I am sure this thread will bring out all the "I told you so" crowd members, but clearly all the schools who signed up for the GW clearly thought they could deal with the high travel distances. I don't think any of them expected fuel costs to double overnight under pressure from speculators and massively increased demand for oil from emerging massive economies in India and China.

We may have some breathing space brought on by the collapse of the stock market and the banks bringing the economies of the world to their knees and killing new growth in India and China, but those economies are due to bounce back in a year or so and with oil production currently being CUT due to low prices, the demand problem will be even worse in the future.

The GW was apparently the brainchild of a former SUU athletic director who works in the Summitt offices. It appears to have been created to eventually provide SUU a good all sports home. The fact that the Summitt just stole USD and is porjected to be waiting to steal UND seems to imply that the GW experiment as a BB and likely football conference is over.

What other implications do these moves suggest?

The great West formed for football so one reason: there were 7 teams in the general west footprint that didn't have homes. So the goal was simply to create a league and perhaps one day an autobid would form. St. Mary's dropped football the same day the league was announced. And then UNC left for the Big Sky. And then the Dakota States left for the MVFC with the Dakota U's taking their spot.

On the all-sports side, the Great West was simply a conference office willing to take over something that already existed. The independents already had a loose conference via their scheduling agreement. So the Great West is simply an extension of that. The goal being the same as football: have enough members and maybe one day with some stability, there could be an autobid.

But the fleeing of schools to better conferences was expected for both. Like the Mid-con in the 90's, the Great West is now the conference where D2 upgrades will end up regardless of location.

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And really, you're wrong on both fronts of gas prices having caused the GW to implode. The GWFC went to hell long before gas prices skyrocketed last summer, and the GW all-sports formed AFTER gas prices finally went down. As far as the current GW, all I can add to what Quinn has said is that this league exists solely for these independent schools to have more home games to get the students the opportunity to see these teams and get behind their schools.

The all sports conference was announced on July 7th 2008 when oil hit a record $147 a barrel. They were negotiating its formation during the run up. It is accurate to say that prices dropped shortly after it was formed though, so I don't the chronology right. Is the collapse due to recession based funding cuts or fear of gas prices going back up or both? Or is the Summit simply looking for a different identity than the bottom rung BB conference in the region?

I am referring to the all sports GWC mainly --- the schools that joined the already effectively dead GW football conference joined with the idea they could afford nationwide travel for a future shot at an autobid--- not the football schools left standing in the wreckage of GWC v.1.

Regardless I was hoping for some deeper thought into what this implies. My hope with this thread is to get to the implications of these moves.

Some Implications that I think are there:
1) At least one Summit school is going down (and possibly 2).
2) There is zero confidence in the league in Cenetenary staying D1.
3) The league felt motivated to get USD in as soon as possible. What does that mean as far as the 5 year rule and when USD goes core?
4) The league wants to play football and become a hybrid conference in the near future to try to stem the churn.
5) The football status of Cal Poly and Davis are cloudy. Will joining the Summit for football be politcially tolerable in California? That is a guaranteed 2 trips to the Dakotas each year and a trip to Illinios every other year.

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