Thursday, February 28, 2013

Mixing things up in the Missouri Valley

The Missouri Valley Conference is currently a hybrid league of 5 football schools (all public) and 5 non-football schools (4 of whom are private).  The league is also affiliated with but does not directly administer the Misssouri Valley Football Conference--which consists of the 5 FCS scholarship-granting MVC schools as well as Summit League members North Dakota St, South Dakota, St. South Dakota, and Western Illinois as well as the Horizon League's Youngstown St.  In basketball the league's two crown jewels are Creighton and Wichita St but the former is currently being thrown around as a potential future member of the new conference being started by the Big East's Catholic 7.  Should Creighton leave the balance of power in the MVC would be tipped in favor of the football schools.

I personally would like to see the Missouri Valley football schools mix things up.  I think the 5 football schools--Indiana St, Illinois St, Southern Illinois, Missouri St, and Northern Iowa, as well as basketball power Wichita St should consider voting as a block 6-3 to disband the league and walk away without exit fees and then form a new conference with the 4 Dakota schools, Western Illinois, and Nebraska-Omaha.  5 of those 6 are Summit League members.

This would give the new conference 12 all-sports members, 10 football schools, and a relatively simple travel arrangement as a product of going to divisional play for basketball and Olympic sports:

North
North Dakota
North Dakota St
South Dakota
South Dakota St
Nebraska-Omaha (no football)
Northern Iowa

South
Wichita St (no football)
Missouri St
Western Illinois
Illinois St
Southern Illinois
Indiana St

The result would be shedding the weaker private schools while bringing in some solid state schools into the fold and creating a league that runs its football conference in-house.  Youngstown St could be retained as a football affiliate if the league wanted to keep the Penguins around.

The Fall Out
As a product of this move 3 private schools who were part of the MVC would be set adrift--Drake, Bradley, and Evansville.  The Summit League's eastern flank--Oakland, IUPUI, and IPFW as well as Denver would also be left in a league that no longer met the NCAA's minimum membership requirements.  Rather than these two groups merging, I see the 9-member Horizon League whose membership is mostly public schools in the Great Lakes region likely picking out their 3 favorites from that pool and going to a 12 member league.  The remaining schools' best bet would be to join Chicago St and UMKC in a Midwestern wing of the Western Athletic Conference.

The Horizon could look like this:

East: Oakland*, Detroit Mercy, Youngstown St, Cleveland St, Wright St, Evansville*
West: Valparaiso, Loyola (Chicago), UIC, Bradley*, Milwaukee, Green Bay

and the WAC like this:

Midwest: IUPUI*, IPFW*, Chicago St, Drake*, UMKC, Texas-PanAmerican
West: Denver*, Utah Valley, New Mexico St, Grand Canyon, Cal St Bakersfield, Seattle

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