So earlier this week I was on the campus of University of Colorado, Colorado Springs dropping my younger brother off for college. I know that Denver was previously mentioned as a possibility for rejoining the WAC even though it would never happen, so I thought about what if the WAC added UCCS. Some pros of adding UCCS would be an academic boost to the conference as US News ranked them as the #39 university on the west coast, which puts it just behind Cal Baptist for western schools. UCCS currently sponsors 14 sports, 13 of which are sponsored by the WAC (Women's lacrosse is the odd one out). They also have plenty of land to make necessary expansions for new sports. Colorado Springs also has it's own airport, which means teams wouldn't need to fly and then bus for an hour down to Colorado Springs. The downsides of UCCS is they currently have the smallest Division 2 arena, it seats 400 people, but they are often turning away students and outsiders, which means that there is definitely more interest than capacity and it could justify building a new arena for the move up to Division 1. They would also have to add 9 sports in order to move up and the WAC to add them.

Oh dear God. You've opened Pandora's Box. Inb4 20 pages of complete drivel and nonsense.

I was looking for the old thread, but I couldn't find it lol

Lol what Clarity said.
I know, i know.

It would be cool. By chance my wife's uncle and aunt live in Pueblo. We flew there about 5 years ago to visit. COS decent airport, nice town overall it seemed.
Wondering IF.....IF.......UCCS would join, would/could it sway Denver U at all?

Currently mobile....away from the house or on the 'throne.'

Would have a better shot at getting colorado college to jump up than uccs. The springs has so many colleges in town! Just roll the dice and pick one.

Any team that has football is not a candidate, period

Metro State should be the target from Colorado

(08-20-2017 01:58 PM)SeattleVandals Wrote:  Metro State should be the target from Colorado

^^^This.

Deleated post.

Currently mobile....away from the house or on the 'throne.'

JMU has made it clear in an article found in the USA today last week that they would move to FBS. Here is the quote -

"Although no formal discussions have occurred, Houston said the idea of moving up to the FBS has crossed his mind.

“There’s been a lot of talk, and the talk is legitimate,” Houston said. “I think JMU is a very attractive institution for a lot of the FBS conferences, because our entire athletic program operates at a pretty high level. … If that opportunity comes to us, I think JMU would enthusiastically transition and would not hesitate.”

"https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2017/08/15/james-madison-repeat-expectations-matt-houston/560269001/"

So we can gather from this that the Sun Belt is not what they wanted, I bet they want the AAC.

One other tidbit, the Mercer University cross country coach left to take the job at University of West Georgia. I know that few people care about cross country, but he was frustrated by the lack of scholarship funds at Mercer and their inability to compete in the Southern Conference. No speculation here, a move to a ambitious Division II school, that has made it clear that they want to move to Division I. Hmmm...

Now how does this affect the WAC, it would essentially close off the Sun Belt forever. UWG could join the A-Sun, and place its football like University of Northern Alabama in the Big South.

The Sun Belt would have multiple schools within their footprint to enable future desired expansion.

That would reduce the chances for an NMSU departure by leaps and bounds.

Sort of related - the Lone Star Conference has voted to expand by 8 schools next year. They will add the following schools:
University of Arkansas-Fort Smith
Dallas Baptist University
Lubbock Christian University
Oklahoma Christian University
Rogers State University
St. Edward’s University
St. Mary’s University
Texas A&M International University

http://www.texomashomepage.com/sports/lo.../801456337

This is not big news except that it does show that the oft mentioned St Mary's does have a desire to increase their athletics. Granted most of these schools are years away from D-I. But it is an interesting discussion none-the-less.

(09-01-2017 07:19 AM)RobtheAggie Wrote:  Sort of related - the Lone Star Conference has voted to expand by 8 schools next year. They will add the following schools:
University of Arkansas-Fort Smith
Dallas Baptist University
Lubbock Christian University
Oklahoma Christian University
Rogers State University
St. Edward’s University
St. Mary’s University
Texas A&M International University

http://www.texomashomepage.com/sports/lo.../801456337

This is not big news except that it does show that the oft mentioned St Mary's does have a desire to increase their athletics. Granted most of these schools are years away from D-I. But it is an interesting discussion none-the-less.

Does Lone Star play D1 baseball or is Dallas Baptist an affiliate to one of the already established conferences? I may just be completely wrong as well.

(09-01-2017 11:01 AM)ThunderDan49_2 Wrote:  

(09-01-2017 07:19 AM)RobtheAggie Wrote:  Sort of related - the Lone Star Conference has voted to expand by 8 schools next year. They will add the following schools:
University of Arkansas-Fort Smith
Dallas Baptist University
Lubbock Christian University
Oklahoma Christian University
Rogers State University
St. Edward’s University
St. Mary’s University
Texas A&M International University

http://www.texomashomepage.com/sports/lo.../801456337

This is not big news except that it does show that the oft mentioned St Mary's does have a desire to increase their athletics. Granted most of these schools are years away from D-I. But it is an interesting discussion none-the-less.

Does Lone Star play D1 baseball or is Dallas Baptist an affiliate to one of the already established conferences? I may just be completely wrong as well.

DBU plays D1 baseball in the Missouri Valley

(09-01-2017 01:10 PM)RandomFan Wrote:  

(09-01-2017 11:01 AM)ThunderDan49_2 Wrote:  

(09-01-2017 07:19 AM)RobtheAggie Wrote:  Sort of related - the Lone Star Conference has voted to expand by 8 schools next year. They will add the following schools:
University of Arkansas-Fort Smith
Dallas Baptist University
Lubbock Christian University
Oklahoma Christian University
Rogers State University
St. Edward’s University
St. Mary’s University
Texas A&M International University

http://www.texomashomepage.com/sports/lo.../801456337

This is not big news except that it does show that the oft mentioned St Mary's does have a desire to increase their athletics. Granted most of these schools are years away from D-I. But it is an interesting discussion none-the-less.

Does Lone Star play D1 baseball or is Dallas Baptist an affiliate to one of the already established conferences? I may just be completely wrong as well.

DBU plays D1 baseball in the Missouri Valley

Thanks, I tried finding it for a little bit on the NCAA website, but it wasn't very user friendly.

Dallas Baptist baseball just left the WAC a few years ago. Again, for the 100th time, no team sporting a football program is going to move to the WAC unless GCU with all it's money decides to start football and GCU and NMSU would have to convince some D2 schools with football programs to move up which is very unlikely. I know everyone is tempted but I agree with Clarity. Conference fantasy alignment threads are a giant waste of time.

(09-01-2017 07:19 AM)RobtheAggie Wrote:  Sort of related - the Lone Star Conference has voted to expand by 8 schools next year. They will add the following schools:
University of Arkansas-Fort Smith
Dallas Baptist University
Lubbock Christian University
Oklahoma Christian University
Rogers State University
St. Edward’s University
St. Mary’s University
Texas A&M International University

http://www.texomashomepage.com/sports/lo.../801456337

This is not big news except that it does show that the oft mentioned St Mary's does have a desire to increase their athletics. Granted most of these schools are years away from D-I. But it is an interesting discussion none-the-less.

This is basically a merger of the Lone Star and Heartland D-II conferences, with eight of the nine Heartland members joining the Lone Star (the exception is Newman University in Kansas which is an outlier geographically and plans to seek "other affiliation").

As for St. Mary's, I've brought them up before as a WAC expansion candidate based on their excellent athletic facilities, sizable endowment, solid academic reputation, and proximity to UT-RGV. However I didn't realize at the time that they sponsor only 11 sports. They have further to go to make a D-I transition than I thought, unfortunately.

(09-02-2017 08:32 AM)dancingNMSUaggie Wrote:  Conference fantasy alignment threads are a giant waste of time.

Note that all I posted was about two conferences merging and that there had been speculation on this board that St Mary's might be a school to target in the future.

Conference expansion threads are what they are, no more, no less. Some people like tracking recruits, others like baseball, some like talking about what might be.