Following DII sports is kind of a side hobby of mine. Currently there are 12 schools in Ohio participating in NCAA Division II. Seven are full members of the GLIAC, which also has nine members in Michigan. An eighth, Notre Dame College is a GLIAC member in football and a few other sports but as of yet has not secured full membership. The other four are charter members of a new conference the G-MAC that is supposed to start play in 2013 with Kentucky Wesleyan, Trevecca Nazarene, and Virginia-Wise also participating.
Perhaps its a feeling of Ohioan provincial pride or an ingrained disdain for all things Michigan but I would love to see the the GLIAC members in Ohio overthrow their Michigander overlords and create an all Ohio Conference at the DII--since DIII already had an Ohio Athletic Conference lets go with Buckeye State Conference. Let's just scrap the whole G-MAC concept. Also since one of these Ohio schools is Ursuline, a women's college, to make it an even 12 for men's sports lets call up Mount Vernon Nazarene from NAIA--they currently play in an Indiana-based conference but that's only because most of their old conference mates in the American Mideast Conference have already jumped to NCAA DII.
Members would be: Lake Erie College, Notre Dame College, Ursuline College*, Walsh University, Malone University, Ashland University, Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Tiffin University, University of Findlay, Ohio Dominican University, Urbana University, Cedarville University, and Central State University.
This conference would be able to support championships in 11 men's sports and 11 women's sports and in some cases, the GLIAC Michigan schools would actually have to participate as associate members under a Buckeye State Conference banner. If none of the Ohio schools added a single sport the conference (before adding associates) would boast the following number of participants in these sports: # denotes a BSC sponsored sport
Football-10# W Volleyball-13#
M Basketball-12# W Basketball-13#
M Baseball-11# W Softball-12#
M Soccer-11# W Soccer-12#
M Track and Field-10# W Track and Field-11#
M Cross Country-12# W Cross Country-13#
M Golf-11# W Golf-12#
M Tennis-7# W Tennis-10#
M Swimming and Diving-6# W Swimming and Diving-7#
M Indoor Track and Field-5# W Indoor Track and Field-6#
M Lacrosse-2 W Lacrosse-6#
M Wrestling-5#
M Equestrian-3 W Equestrian-3
Travel within this league would also be considerably less strenuous than in a conference with 9 Michigan members or members in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and possibly additional states. I took the liberty of mapquesting how long it took to get from each of the 13 proposed schools. For a centrally located school like Ashland, the average road trip in the new conference would only be an hour and 40 minutes. For an outlying school like Central State its 2 hours and 20 minutes. Additionally, with the geography of this league with so many schools located near each other, in many sports you could play two opponents in the same road trip--Central St and Cedarville could travel together to northeastern Ohio and play Notre Dame and Lake Erie on back-to-back days.
The only things keeping this from being a realization is that the NCAA wants to cap off DII at 24 conferences (with the 24th being the G-MAC) and that the GLIAC is currently one of the most respected leagues in DII. Capping off the number of conferences in DII is just dumb at so many levels. Conference alignment should remain free to develop organically based on need but in the cut throat, Darwinian world of college athletics the strongest, that is the establishment, wants to prevent any up-and-comers from potentially dethrowning them and since they get to make the rules they have been free to hold potential contenders down. Also, there are plenty of NAIA programs that could easily be absorbed to the betterment of NCAA DII. Addressing the later issue, schools like Ashland and Findlay, who joined the GLIAC in 1995 and 1997 respectively enjoy the prestige of being in an elite league despite the fact there are few similarities between them and the Michigan schools. 7 of the 9 Michigan schools are large state schools. Of the 12 (13 if we count MVNU) DII Ohio schools all but one are private and most have between 1000 and 3000 students. The creation of a Buckeye State Conference would give Ashland and Findlay the opportunity to be big fish in a slightly smaller pond where the athletic budgets of their peers would be closer to theirs and where travel would be considerably less--no more weekend trips to the UP. From the chatter on the online message boards fans from the Michigan schools hold their Ohio conference mates in Ohio, aside from maybe these two, in contempt and unworthy of being in their league.
Aside from obvious geographic rivalries, many of which are pre-existing like Walsh-Malone, there is real potential for creating some fun new ones: MVNU vs. Cedarville in the Evangelical Rumble, Tiffin Dragons vs. Urbana Blue Knights in the Camelot Bowl, Notre Dame Falcons vs. Ashland Eagles battling for avian superiority, Walsh vs. Ohio Dominican in the Catholic Bowl...
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