It maybe closer but what teams would be rivalries? Still don't get why it's still called Ohio Valley.
I see the rivalry aspect coming from playing the same schools in football, MBB, WBB, track, golf softball baseball, etc. You are members of a conference. We are one sport, part time guys in football for our affiliates now and it detracts from everything else.
Going forward, since we have added ND, so we have ND, NDSU, SD and SDSU which means 2 trips out to the Dakotas every football season. For me, give me Jacksonville AL, and a couple trips to Tennessee over a couple trips the ND and SD! There is a day coming closer every day when Akron and maybe even Kent are going to want to do something too. They aren't going to do a multi conference thing like the MVFC and the Horizon like us. We should help pave the way for them!
Frankly I'd rather be in the Colonial, Ohio Valley or Patriot instead of what we are doing now.