fighting muskie wrote:
tute79 wrote:
So Creighton has offically submitted their intent to leave.
MVC doesn't need to react just yet.
Horizon still hasn't reacted to loss of Butler.
The two conferences could devour the Summit League, with the MVC taking the MVFC members + North Dakota from Big Sky,
and the Horizon taking some non-FB members (maybe Evansville from MVC, Oakland / IUPUI / IPFW from Summit, they may be interested in Belmont (OVC) too).
If MVC wants to take in more FB schools from Summit, the non-FB private schools (Evansville, Bradley, Wichita State, Drake (?))
may resist on grounds that they become a minority voting block.
If Evansville is truly likely to leave for Horizon, does the MVC wait for them to depart, if that changes the voting dynamic ?
I'd like to see the 3 private schools (Evansville, Bradley, and Drake) go to the Horizon (9+3=12), giving the MVC football schools the freedom to add the 4 Dakota schools and WIU. Since they are public and the geography would be better I'd keep Wichita St with the football schools and maybe add UNO to round out that league at 12. The rest of the Summit schools are kinda screwed but the WAC is out there and already has Chicago St and UMKC.
Great plan. But how about Youngstown State to the MVC since its football team is in the MVFC (if the MVC plans to "absorb" the MVFC to "re-instate" football, while maintaining as an elite mid-major basketball league-like all-sports conference), along with Eastern Illinois (from the OVC)? Remember that most of the current and former MVC/Summit schools [Bradley, Drake, Eastern Illinois, Illinois State, Indiana State, Southern Illinois, Missouri State, Northern Iowa, Western Illinois and Wichita State] were part of the then-women's-only all-sports league known as the Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference (Gateway for short).