does anyone know how serious the rumors are that the socon will expand to 14? i figure if anything is to happen, it will take place in the next month to beat the july 1st deadline.

I haven't heard any of those rumors. Where have you seen those? I'm a huge SoCon fan and am not a huge fan of it's current state. I would love to get some more large public institutions in the fold.

Ideally I can see Valdosta State, West Georgia, or Coastal Carolina getting an invite. Tennessee Tech would be a welcome addition. UNCW could join to a non-football playing member.

Currently the SoCon has:

Appalachian State
Chattanooga
The Citadel
College of Charleston
Davidson
Elon
Furman
Georgia Southern
UNCG
Western Carolina
Wofford

Current: 11 members, 8 football playing members. The three non-football schools float their basketball. Adding one non-football school, and two football playing institutions would be the ideal way to go if they're expanding to 14. That would mean 10 football schools and 14 schools total. UNCW, Coastal, & someone else who plays football would be my guess.

Winthrop would be the other school in the running for the non-football playing spot with UNCW. Winston-Salem St. and Savannah St. would probably also garner a look if 14 is the expansion number as opposed to 12.

Any chance VMI would get an invite? That would give them 9 football schools, 12 total for men's sports, and 10 total for women's sports. I'm surprised that either the Big South or SoCon hasn't managed to snatch up both VMI and The Citadel, because they would seem like natural rivals and provide much better balance to the conference in which they reside. VMI would stretch the SoCon a bit northward, but you could still have the following:

North - VMI, App State, UNCG, UTC, WCU, Elon
South - Davidson, C of C, Furman, Wofford, The Citadel, Ga Sou

If Georgia Southern and/or Appalachian State have I-A aspirations, then we could see some serious movement!

VMI was in the Southern Conference, then moved to Big South.

i've heard these rumors on the coastal and app st. boards. they have also made their way to the uncw boards. what i heard on the app st. board was samford, coastal, and uncw. that would give them 14 and 10 football members.

VMI is a no go. VMI felt they couldn't compete in the SoCon. Unless they changed their mind, which I severly doubt, they aren't coming back. VMI, however, does maintain relations with the SoCon in that they are a wrestling affiliate. Appalachian State might consider moving up, though I think the move would be premature. App would provide a nice link to ECU & Marshall for the CUSA, or a decent regional fit for Middle Tennessee State in the Sun Belt. Georgia Southern would be a solid fit into the Sun Belt.

The SoCon would be left scrambling if App and Georgia Southern decided to move on.

Coastal Carolina is a perfect candidate for the SoCon. I hope they make it.

Fear not whitebread, since the addition of football Coastal joining the SoCon has been a question of "when" rather than "if".

As for Samford, that is a interesting choice. Samford just recently (2003) joined the OVC. However Samford is the southern most member of the OVC and the only private school in the OVC. Exposure in the Birmingham market is a plus though obviously exposure gets overplayed in all expansion talks when you start talking about schools like Samford. Samford would be a similar addition to most recent invitee Elon. I'm not sure that's the direction I would go, despite the fact I was in favor of the Elon addition. However, I also don't think I would be entirely upset if that was the choice.

Fred G. Samford University needs to work on their facilities. The football stadium only holds 6,700 and it looks like a HS field. Compare that to Ape State and GSU.....there is no comparison.

14 would be difficult. It wouldn't be a shocker, but 12 would seem to be safer. But if you're the SoCon you feel like you need to add another football school. If you are non-football schools, then you feel basketball should be priority. Add to the mix the blend of public and private schools and you get the only scenario everyone agrees upon: 14 schools.

_________________


@ncaasports csi.com/facebook


Like the new CSI Userbar? Feel free to use it here and any other forums.
You can save and host it yourself or link from here.

Although Samford is the southernmost OVC school, fellow conference member Jacksonville State is very close. Your point about Samford being private, however, is a good one. I would think they'd prefer a conference with some similar schools.

The OVC would likely fight to keep its Alabama connections. They recruit that state heavily, and already have some special deals in place with some schools (such as Tennessee State for football). Long before Samford and JSU joined, I heard rumors that the OVC was trying to talk North Alabama into moving to 1-AA and joining the conference.

jacksonville st. was a very popular choice among the app st. message board. they seemed upset that the gamethingys were not added last go round. they did not seemed to enthused about samford though, i guess becuase they were small and private. they did not like uncw or coastal either, uncw does not play football, and they just do not like coastal.

I'm not sure why they wouldn't like Coastal. Coastal is numbers 1 and 1a in SoCon expansion. Tough cookies if they don't like them. UNCW would improve the image of SoCon basketball and would give Coastal a nice regional rival, obviously not in football though. I would be satisfied with Jacksonville State. A nice fit for SoCon sports. However just like with Samford, I don't see Jacksonville State making the move up.

i just saw another interesting scenario on the app st. message board. if utc leaves to go to the ohio valley conference that would leave the socon with 7 and the big south with 6, including presbyterian. if app st. were to go d1a, that would allow basically a football confederation with 12 members.

Thats not bad idea ACC. Maybe the Big South could take the non-bb members. Might be hard to do for the autobid wise.