NDSU Stuns Wisconsin... Mid-Con bound?

[tmh8286]

Something tells me that the administrators of the schools in the West division may not look as favorably on that arrangement as some of you are . . .

[valpotentate]

I guess this means that no one reads the Midconfans posts huh?

[thehttpguy]

I'm back. Your P-T Archives guy:

Drop zone: Southern Utah and Centenary


Jan. 26, 2006

By Justin Breen / Post-Tribune deputy sports editor



The chaos that is the Mid-Continent Conference can be solved quite quickly, with a few minor tweaks.

Step 1: Say so long to Centenary and Southern Utah. Those schools won’t really be missed anyway. Heck, Valparaiso director of athletics Mark LaBarbera said VU spends between $70,000 and $125,000 per year just getting the Crusaders’ teams to those schools, which aren’t exactly competitive.

Step 2: Say hello to IPFW, South Dakota State and North Dakota State.

Step 3: Mid-Con presidents, directors of athletics and coaches can pop the champagne corks. Student-athletes 21 and over can do the same.

It’s that simple.

Really.

The only thing Southern Utah adds to the conference is a lot of travel and a lot of headaches. I mean, who seriously wants to fly to Las Vegas only to take a long bus ride to Cedar City, Utah?

Centenary is small. The teams are terrible — just ask VU volleyball coach Carin Avery — and its location stinks. The folks in Shreveport, La., may be nice — as Crusaders personnel continually have said — but it’s not worth flying to Dallas and busing to the bayou.

Kicking those two out and adding the other three would give the Mid-Con 10 teams, a desirable number that could be divided into two five-team divisions. That’s what LaBarbera wants at least, and the guy should know what he’s talking about, considering he spent a considerable amount of time in the ACC as an athletics administrator at North Carolina State.

The Mid-Con coaches are big on travel partners — teams paired together for others to play during road trips — and the three new programs would really simplify that.

Valpo could be paired with IUPUI, IPFW with Oakland, UMKC with Oral Roberts, Western Illinois with Chicago State and South Dakota State with North Dakota State.

I don’t see any problem there.

And it doesn’t hurt considering IPFW can contend with teams in the Mid-Con. Its volleyball squad beat Valpo, and its men’s basketball team almost defeated the Crusaders in Fort Wayne.

“Affiliation with the Mid-Con would be a validation of our decision to move to Division I in 1999,” IPFW director of athletics Mark Pope said. “And I believe that we are quite similar to many Mid-Con schools in both athletics and academics.”

The Dakota schools are enticing too, especially because NDSU upset upset Wisconsin on Saturday and SDSU has some excellent facilities, including Frost Arena, which seats 8,500 and just added a multi-million dollar scoreboard.

“We have a great respect for the programs and institutions in the Mid-Con,” SDSU director of athletics Fred Oien said. “South Dakota State University is very interested in the Mid-Continent Conference.”

The interest should go both ways, and hopefully at the Mid-Con presidents’ meeting in March, there’s serious talk of switching the conference lineup.

Because a few changes could make all the difference in the world.

Contact Justin Breen at 648-3122 or [e-mail]

[thehttpguy]

More teams, less travel may be next for Mid-Con

Jan. 26, 2006

By Justin Breen / Post-Tribune deputy sports editor



ELMHURST, Ill. — About to celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Mid-Continent Conference has been an ever-changing entity.

Since its 1982 inception, 32 different Division I programs have been at least associate members of the Mid-Con. Valparaiso and Western Illinois are the last two original representatives.

The Mid-Con stretches so far and wide across America — almost 2,000 miles between its two most polar schools — that a survey has been passed out to the nine conference institutions asking representatives there if the conference should change its name.

The Mid-Con spans three time zones, has a host of scheduling issues and complaints, yet, at the the same time, is a very desirable place for a handful of D-I programs, who are practically begging to get on board.

Like anything else, the Mid-Con has its good and bad issues.

A great deal of unknown is involved as well. For now, talk of expansion is not on the agenda.

But it may be soon.

The Good

The Mid-Con has nine schools — Valpo, Western Illinois, Oral Roberts, UMKC, IUPUI, Oakland, Chicago State, Southern Utah and Centenary.

Five other D-I independents — IPFW, Utah Valley State, South Dakota State, North Dakota State and Texas-Pan American — would love to be part of the Mid-Con party.

The aforementioned independents aren’t in a conference, although they just formed the United Basketball Conference, which in reality is a scheduling arrangement to soak up games. They feel the Mid-Con would be a perfect fit, and they’ve all asked current commissioner Tom Douple to be considered.

“We have inquired on several occasions about possible membership, but have not been invited to apply,” Utah Valley State director of athletics Michael Jacobsen said. “We would love the opportunity to be considered.”

Said IPFW director of athletics Mark Pope: “Affiliation with the Mid-Con would be great for our student-athletes, as far as branding, name recognition, awards, etc.”

Douple said the attraction for these schools is not only a conference affiliation, but the chance to compete for the Mid-Con’s automatic berths into the NCAA Tournament. Because the Mid-Con has more than six core institutions, it earns that automatic bid, according to NCAA by-laws.

“The bids are essential,” Douple said from the Mid-Con headquarters in Elmhurst, Ill., on Monday. “You want to be able to provide the highest level of competition available.”

And some of the Mid-Con’s elite games, including the men’s basketball title game, are shown on ESPN. Douple said the conference recently signed a five-year deal with the sports cable giant that also will include broadcasting the women’s basketball finals on ESPNU. Other TV plans are to get all the sports’ championship games broadcast via the internet.

And even though the Mid-Con has an odd number of teams, which could lead to scheduling difficulties, 12 of the other 31 D-I conferences also have an odd number of members. That includes the 11-team Big Ten.

“Some conferences are comfortable with nine or 11 members,” said Douple, who replaced Ron Bertovich as commissioner in October. “Everybody else is making it work, and so are we.”

Valpo president Alan Harre believes a key to the success is every school in the conference trying to be on the same page. He said schools are being honest with each other, such as when Southern Utah and Centenary were both recently open about the intentions of going to the Big Sky and Southland conferences, respectively. Harre said that’s a different attitude than following the 1994 school year, when six teams left the Mid-Con for the Midwestern Collegiate Conference (now the Horizon League).

“I felt there was duplicity,” Harre said. “Simply saying one thing in the meeting rooms and doing something else. I don’t think it’s that way currently. For that, I am thankful.”

Back then, the Mid-Con was forced to search out of the Mid-Con so to speak, to fill the void. Central Connecticut State and Buffalo were among the schools added.

Now the Mid-Con doesn’t have to add teams, if it chooses that route.

“I feel like we have some good rivalries with the (current) schools,” VU director of athletics Mark LaBarbera said. “I think we have a pretty good understanding about what we’re all going to achieve.”

The Bad

Oakland (Mich.) and Southern Utah are 1,850 miles apart. Southern Utah’s closest opponent, UMKC, is 1,182 miles away.

Going to Cedar City, Utah, is as big a pain — with a flight to Las Vegas, followed by a long bus ride into the desert.

To get to Centenary, some of Valpo’s teams fly to Dallas and then take a multi-hour bus ride to Shreveport, La. A few, like the volleyball team, just utilize a sleeper bus. Valpo volleyball coach Carin Avery said she spends half her budget on the Centenary trip, for a match that lasts about an hour.

LaBarbera said it costs about $15,000 to send a basketball team to Cedar City and about $11,000 to send it to Shreveport. He added that the school spends between $70,000 and $125,000 per year — about 2 or 3 percent of VU’s total operating athletics budget — just to take teams to Southern Utah and Centenary.

There are few easy road trips in the Mid-Con. Coaches, including VU’s, complain about the schedule, too, which can take them on multi-game road trips over more than half of the country.

“There are no simple answers,” Douple said.

Adding teams in such a vast conference only adds to the dilemma. LaBarbera said he would selfishly like IPFW to join because it’s only two hours away from VU. But that doesn’t help a school like Southern Utah, which is already racking up the frequent flier miles.

The case of Utah Valley State joining is similar. Although it helps Southern Utah, it may detract from the schools in VU’s neck of the woods. And adding either North Dakota State or South Dakota State would be another flight for the Crusaders.

“(Those schools) have some fine athletics programs, and they seem like they have a commitment to making their programs better, but that is two more schools we would have to fly to,” LaBarbera said.

The Unknown

Douple said the earliest anyone could join the Mid-Con is before the start of the 2007 school year.

But that’s only in theory, and he doesn’t foresee any additions in the near future.

“There’s some other things we’re trying to get done,” Douple said.

Things like perhaps renaming the conference, and changing its blue-and-red rainbow logo, which has been in place for 16 years.

Meetings with Douple and the Mid-Con presidents happen twice a year, during the basketball tournament in early March and in the summer. Only there can official discussions take place regarding the addition of teams.

Douple said that topic is not on the agenda for March, but it could be in June if the presidents want to add it.

If that’s the case, Douple is in charge of researching potential candidates — whether their facilities, graduation rate, athletic budget, academic standards and location meet the needs of the other Mid-Con schools.

For various reasons, the five hopeful candidates haven’t fit the bill yet.

“I just tell them to be patient,” Douple said. “Something will come up sooner or later.”

Until then, the Mid-Con will stay at nine teams, unless someone departs.

But in this conference, change is inevitable. Its history has proved that.

Contact Justin Breen at 648-3122 or [e-mail]

How the Mid-Continent Conference has changed over the years:

1982-83: Cleveland State, Eastern Illinois, Illinois-Chicago, Northern Iowa, SW Missouri State, Valparaiso, Western Illinois, Wisconsin-Green Bay

1994-95: Buffalo, Central Connecticut State, Chicago State, Eastern Illinois, UMKC, Northeastern Illinois, Troy State, Valparaiso, Western Illinois

2005-06: Centenary, Chicago State, IUPUI, UMKC, Oakland, Oral Roberts, Southern Utah, Valparaiso, Western Illinois

[tmh8286]

I had indeed read both of those articles, and I have to ask, how much does Justin Breen know about what he's talking about, in regard to dumping Southern Utah and Centenary? Neither school has changed locations since they were admitted to the league and neither has committed any sort of unpardonable sin; now, because we have got teams interested in joining the Mid-Con that are geographically more convenient we're going to cut them loose? One of them a past NCAA tournament team from the Mid-Con?

While I can't argue the logic in this, I do question the ethics. I'm not familiar enough with the process to know if this sort of thing is done routinely by conferences, but in my mind, in our conference, it would seem unseemly.