Big South-Great West Merger?

[Sly Fox]

Somebody has been thinking WAY outside the box with this latest proposal that was bantered about at the recent Big South media days.

With the Big South and Great West conferences both having just five members apiece soon, why not merge the two into one cross-continental league?

The idea was mentioned in this thread about the Great West on the AGS board:

www.anygivensaturday.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2066&page=2&pp=10

The rumors are further mentioned later in the thread. The Coastal board has been discussing the merits of it and the logistics. Frankly, the more I think about the possibility the more it makes sense.

Obviously, the travel expenses for one or two trips out west a year would be significant. And while CCU and us could probably make it happen, it would really be tough on the smaller schools in our league down south of us.

What do you guys think? The Great West actually has some really quality programs that would undoubtedly greatly improve our strength of schedule from the get-go. It certainly merits some more thought IMHO.

[LUconn]

The only way that would work is if it was split into 2 divisions. Obviously east and west. That would really cut down on travel expenses if we only had to play a couple of western teams per year, and then if we had a conference championship. Is 10 allowed to have a championship game? Do AA leagues even have championship games?

[bigsmooth]

you would need to play two games against the other division for a total of six conference games, thus leaving 5 OOC games. with the advent of I-A programs looking for I-AA'S to beat up on and pay a nice guarantee, the finances could work. The great west has a few quality teams and a lot of DII teams that made the jump. A merger would help credibilty, but i would still prefer picking up some southern DII programs. Only the non-scholarship pioneer league has held a championship game to my knowledge.

[PAmedic]

with all the talk of building a fan base, growing support, etc- I think we need to stay in our region and develop rivalries locally. Hard to get Lynchburg or LU fired up about a game at Southern Utah or North Dakota State.

[HarrisburgFlame]

Bingo. We need to continue to take what we can get from JMU, W&M, UofR, etc. Those games will bring interest and fans. The other big piece is recruiting and signing more kids from Central VA. Talk about making local interest high - sign local kids and build relationships with local coached. even the N&A fish wrap like reporting on local kids and thus additional exposure for LU amidst VT ad UVA country.

[PAmedic]

I'm sticking w/ reaching out to one or more of the MEAC teams (Norfolk State, NC A& T, SC State?) and bringing them over. Geography, size, competetiveness all seem to work.

[Sly Fox]

Guys, there couldn't be a championship game with just ten teams in the league. If you read the entire thread I posted, you would see that as I mentioned earlier in this one that there would only have to be one or two road dates a season across country. They would have to have two divisions.

Again, this is just an idea that is being floated out there right now. Logistics may it unlikely. But it does show some forward thinking.

As for scheduling JMU, W&M and Richmond, its not as easy as you might think. They are not anxious to give a potential recruiting opponent any credibility. Sure, ti would be great if we could work out longterm home & homes with these guys. But that's proving more difficult by the minute with the growth of the A-10/CAA.

[HarrisburgFlame]

Totally agree Sly regarding QB size and scheme. You just need the right fit. I also totally agree regarding scheduling JMU, UofR and W&M. Even if we don't get a home and home - I'll take what I can get to have state I-AA teams on the schedule.

[Stevev]

Totally agree with scheduling the in-state Colonial conference teams. Would boost attendance and give us a good "measuring stick" to see how we stack up. Need to get some long term home and home agreements with some of these teams. This proposed merger would not work out due to travel costs. By the way who is in this Great West conference. Is it mainly the old independents on the west coast.

[Sly Fox]

They are a league made up of a few longtime I-AAs with a few strong DIIs that stepped up the past few years. They are losing Northern Colorado leaving them with just five teams in a conference just like us.

[ATrain]

I would not mind seeing a merger between the two conferences...and with teams out in the west in our conference, it'd give us some exposure nationwide. Financially speaking, Coastal and LU wouldn't have too much of a problem...can't speak for the rest of the schools though.

[bigsmooth]

after looking at the great west schools im warming to the idea.....i remember cal-poly coming to the burg back in the day....

[rokamortis]

bigsmooth said:

after looking at the great west schools im warming to the idea.....i remember cal-poly coming to the burg back in the day....

Even if it isn't a merger and is more of an alliance - I hope it works out. It really can't hurt anything. The GWFC had the second strongest GPI after the A-10. Being affiliated with us would drop that, but hopefully it would add some credibility to our schools. Especially if we can beat some of those schools.

[PAmedic]

stevev said:

By the way who is in this Great West conference. Is it mainly the old independents on the west coast.

Great West (currently)

Cal Poly
North Dakota St
Northern Colorado
South Dakota St
Southern Utah
UC Davis

[rokamortis]

I don't know - I still love this idea. As far as the expense argument it would only be 1 trip. Make sure you have a I-A on the schedule as the payout should cover your expenses +.

Currently the GWFC is only behind the A-10 in terms of strength. Having them on the schedule would boost our collective GPI. It would hopefully encourage the BSC teams to get better.

This would only help other teams want to join the BSC. Also, other conferences may seriously look at you now since you play in a 'real' conference. Sure, no one has heard of many of these schools, but surely they would show if you are battling a top 25 team, like a couple of the GWFC schools were last year. It would also give all of us a shot at a auto bid - what if LU got it and went deep into the playoffs? I don't see many drawbacks to this.

[Sly Fox]

Rok posted this link over on the Coastal board so I thought I'd drop it here as well:

Great West talks merger

By Jeff Kolpack, The Forum
Published Thursday, August 04, 2005

The Great West Football Conference will be one school short of attaining automatic qualifier status for the Division I-AA playoffs. The Big South Conference has the same problem.

Does the solution involve a mixing of the two? The leagues had preliminary discussions about forming a merger for football only in an effort to be a bigger player in the postseason.

Any resolution, however, appears to be a long shot.

"It was just a very preliminary idea that we talked about," said Big South commissioner Kyle Kallander. "Whether or not it goes anywhere is speculative."

But it appears the Big South coaches are getting anxious about finding a sixth member. The Myrtle Beach Sun News newspaper reported all five coaches agree that finding another school should be a conference priority. Kallander said there does not appear to be any near-future options of adding another school or finding a Division II reclassifying school.
The NCAA requires a league to have at least six members in order to attain automatic qualifier for the I-AA playoffs.

The Big South's Coastal Carolina went 10-1 last season but didn't make the playoffs as an at-large entrant because of strength of schedule.

The Great West started its maiden voyage last season with seven, but St. Mary's (College) dropped football and Northern Colorado is moving to the Big Sky Conference next year.

The Big South has nine members, but four don't play football. One proposal calls for the Great West and the Big South to play all its current members and then add a couple of "crossover" games between the leagues to lessen the travel bite.

"We talked about all of those possibilities," said Southern Utah athletic director Thomas Douple. "It's a possibility down the road."

But Douple said he was told the Big South athletic directors were not in favor of the setup.

Big South members rarely fly to games and the cost would be an issue, Kallander said.

"Just because we've floated an idea out there doesn't mean the membership is totally supportive of it," Kallander said.

The Great West appears in favor of it. The league won't be eligible for the automatic bid until 2008 when North Dakota State and South Dakota State complete their Division I reclassification periods.

"We would love it," said NDSU athletic director Gene Taylor. "There are a lot of positives. The negative is the cost of travel and I think we're a little more used to it in our conference."

The five Big South football schools come from a three-state area with the longest trip about a seven-hour bus ride between Virginia Military Institute and Charleston Southern, Kallander said.

Only Cal Poly vs. Cal Davis and NDSU vs. SDSU are bus trips in the Great West.

"As far as the Great West athletic directors, we want to keep all options available and look at every possibility," Douple said.

Readers can reach Forum reporter Jeff Kolpack at [phone]

www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=99451§ion=Sports

It does offer the Great West's perspective which seems very receptive to the idea. So it looks like the ball is clearly in the Big South's court.

[PAmedic]

would this be football only or all sports?

[bigsmooth]

football only. im warm to the idea....esp. since the other options are few. im not saying we should jump, but serious consideration should be given.

[Sly Fox]

The only downside I see is financial. And we're not talking about a bunch of long road trips ... probably just one a year.

This is strictly a football-only deal. It wouldn'tmake sense for either side in any other sport.

[ATrain]

Well most of the other schools are independent and are looking for a home in all sports...Longwood shouldn't have been so quick to turn them down on some type of all-sports deal to try to get into a conference thats clearly giving them a cold shoulder (Big South).

[Sly Fox]

Here's an update on the talks between the two leagues from a writer in North Dakota:

Big South must go national

Jeff Kolpack, The Forum
Published Friday, September 16, 2005

Jeff Kolpack has covered sports at The Forum since 1990. His primary beat is covering North Dakota State University athletics. He has won eight first-place reporting awards and enjoys family and running when not writing.

Automatic. Qualifier. They are the two most important words in Division I-AA football and if you’re not convinced, just ask California Poly.

Last year’s Great West Football Conference champ was snubbed from the Division I-AA playoffs for some reason we will never know – or somebody will ever admit.

The Mustangs went 9-2, finished high in the final ESPN/USA Today top 25 poll and owned quality wins over NDSU, Montana State and Texas State.

But because the Great West does not have automatic qualifiers, the Mustangs were left begging for one of eight at-large entrants. They didn’t get invited.

So the answer, of course, is to get an AQ. To do so, a league must have at least six teams that are postseason eligible. The Great West has five teams. So does the Big South Conference.

But arranging a marriage between the two has not been love at first sight.

The Big South is south and east in a big way: Coastal Carolina, Virginia Military Institute, Gardner-Webb (N.C.), Liberty University (Va.) and Charleston Southern (S.C.).

A sensible idea that was proposed by the Great West was to have two divisions with two crossover games, meaning each team would have to travel just once.

One of the hang-ups is the Big South’s unwillingness to travel.

Teams apparently don’t want to spend the money to fly for one game.

Which begs the question: What is a program doing in Division I if it cannot afford to fly for one football game?

If the Big South wants to compete with the big boys, it needs to leave its comfort zone of the southeast and think on a more national scale.

The league made significant progress in its quest for recognition when Coastal Carolina defeated defending national champion James Madison last Saturday. Of course, this had all the news value to folks in the Red River Valley of a snow storm in Iceland.

Still, the Big South has not had a winning nonconference record in three years, was 6-14 against Division I-AA scholarship teams last year and is 13-38 in the last three years against teams that are from an automatic qualifier league.

Merging with the Great West could help raise its status.

As Cal Poly found out, relying on a committee to make the playoffs is risky business. Division I-AA puts more stock in strength of schedule than wins and losses.

If you want to make the playoffs, then you have to pony up and play teams from the five I-AA premier leagues: Big Sky, Atlantic 10, Gateway, Southland and Southern.

The Big South needs more of its teams to follow Coastal Carolina’s lead.

www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=103118§ion=Columnists&columnist=Jeff%20Kolpack

I always love when some dude in a tiny market feels compelled to publish his resume at the top of his story.

[Chris Lang]

Wow, that seemed like an unnecessary swipe at the Big South.

First off, it's Cal Poly, not California Poly. They're touchy about that over there.

Second off, what a lot of people don't seem to understand is that just getting a sixth team won't guarantee a bid to the playoffs for the Big South or the Great West. Two Great West teams - North Dakota State and South Dakota State - aren't even playoff eligible until 2008. And the I-AA playoff committee still only gives eight auto bids. Unless the playoffs expand to 24 teams (they won't), someone would have to wrestle a bid away from an established league.

And the travel issue is a huge one for a school like Chuck South or VMI that doesn't have a huge athletics budget. A trip to North Dakota or Cal Poly is terribly expensive for a college football traveling party.

To pin this whole thing on the Big South is wrong and shortsighted. The reporter ought to do a little more research before just throwing blame around. You can't just snap your fingers and make this happen. This writer believes you can.

[HarrisburgFlame]

Chris Lang - "The Voice of Truth"

Seriously, great points Chris all well taken.

[WinthropEagleFan]

The travel is definitely a sticky point, but I'd be more worried about the stability of that kind of arrangement. How do you select the team that gets the automatic bid? With terribly unbalanced schedules, it would almost be inevitable that there would be some dispute about the best way to choose a champ. Secondly, what happens when either side gets a sixth team? Do they leave the other side high and dry? Travel is definitely an issue, but I think these other issues create just as many problems.

[PAmedic]

WEF- is it COMPLETELY out of the realm of possibility that Winthrop would ever add football? I remember a thread somewhere joking about T-shirts saying "Winthrop football: undefeated" or something like that.

no support AT ALL down there for this?

[WinthropEagleFan]

I think it'll happen someday..but probably not anytime in the near future...

[Stevev]

excessive travel is the big issue that I see here. We could spend our money on better things that would be more beneficial to the program. Some of these teams in the Great West can at times compete with top 1AA competition but no one strikes me as being a consistent winner.

[GetRealLU]

I'm up for anything that betters LU's chances of making the playoffs.

Im really not sure why the big south added football when it knew it didn't have enough members to have an auto-qualifier for post season play. This pretty much means that Liberty is still playing as an Independent.

Maybe Liberty should pull out of the Big South for football and have the freedom to schedule those in state rivals as mentioned earlier.

Imagine this schedule
Sept 3rd Concord
Sept 10 atUconn
Sept 17 YSU
Sept 24 atW&M
Oct 1 VMI !(Keep them because of the VA fan draw)
Oct 8 Chattanooga
Oct 15 Towson
Oct 22 at JMU*
Oct 29 Richmond*
Nov 12 at Appalachian State*
Nov 19 at Villanova*

Of course strictly hypothetical but our strength of schedule would shoot through the roof!

[Stevev]

Great schedule with that list except for Concord, but 1 lousy div 2 team is not going to kill our reputation. Definately agree that we should be independent instead of lowering our standards competing in the Big Slouch. Right now that decision is hurting our recruiting and our ability to keep recruits at LU and most of all the standards by which we judge success. Based on the results the last few years against good competition I think I am bringing up a valid point here. Agree?

[Realist]

How do you explain CCU then? You can't blame a conference for your success or lack thereof, it may have a little to do with it, but responsibility lies within. WU has emerged in basketball as a legit top 50 program and no one in the big south comes close, they did it without conference help. By the same token, clemson is a horrible basketball program but plays in the acc. I think blaming the conference is a cop-out. You can be successful regardless of conference.