Realignment: separating football schools

[perryc]

You may already know about the Atlantic Sun's ambitious plan...
https://youtu.be/5t8AjIhdtcA

Would it be desirable to attempt something similar with the Summit and Missouri Valley? Football schools would go to one conference, non-football (and Pioneer football) schools would go to the other conference.

For basketball, there would be a scheduling agreement between the two conferences, providing the benefits described in the video.

[perryc]

In the above scenario, the Summit is analogous to the proposed United Athletic Conference. The Summit would be the Valley's sister conference for basketball scheduling. This model would have half the Valley membership** becoming members of the Summit. Current Summit members without football would join the Valley.



** UNI, Illinois St., Southern Illinois, Indiana St., and Missouri State.

[JimmieTuba]

Interesting. In your scenario, I think moving football members to the Valley makes more sense. The Valley already has a football image. You would have to build up the Summit (not that it would be hard) football image.

[perryc]

If this were ever seriously proposed for the Summit & Valley, I imagine longtime MVC schools would fight to keep the Valley name for their conference. Drake has been in the Valley more than a century. Bradley joined in the 1940s.

[jackdaniel]

i'd miss the ND's, Louisville, Oregons, UCLA'S, Arkansas,Nebraska's

etc coming to play at Frost for WBB.....but for how long could we be so fortunate to get P-5's on a H&H basis ......I guess this would be less stressfull for scheduling if both conferences were to merge more or less.

[Nidaros]

I don’t quite get the football conference that Ted was talking about. Kennasaw and North Alabama hardly have dried paint at the FCS level and the rest of football conference are tail end FBS. Will this mean Kennasaw and North Alabama will be moving up to FBS to be part of new football conference? It seems it would put a great deal of burden on these two schools.

[Nidaros]

Ted is talking about a football conference, I notice two schools are new to FCS, Kennasaw and North Alabama.If in this formation they have to move to FBS, it could put some burden on these two schools. North Alabama has been a power at D2 but having gone from 36 to 63 to 85 scollies could have the effect of putting there two of business . It seems a bit of wort.

[perryc]

Nidaros, the United Conference would be FCS/63 equivalencies per team. No plans for them to go FBS.

North Alabama and Kennesaw State, as Ted discusses at 1:20, would be the first two of their eight United Conference schools . For 2020, UNA and Kennesaw will be members of the Atlantic Sun Conference with associate memberships in Big South football. The idea is for the United to find six additional FCS schools that want to leave their current conference to play all sports the United.

The United Conference probably needs to strip the Big South of all its football playing members, except Presbyterian (PFL) and Monmouth (outside geographic footprint). In that case, the Big South's automatic playoff bid would likely be transferred to the United Conference.

While it might seem like nonproductive jockeying for football, the underlying reason for their strategy is to improve mid-major basketball schedules.