Horizon League Expansion

[HorizonLeagueFan]

Story from Sunday's Dayton Daily News.

Excellent story, although I am sure Southern Illinois is surprised to discover they are in the OVC.

The article didn't say Southern Illinois was in the OVC.  It said Southern Illinois-Edwardsville was in the OVC and they are.

http://www.realtimerpi.com/rpi_ovc_Men.html

[ysuindy]

Story from Sunday's Dayton Daily News.

Excellent story, although I am sure Southern Illinois is surprised to discover they are in the OVC.

The article didn't say Southern Illinois was in the OVC.  It said Southern Illinois-Edwardsville was in the OVC and they are.

http://www.realtimerpi.com/rpi_ovc_Men.html

The chart in the article may say Southern Illinois Edwardsville but as of 1:17 p.m. Sunday the body of the story still says Southern Illinois.   

Morehead State and Southern Illinois, from the Ohio Valley Conference

[HorizonLeagueFan]

Story from Sunday's Dayton Daily News.

Excellent story, although I am sure Southern Illinois is surprised to discover they are in the OVC.

The article didn't say Southern Illinois was in the OVC.  It said Southern Illinois-Edwardsville was in the OVC and they are.

http://www.realtimerpi.com/rpi_ovc_Men.html

The chart in the article may say Southern Illinois Edwardsville but as of 1:17 p.m. Sunday the body of the story still says Southern Illinois.   

Morehead State and Southern Illinois, from the Ohio Valley Conference

There are 2 Southern Illinois and they both go by Southern Illinois.  Southern Illinois-Edwardsville is in the OVC.  Southern Illinois-Carbondale is in the MVC.

[Wick250]

There are a lot of errors in that article, especially in the enrollment figures in the chart.  It will be interesting to see just how serious the League is about maintaining the auto bid for baseball.  Here is one solution.  Develop a new policy that states that each member MUST participate in three of the following four men's sports: soccer, basketball (obviously,) track and field, and baseball.  Right now we have two members, Green Bay and Cleveland State, that just take the spring season off, except for individual sports like golf and tennis.  For a so-called Division I school, that is absurd.  So Green Bay and Cleveland, start a track program or field a baseball team.  Lacking track facilities, my guess is that both schools would opt for baseball.  The penalty for not engaging in three sports from that list: a substantially reduced share of NCAA basketball money.

[IAA Fan]

There are a lot of errors in that article, especially in the enrollment figures in the chart.  It will be interesting to see just how serious the League is about maintaining the auto bid for baseball.  Here is one solution.  Develop a new policy that states that each member MUST participate in three of the following four men's sports: soccer, basketball (obviously,) track and field, and baseball.  Right now we have two members, Green Bay and Cleveland State, that just take the spring season off, except for individual sports like golf and tennis.  For a so-called Division I school, that is absurd.  So Green Bay and Cleveland, start a track program or field a baseball team.  Lacking track facilities, my guess is that both schools would opt for baseball.  The penalty for not engaging in three sports from that list: a substantially reduced share of NCAA basketball money.

One thing that I might add is also absurd ...is for a DI college in a major city ...with an MLB team ...not to have a baseball team ...CLEVELAND. Bring your team back & we are set. Also, Green Bay is a big skiing college. This is a sport that is not in the conference, but does go against their scholarship totals.

[HorizonLeagueFan]

One thing that I might add is also absurd ...is for a DI college in a major city ...with an MLB team ...not to have a baseball team ...CLEVELAND. Bring your team back & we are set. Also, Green Bay is a big skiing college. This is a sport that is not in the conference, but does go against their scholarship totals.

Kinda like football at YSU.   

[IAA Fan]

One thing that I might add is also absurd ...is for a DI college in a major city ...with an MLB team ...not to have a baseball team ...CLEVELAND. Bring your team back & we are set. Also, Green Bay is a big skiing college. This is a sport that is not in the conference, but does go against their scholarship totals.

Kinda like football at YSU.   

Not quite as bad. We have a total of 68 scholarships for football. UWGB has only about 20. UIC has huge gymnastics programs ...every bit the size of our football in terms of scholarships. Loyola has a fully-funded mens volleyball program. CSU does fencing & wrestling. UDM has fencing and lacrosse for both sexes. Just about all the HL schools have sports that are not supported by the conference. In fact, we are one of only a couple schools without a men's soccer program.

[HorizonLeagueFan]

One thing that I might add is also absurd ...is for a DI college in a major city ...with an MLB team ...not to have a baseball team ...CLEVELAND. Bring your team back & we are set. Also, Green Bay is a big skiing college. This is a sport that is not in the conference, but does go against their scholarship totals.

Kinda like football at YSU.   

Not quite as bad. We have a total of 68 scholarships for football. UWGB has only about 20. UIC has huge gymnastics programs ...every bit the size of our football in terms of scholarships. Loyola has a fully-funded mens volleyball program. CSU does fencing & wrestling. UDM has fencing and lacrosse for both sexes. Just about all the HL schools have sports that are not supported by the conference. In fact, we are one of only a couple schools without a men's soccer program.

You might want to check your facts.  Almost none of the sports you listed receive full scholarships from the schools that sponsor them (especially for the men's teams).  The women's programs exist because of Title 9 requirements.  None of them are even close to the 68 scholarships you use for football.

[IAA Fan]

I am not saying they are close to the 68 ... most are far from. The difference is how our football scholarships are applied. You mentioned it in your last post HL fan. Now LaCrosse and gymnastics (especially gymnastics) have quite large teams. UIC spends probably about the same number of scholarships in gymnastics, as we do in football ...probably even more. However, it is evenly distributed between men and women ...thus making the title-IX people happy. We have to make up the difference as our 68 scholarships all go to men. Thus we said goodbye to wrestling, men's swimming and diving. Brought in women's basketball, tennis, and golf. Then again, aside from throwing title-IX out the window ...I would take football over everything else. As would most everyone in town and on the board.

Also, Loyola is highly-competitive in  men's volleyball ...several NCAA tourney's. There are a great number of scholarships there. You cannot have two teams, Lacrosse and Field hockey, without at least 16-scholarships on each team. Valpo may not offer true scholarships in football, but most every solid player is on some form of assistance ...grants, need-based scholarships, intellectual scholarships. They try to pull the old "Notre Dame" on us. You know ...'our players are actually students first' line of BS.


With UDM adding Track & Field; I still say, get CSU to bring back baseball, and YSU to offer men's soccer ...and the conference can stay as is ...then pull in new teams that you want ...not simply what you need to fill an NCAA requirement. Even if we moved to the MAC, we would need to have men's soccer ...so why not get started with the new facility? That is why we are building it.

[IAA Fan]

One more thing to consider. I-AA/FCS football allows partial schoarships. So we may actually have 100 players receiveing some assistance ...but the total equivalent is equal to 68. In other sports (including IA/FBS) football ...the rules are different. For example, at an Akron, Kent, or Michigan State ...they all are allowed 83 football players on scholarship. There are no partials. Here is an example:

Michigan State: big school. 83 players receiving full scholarship.

Kent: having a bad year financially. They are not required to offer all 83 players a scholarship, but they are all eligible to receive it. So if they do not get it ...what are the chances they will stay? Like YSU, they can offer a partial scholarship, but it counts as a full-ride to the NCAA. That is the big difference between FCS and FBS. We have equivalents, where FBS does not.

YSU, theoretically, can offer a 25% ride to 272 football players. This is why it is so important to try and recruit local players. They can live at home for a year ...and we do not need to pay them residence dollars. Then we give the residence component of their scholarship to an out-of-state player that is on academic, or some other non-athletic scholarship ...or maybe a 5th-year guy. Confusing ...but that is how it works. The NCAA has "clamped-down" on this quite a bit is recent years. For example, they do not like you to divide by more than education and residence (50/50) expenses ...but it can be done, when a player receives a partial scholarship from another source. Of course they added "payola" last year ...so players will get some spending cash as well ...the team is not penalized for this.

[ysuindy]

Green Bay writer Rob Demovsky mentioning that HL expansion could add some private schools in response to  speculation by PantherU (Milwaukee fan board / tweeter /etc) that the names he is hearing are Oakland, Evansville and Bellmont.

Rob Demovsky ‏@RobDemovsky
@PantherU Heard late last week that the private school presidents in the HL wanted to add more private schoolsRob Demovsky ‏@RobDemovsky
@PantherU Right. They didn't want to "just add another 15,000-student state school," someone told me.
Rob Demovsky ‏@RobDemovsky
@PantherU Right. But I was told the presidents threw everyone else out (including ADs and coaches) and said they were making the decisions.

[ysuindy]

Probably the best recap from the Evansville paper

http://www.courierpressblogs.com/sports/ue/?p=217

A Milwaukee-based blog run and edited by experienced sports writers posted a report Wednesday night that the University of Evansville, Belmont and Oakland will join the Horizon League.

I’ve left a message with UE athletic director John Stanley regarding the matter.

If true, the secret has been well-kept.

PantherU.com, which closely covers Horizon League member Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is part of the BrewCityBall.com network, tweeted and posted the following statement to Facebook:

“Not able to confirm this 100%, but it looks like Belmont, Oakland and Evansville will be joining the Horizon League. I’m not hearing any other schools brought up by my contacts, and too many contacts are using those three together. Either everyone I talk to is conferring with each other, or where there’s smoke there’s fire. I’m thinking the latter.”

No other details were provided by PantherU. The website is run by its founder, former sports editor and board of directors member at UW-Milwaukee’s student paper, Jimmy Lemke.

The Horizon League recently lost Butler to the Atlantic-10 Conference, and commissioner Jon LeCrone has since considered expansion in reports that named both Belmont and Oakland. Published reports haven’t mentioned Evansville until now.

The Missouri Valley Conference last season compiled the eighth-best league Ratings Percentage Index ranking. The Horizon League was 13th.

Current Horizon League members include Cleveland State, Detroit, Green Bay, Loyola, UW-Millwaukee, Illinois-Chicago, Valparaiso, Wright State and Youngstown State.

[ysuguins4]

I understand Evansville and Oakland, but why Belmont?  Aren't they in Nashville?

[Wick250]

All of these rumors seem to spring from Milwaukee fans who are somewhat delusional about the place of their university in the DI pecking order.  Why would Evansville be interested in the Horizon League now that Butler has departed?  What does Belmont bring to the Horizon League that would justify the ridiculous expense of sending Olympic sports teams to Tennessee each year?  Only Oakland makes sense, but only if they guarantee (in blood) to continue to operate a baseball team.

[ysuindy]

Updated post from Evansville

http://www.courierpressblogs.com/sports/ue/?p=217

UPDATED: UE’s Stanley shoots down Horizon League report
Posted on September 26, 2012
University of Evansville athletic director John Stanley on Thursday refuted a report published last night that said the school will move to the Horizon League, saying, “The University of Evansville is a member of the Missouri Valley Conference, and we haven’t had any discussions about changing conferences.”

Stanley added: “We understand that the conference world is changing rapidly and has over the last couple years, so we always have to be aware of the circumstances surrounding us, and we’ll make decisions based on events as they occur. We enjoy the Missouri Valley Conference, but we need to be cognizant of the world surround us as it comes to athletic conferences.”

The original report published by PantherU.com, a Milwaukee-based blog run and edited by sports writers covering Horizon League member Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said Belmont and Oakland would make the move with UE.

PantherU.com tweeted and posted the following statement to Facebook:

“Not able to confirm this 100%, but it looks like Belmont, Oakland and Evansville will be joining the Horizon League. I’m not hearing any other schools brought up by my contacts, and too many contacts are using those three together. Either everyone I talk to is conferring with each other, or where there’s smoke there’s fire. I’m thinking the latter.”

The Horizon League recently lost Butler to the Atlantic-10 Conference, and commissioner Jon LeCrone has since considered expansion in reports that named both Belmont and Oakland. Published reports didn’t mention Evansville until Wednesday night.

The Missouri Valley Conference last season compiled the eighth-best league Ratings Percentage Index ranking in men’s basketball compared to the Horizon League’s 13th-place spot. But the move wouldn’t have seem too far-fetched, allowing UE’s programs to compete more consistently across the board in a smaller conference.

Current Horizon League members include Cleveland State, Detroit, Green Bay, Loyola, UW-Millwaukee, Illinois-Chicago, Valparaiso, Wright State and Youngstown State.