its pick of the remainder of the Group of Five teams. Much as the Big East used Conference USA as a feeder program through a variety of realignments, The American comes from a position of strength over the rest of the non-power leagues, even without access to football's power structure itself. With all due respect to UConn, it wouldn't be difficult to replace them with a program of equal or greater value on the football side of the equation.

My choice - selfish, but also justifiable - would be Appalachian State. To some the move may seem premature. After all, the Mountaineers have spent just a half decade at the FBS level. Still, they bring the distinction of winning at every level, suffering no setback when changing subdivisions and winning the Sun Belt each of the past three years. They also bring a rabid fanbase in North Carolina, and through it the Charlotte media market, as well as a natural rivalry with ECU.

There are a number of other candidates that, for a Conference USA-era USF alumnus, feel like getting the band back together. UAB, Southern Miss, and Charlotte (this time with football) would all rejoin former conferencemates USF, Cincinnati, Houston, and Memphis, and Tulane, as well as UCF, Tulsa, and SMU from the conference's life immediately following. A couple of other current Conference USA members, notably UTSA, ODU, and the aforementioned Charlotte, have programs that are less than a decade old.

Losing its northernmost outlier tightens the conference up just a bit, keeping each of its teams at or below the 40th parallel. Still, if the American, which is also moving league offices from Providence to Dallas, wishes to maintain a New England outpost, UMass may be worth a phone call. The Minutemen rebuffed an "all in or all out" offer from the MAC to keep its other sports in the Atlantic 10, The American may offer a profile in all sports that meets their needs a bit more. The Minutemen would also bring with them the only Sudler Trophy in FBS outside of the Power Five leagues. Filling out an independent schedule for a number of years may make them long for the stability of conference affiliation, but it will also mean quite a few contracts to get out of in coming years.

UConn Go Home Again

There's no place like home.

The University of Connecticut recently announced they will be rejoining the Big East, a league they were a charter member of in 1979. When conference realignment tore the conference as we knew it asunder, UConn and the other football playing members splintered off in to what is now known as the American Athletic Conference, while the private, Catholic, basketball schools without FBS football retained the Big East name and forged forth a new path, picking up a few programs along the way.

This development is just the latest in the ongoing conference realignment saga, but it differs from previous moves significantly in that it is not driven by major college football or by media markets. To the latter, Hartford-New Haven ranks #33, a paltry addition to a conference that already boasts the top four markets east of the Mississippi in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. To the former, the Big East doesn't field football, leaving UConn's future football conference - even subdivision - uncertain.

To be clear, the return to the Big East isn't all wistful nostalgia for UConn. While they'll return to familiarity, it's a shrewd business move that brings them literally closer to home, with a critical mass of schools in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. The expanded Big East will involve conference games as far west as Creighton, but the American's geographic footprint, with outposts in Tampa, Tulsa, and Houston, was far more daunting. They'll return to at least some of their traditional rivalries, rather than manufactured trophy games with C. Florida. Men's hoops will return to the venerated Madison Square Garden, and women's hoops might at least get some competition rather than a league in which they've never suffered a loss in six years.

UConn will be the odd school out - the only public school in the bunch, and one of only two non-Catholic institutions. It's also the only school with the major college football albatross to account for, but that's their problem, not the Big East's. Frankly, the conference has proven it gets along just fine without the F word wagging the dog, and UConn, with the acceptance of membership, has nodded assent.

So with all due respect to another place where basketball drives the bus, This time it's UConn saying there's no place like home.

This Is My Fight Song

Sometimes, you get to celebrate America as you celebrate America.

This week offered a Women's World Cup match (and victory, fittingly, over England) just days before the Fourth of July. Watching the game - and naturally, imagining marching bands in that context - got me thinking: Which of our national songs are analogous to school spirit songs?

I first shied away from the Star Spangled Banner as our fight song, mostly because its time signature makes it difficult to march or clap along to. But beyond that, in form and function, as much as I wanted to give the gig to Stars and Stripes Forever, the Anthem is it.

Our alma mater? America the Beautiful. It extols the beauty of our "campus," uses its thees and thys in all the right places, and borrowed its tune from an older hymn.

And don't worry, there's still a home for our national march. Stars and Stripes Forever can occupy that secondary fight song/spirit song spot like NC State's Red and White or Georgia Tech's Up with the White and Gold.