tute79 wrote:
So the Horizon has lost Butler, and the MVC has lost Creighton.
Not sure who the MVC wants... I like Belmont, Oral Roberts, Valpo... who knows. The MVC could add 3, but would they all come from the Horizon ?
If the Horizon were to grab 4 teams from the Summit, I think the obvious would be: Oakland, IUPUI, IPFW, Western Illinois.
So the Summit would be left with: 3 Dakota schools, Denver, and Nebraska-Omaha. What do they do ?
Join the WAC ???? Maybe the WAC splits into east and west divisions, reuniting those schools with Chicago St. and UMKC ?
Not a horrible idea with a the WAC splitting into E/W divisions. While I think the Summit may lose 4 too I think that NDSU/SDSU may be poached while IPFW and Western Illinois get left behind. But no matter.
WAC
West - Seattle, CSUB, GCU, UVU, Denver, NMSU, UTPA
East - NDSU, SDSU, USD, UNO, Chicago St, UMKC, + add North Dakota (already plays baseball in WAC)
Still I'm not sure why these 14 schools would rather share 1 post season bid rather than have 2 separate ones...
From the WAC side you have to worry about the Big West taking CSUB, WCC taking Seattle, Southland taking UTPA, and possibly the Big Sky taking a school like GCU/UVU to blanace out Idaho's non-fb sports if UND leaves, plus NMSU is a flight risk to just about any other conference.
From the Summit side I see no benefit to flying half way across the country to share your post season bid with a random mix of school when you could have a pretty compact conference from Missouri/Illinois to the Dakotas with room to grow.
Once again if it wasn't for that weird UMKC move, I don't think we'd even look twice at the WAC overtaking the Summit.
_________________
Fan of the Big 12 Conference, the Mountain West Conference and...
