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The Gateway and Pioneer Leagues are both run out of the offices of the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC).
The Gateway is 1-AA and includes 5 MVC members + Western Illinois (Mid-Con), Younstown State (Horizon), and Western Kentucky (from the 1-A Sun-Belt). This is a marriage of convenience, to get a critical mass of 8 [sort-of] Mid-West teams that choose to play FB at the 1-A level. If say, WKU or Youngstown State changed conferences, then you might see the Gateway look to the Great West with an eye toward expansion or merger.
The Pioneer League involves 8 non-scholarhip schools from 8 different conferences (only Drake is from the MVC).
The only real concentration of non-scholarship teams is in the northeastern USA (Patriot - 7, Metro-Atlantic -5, and Northeast - 8) for a total of 20 teams). The other 8 in the Pioneer League span from coast-to-coast.
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