Louisiana-Monroe informs Southland of intention to move - 5/30/04

Louisiana-Monroe has notified the Southland Conference that it plans to move exclusively to the Sun Belt Conference. "The Southland Conference has received written notification from the University of Louisiana at Monroe detailing its intent to withdraw from the Conference effective June 30, 2006," a Southland release said on Wednesday. "Due to its continued efforts to compete at the NCAA Division I-A level in football, and changing NCAA legislation regarding I-A conferences, the university has informed this office that it will pursue an invitation of full membership with the Sun Belt Conference." Last week, Louisiana-Monroe's athletic department received an evaluation report from Carr Sports Associates, recommending full membership in the Sun Belt Conference. Louisiana-Monroe's football and swimming and diving programs are already SBC members while the remaining 14 sports are affiliated with the Southland Conference. The Sun Belt is expected to send an evaluation team to the Louisiana-Monroe campus next week before voting on adding the school as a full conference member.

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In the article from Jonesboro that Quinn posted on the Sun Belt thread, Waters (SB commissioner) echoed your comments and mentioned the dominoes would bounce around I-AA and I-AAA for a while.

He also mentioned what IMO triggers the next change-and it will be decided in August-the new Division I-A standards and how they will be enforced.

It is odd, as long as this has been going on, that the Sun Belt could not make it official by June 30. Perhaps the U of L study delayed UL-M, but I would have thought the Sun Belt would have worked the contingencies in.

Waters has said its basically a formality now and UL-M, while officially out of the SLC in 2 years, will be officially in the Sun Belt later this month.

I'm sure they were waiting on LA Tech for awhile...wanted to see if they would come back from the WAC. Once LA Tech went public, it was over. They might come back in time, but for now, they are settled in.

The Sunbelt has done an excellent job with realignment. They were the conference at the bottom of the picking order and they made all the moves they could to become stronger. North Texas could have been a CUSA option, but they the conference members stood strong. Granted, UTEP was probably the choice all along, but publicly the Sunbelt slowly grew larger to prepare for any NCAa policy changes and only lost Idaho and Utah St., 2 associate members. You have to figure that when a commissioner opening is created in a BCS conference, Waters will get an interview.

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Sad that ULM's move to the SunBelt makes the Southland better in most sports.