Big South Realignment

fighting muskie · **Posted:** Wed Sep 02, 2015 5:22 pm

Losing Coastal Carolina is not good for Liberty, Presbyterian, Charleston Southern, and Gardner-Webb. The six basketball schools are in firm control of the conference and can hold at 10 members which is optimal for basketball. To be in a healthy place for football they really need 3, if not 4 more full members who play the sport.

Options:

Kennesaw St for full membership seems like a no brainer if they basketball schools will agree to it.

Recruiting non-scholarship programs in the South would be another route. Those 4 should be pressuring Campbell to go to scholarships as well as Jacksonville and Stetson.

MEAC defectors. Supposedly some MEAC members were quite displeased with the decision to abstain from the playoffs in order to play the SWAC Champ in an HBCU classic. Was anyone upset enough to forgo years of tradition to play in a league on non-HBCUs?

Start ups and DIIs. Someone in the football hungry south has to be interested right?

It's too bad that a swap between the Big South and A-Sun can't be arranged. The Big South picks up Kennesaw St, Stetson, & Jacksonville (Campbell football starts playing w/ scholarships too). The A-Sun gets Longwood, Radford, UNC- Ashville, High Point, and Winthrop. The Big South then finds a couple more members somewhere in the DII ranks for a 10 member league.

wbyeager · **Posted:** Thu Sep 03, 2015 9:17 am

The Bishin Cutter wrote:

tute79 wrote:

Big South Football (FCS) will be down to 4 Big South schools, one ASun FB affiliate (Kennesaw St.), and a northern affilate (Monmouth) for the FCS conf. minimum of 6.

Monmouth would obviously rather be in a northern FB conference, and their presence in the Big South FB League is a temporary marriage of convenience.

However, I think likely new candiates are the 3 schools in Big South (Campbell) and ASun (Stetson, Jacksonville) who currently play FB in the non-schooly Pioneer League.
See if any pressure is applied for those 3 to upgrade to full FCS....
(it will have an effect on their other sports, as adding 40-63 FB scholarships will mean having to up women's athletic scholarships and / or decrease other men's scholarships by a corresponding amount.

Is six the minimum for FCS playoff autobid, or is it seven? I think six can make the conference in certain sports, but football was different? If there isn't panic out of Big South about this, I guess they're safe with this loss, although you'd want more teams for scheduling assurances and security and whatnot.

It is six like most other sports. Basketball is seven (thanks to the WAC's legislation) and FBS football is eight (and the eight must be full members of the conference).

jlog3000 · **Posted:** Thu Sep 03, 2015 9:30 am

Putting Campbell, Stetson and Jacksonville aside, and speaking of finding schools from D-II, it had led me to this thought. Since like the late 1990's schools, there were like 2 versions.

On the football perspective, schools like Elon (then joined the SoCon, now in the CAA), Gardner-Webb and Presbyterian joined the Big South and were former member schools of the South Atlantic Conference.

On the basketball perspective, schools like High Point and Longwood joined the Big South and were former members of the CVAC (now known as 'Conference Carolinas').

The schools that should be in consideration for the Big South might vary, and depending on what direction will the conference might take. If it's for football, there are the likes of Lenoir-Rhyne or Carson-Newman or Newberry. If it's for basketball, there are the likes of Belmont Abbey or Limestone or Mount Olive.

fighting muskie · **Posted:** Thu Sep 03, 2015 11:46 am

If the basketball component stonewalls football expansion there are a couple of avenues the Big South could explore:

1. The Every Man for Themselves Approach-- Each of the schools is on their own. Some manage to become football affiliates in the SoCon while others land in the OVC.

2. Deal with the A-Sun-- If the basketball schools won't play ball then approach the A-Sun with an offer for the 4 football schools to join as a block bringing A-Sun membership up to 12. The A-Sun could easily pair of for travel and go to two divisions. If they don't actually go this route they could use this possibility as leverage to get their way.

3. Merge Big South football with NEC football. Not sure if the NEC would be alright with this but its worth a try.

jlog3000 · **Posted:** Thu Sep 03, 2015 12:52 pm

fighting muskie wrote:

If the basketball component stonewalls football expansion there are a couple of avenues the Big South could explore:

1. The Every Man for Themselves Approach-- Each of the schools is on their own. Some manage to become football affiliates in the SoCon while others land in the OVC.

2. Deal with the A-Sun-- If the basketball schools won't play ball then approach the A-Sun with an offer for the 4 football schools to join as a block bringing A-Sun membership up to 12. The A-Sun could easily pair of for travel and go to two divisions. If they don't actually go this route they could use this possibility as leverage to get their way.

3. Merge Big South football with NEC football. Not sure if the NEC would be alright with this but its worth a try.

Sounds like interesting theories. But lemme summarize on a few.

a.) On the NEC/Big South fb. merger, I don't think it would work, unless there are some conference realignment movement with some of the NEC schools heading into nearby leagues like the MAAC or the AmEast (America East) or the Patriot League, plus making the Big South an East Coast-based conference in a football perspective, just like the A-Sun is attempting to be in a basketball perspective with its latest addition in NJIT.

b.) On the deal with the A-Sun, for what I understand it would make much sense in terms of exchange, which the A-Sun sends its fb-sponsoring schools to the Big South while the Big South sends its non-fb. sponsoring schools to the A-Sun. Sounds like a win-win situation in my book.

The Bishin Cutter · **Joined:** Mon Apr 16, 2012 11:41 am **Posts:** 1411

Why does there have to be both an Atlantic Sun and Big South? Neither are choice destinations; they're stepping stone conferences. It's a shame their numbers are too high to merge.

tute79 · **Joined:** Fri Jun 23, 2006 4:25 pm **Posts:** 2260

I think you answered your own question - their numbers are too big to merge, otherwise they would.

There are other similar situations where 2 geographically-close conferences cooperate to merge various sports under one conference or the other, in order to get enough teams to earn an auto-bid to the championship bracket.

In football for instance, the Summit teams all play within the MVFC....
The American East teams all play in the CAA.
The Big Sky is the western FCS conference and has taken in FCS teams from the Big West.
There seems to be much more cooperation at the FCS level, and not this conference vs. conference animosity that you see during re-alignment up at the FBS level.

The tendency is to focus on football too much. At the D-1 FBS level - the P5 money is INCREDIBLE and yes football absolutley dominates all other considerations.
At the FCS level, football is generally at best a break-even proposition, and the other dozen or so sports earn a lot of consideration from the AD's.

freaked4collegefb · **Joined:** Tue Jun 13, 2006 2:37 pm **Posts:** 9048

FCS MB thread discussing future of Big South football at http://www.anygivensaturday.com/showthr ... -Big-South

wbyeager · **Posted:** Wed Sep 09, 2015 6:09 pm

It might be time to ditch the Big South name for the football conference if the next associate members are from say, Pennsylvania or New England.

The Bishin Cutter · **Joined:** Mon Apr 16, 2012 11:41 am **Posts:** 1411

When they talk about creating a separate entity football conference, and you sit in the same footprint as another non-fb conference, what's the point?

If Big South gives that up, they're basically A-Sun with smaller private schools. Is this a good thing for A-Sun, then?

jlog3000 · **Posted:** Tue Sep 15, 2015 4:39 pm

The Bishin Cutter wrote:

When they talk about creating a separate entity football conference, and you sit in the same footprint as another non-fb conference, what's the point?

If Big South gives that up, they're basically A-Sun with smaller private schools. Is this a good thing for A-Sun, then?

It's like saying about the MVFC having half of the Oly sports schools from the Summit & half of the Oly sports schools from the MVC in football.

But I doubt that it would occur to the Big South & the A-Sun though.

fighting muskie · **Posted:** Sun Nov 08, 2015 8:02 pm

So when is the Big South going to figure out their football problem? They have 10 schools and now just four are playing football in the conference. Convincing Campbell to bring their football under the conference umbrella would be a start; getting Jacksonville and Stetson to be football affiliates would be even better. They potentially have two spots for full members they could put up for for grabs. It would seem logical for them to partner with the A-Sun for a combined conference rather than taking two of their schools and threatening the A-Sun's existence. The A-Sun could take in D-II schools and the Big a south could guarantee them a football home.

wbyeager · **Posted:** Mon Nov 09, 2015 9:37 am

They've basically done that already, the problem is that there aren't any more schools in either conference that can play full scholarship football, at least right now.

The Bishin Cutter · **Joined:** Mon Apr 16, 2012 11:41 am **Posts:** 1411

wbyeager wrote:

They've basically done that already, the problem is that there aren't any more schools in either conference that can play full scholarship football, at least right now.

Big South moving their football operations out from under the full conference sponsorship might allow some work to address scholarship limits. You have schools in Pioneer who are getting caught giving aid to students, and those programs could definitely contribute to that conference.

...and then there's MEAC schools. But, I guess that won't be happening.

fighting muskie · **Posted:** Mon Nov 09, 2015 6:02 pm

The Bishin Cutter wrote:

wbyeager wrote:

They've basically done that already, the problem is that there aren't any more schools in either conference that can play full scholarship football, at least right now.

Big South moving their football operations out from under the full conference sponsorship might allow some work to address scholarship limits. You have schools in Pioneer who are getting caught giving aid to students, and those programs could definitely contribute to that conference.

...and then there's MEAC schools. But, I guess that won't be happening.

So far no MEAC schools have come forward but I guess they can't be completely ruled out but perhaps the Big South/A-Sun football league could agree on a scholarship limit somewhere under the 63 FCS limit. This would take some of the shock away from the non-scholarship and D-2 schools. Maybe they could initially begin with a two division structure, one for schools offering 63 or close to it and one with fewer, maybe 45 or so.

Big South Realignment

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