Sunday, May 13, 2012

Rebuilding the Colonial Athletic Association

Tackling the CAA is difficult task as a blogger.  This conference lacks a real sense of identity and geography.  It stretches from Boston to Wilmington, NC so its geography is best described as Atlantic coast but that is hardly an exact description.  The CAA is a hybrid league too which further complicates things.  Are the a high midmajor basketball conference or are they an elite FCS football league?  Can they be both?  This is also a conference with 4 football affiliates which also makes its cohesiveness a little blurry.

Georgia St has already taken a Sunbelt invitation so they are out of the picture.  As for the other schools discussed as possibly leaving I think Virginia Commonwealth will be departing to become the 14th member of the A-10.  George Mason has declared their intention to stay but I think its only because the A-10 no longer wants them now that they lost Charlotte so expanding by 2 makes far more since for that league than expanding by 3 as it would give them an odd number of schools and GMU was their least favorite of the 3.  Old Dominion is a toss up--jumping straight from FCS to C-USA after just restarting their program would be huge for them but I think ODU is unsure as to whether or not they have the funds to do the facilities upgrades that they would need to play with the big boys.  I'm going to assume that they don't pass up this one-in-a-lifetime opportunity and go to C-USA. This leaves the CAA with 9 members:

Northeastern---no football
Hofstra---no football
Drexel---no football
Delaware
Towson
George Mason--no football
James Madison
William and Mary
UNC Wilmington---no football

And football affiliates:
Maine
New Hampshire
Villanova
Richmond

I'm going out on a limb here and predicting that none of these schools will leave for another conference and become football only members of the MAC (Delaware and JMU rumored) and that with a strong Virginia presence still in place that William and Mary doesn't consider the Patriot League.

Expansion for this league because a northward expansion runs the risk of alienating UNC Wilmington, a founding member, while a southern expansion could alienate the powerful northern block of Northeastern, Hofstra, and Drexel, who could depart as a block for America East if they didn't like the direction of the CAA was taking.  You also have to balance of the four aforementioned schools, none of whom play football, and the interests of the four football schools, who also could explore conference membership elsewhere if they become disgruntled.

After much deliberation, my suggestion for realignment for this league is to add 3 schools whose additions will hopefully balance the interests of the current schools.  They are Boston University (no fb), Stony Brook, and Coastal Carolina.  I would also recommend starting division play to alleviate travel pressures:

North--Boston Univ., Northeastern, Hofstra, Stony Brook, Drexel, Delaware
South--Towson, George Mason, James Madison, William & Mary, UNC Wilmington, Coastal Carolina

The North has nice, neat travel pairs while in the South UNC Wilmington has a buddy.
For football, when you add in the affiliates you have a nice 10 team league that could easily reabsorb UMass should they be asked to leave the MAC.

I think this plan satisfies everyone's desires (aside from FBS aspirations) and creates a manageable that is even more tenable with the institution of division play and the integrity of the CAA brand in FCS football is preserved.

There are some drawbacks---football affiliates Maine and New Hampshire probably won't be thrilled to have their primary conference, America East, reduced to 7 members and probably would like to be included in the CAA expansion.  However taking them would, in my opinion, shift the footprint too far northward and I don't think that William and Mary or UNC Wilmington would vote to add 3 new northern members.  I think this can be mitigated by telling NH and Maine that if the AmEast can't find replacements that the CAA would go to 14 and absorb them.  Another possibility would be to offer to take AmEast expansion candidate Central Connecticut St football membership if the NEC is not willing to let the Blue Devils go to the AmEast and continue playing in the NEC for football.  NJIT is always there for AmEast to grab and I'm guessing they can pry at least one of the bigger private schools in the NEC or MAAC from their current home.

There are also some other ideas floating around out there concerning adding some southern non-football schools--Davidson and College of Charleston.  This is a terrible idea for so many reasons.  It would leave the conference with 3 extremely northern basketball schools and 3 extremely southern basketball schools and not much left in the middle should any of the football schools leave. This move also hems in CAA football--the SoCon will likely replace these two schools with schools playing football and Coastal Carolina and Liberty are two of their top 3 possibilities.  Presuming Stony Brook is the CAA's 3rd school, the CAA is still left with only 5 football members and 4 affiliates with the only expansion options out there being very weak teams in the northeast or trying to pry away Youngstown St from the MVFC.  The CAA also has to be leery of the MAC scooping up a football school to pair with UMass as that would deprive them of yet another core football playing member and a school like Delaware (other sports membership to AmEast) could easily make that jump.

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