with the talk of ul monroe moving to the sunbelt full time, which is expected to happen around july 1st, where does this leave the southland conference?

without ul monroe, this is its lineup:

se louisiana (indy as football 1-aa)

texas san antonio (no football)
texas arlington (no football)
lamar (no football)

stephen f. austin (football)
texas st. (football)
sam houston st. (football)
northwestern st. (football)
mcneese st. (football)
nicholls st. (football)

with 10 total and 6 for football, the southland has no real reason to expand. i have no idea why se louisiana is an independent, but im sure they could join to get if they wanted. so does the southland do the socon plan and go 12 total 9 for football, or do they just stand pat at where they are at?

SE LA is independent as they just re-started their fb program. They are scheduled to join the Southland for fb in a couple of years.

I have heard no rumblings about expansion. 10 is a good number and I suspect they will wait and see what happens elsewhere. They would like to have more than 7 for football. The I-A shakeout with the new rules will likely determine what they do.

UT-Pan American and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi are available should they want to expand with a non-fb school.

texas san antonio (no football)
texas arlington (no football)
lamar (no football)

rumors has it they will be bringing football back soon.

_________________
The Bear may be dead but he still hates Tennessee. Roll Damn Tide

Southland Conference goes into conference meetings this month. More should be known by the beginning of August.

Word on the wind says if the Southland does expand it will be by two teams to get to 12 conference school rather than back to 11 which made scheduling difficult.

The three teams that seem to be mentioned the most:
Texas A&M Corpus Christi
UT-Pan American
Centennary

The more probably out of the three are Texas A&M-CC and UT-Pan Am because they are state schools and offer sports comprable to those the Southland offers already.

The Southland would consider non-football schools now because of the push and popular sentiment to add football at UT-Arlington, UT-San Antonio and Lamar.

If the conference does expand to 12, it will probably go into divisions based on state Texas/Louisana with the easternmost Texas schools being added to the Louisana group. That would be Lamar and Steven F Austin if Corpus and Pan Am were added.

I am curious as to if Oklahoma and Arkansas have a team or two that might be worth consideration to invite who currently play on the D-IAA level.

When ULM finally comes to the realization that:

1. they don't have the financial capacity
2. don't have the talent
3. don't have the necessary sustained fan base

they may well be begging to get back into the southland. May take them 5 or 10 more years but with Tech just 30 miles down the road, and in a city of only 50K they just don't have what it takes to maintain at D1-A level.

Only Arkansas program I can think of that is on the I-AA level is UA-Pine Bluff, currently in the SWAC. I don't know if they would be interested or worth an invite.

Yeah not much faith put into UA-PB. Texas A&M Corpus and UT-Pan AM it is.



My question here is what does the image become with three UT system schools in the conference?

SLC Commish speaks out on UTSA adding football.

SLC points to model for UTSA football
Web Posted: 07/29/2004 12:00 AM CDT

Clint Hale
Express-News Staff Writer

THE WOODLANDS — If UTSA officials are interested in fielding a football team, the Southland Conference will be happy to accommodate the university, SLC commissioner Tom Burnett said Wednesday.

....full article at....

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/stories/MYSA072904.1C.FBCsouthlandUTSA.1aaec72c.html

Anyone heard anything out of the Southland meetings and media days?

Also to talk basketball in the Southland. 12 members is pretty solid and desirable for basketball. If they can increase to that number and have the Southland actually force member schools to schedule decent, they could move from low-major to mid-major quickly. The low budgets of the 2-3 bottom feeder schools in the conference seem to dictate the right to make a crappy schedule. And because they do not play quality opponents, they do not recruit for quality opponents. They need to use the model that other conferences have used to build basketball, that all non-conference schedules must have an average RPI that would rate in the top half of Division I basketball. Also they should discourage any scheduling of D-II and lower opponents except in exhibition games.

TAMUCC would perhaps be the best team in the league if it came in today.

Anyone heard any rumblings out of here since their conference meetings ended? Are the presidents going to have a meeting of their own soon?

http://www.theshorthorn.com/archive/2004/summer/04-jul-27/n072704-02.html

UTA to decide on Football at the end of September.

_________________
The Bear may be dead but he still hates Tennessee. Roll Damn Tide

I'd be surprised if they could swing it. UTSA might have a shot, but UTA just has too much competition. I think the Bay Area and the NC triangle are the only metro areas other than DFW with 3 I-A teams. And there is no pro football in NC. There only only a handful of metro areas with 2 I-A teams. LA, SLC, Houston, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Cincinnati and New York are the only ones that come to mind.

^Also Chicago with Northwestern and Northern Illinois (which DeKalb, IL is in the Chicago Metropolitan Area, but is 65 to 70 miles from downtown Chicago).

And depending on how you view the current division designation for FAU and FIU, the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro area has 3 (U Miami, FAU, FIU).

^ Oh,

And also Nashville-Davidson-Murfeesboro-Columbia metro area has 2, with Vandy and MTSU.