News came out in February but just saw it today that the Big 12 is sponsoring Women's Lacrosse starting next year. Meaning Florida and Cincinnati will be departing the AAC and the AAC immediately loses 2 good programs. And be replaced with Coastal and Charlotte.

Florida is the geographic outlier in that new group, but wondered if JMU ever had a chance to be an affiliate member. The AAC just got significantly weaker in women's lacrosse so not too happy about this.

(04-11-2024 02:42 PM)Dukes_Royals Wrote:  News came out in February but just saw it today that the Big 12 is sponsoring Women's Lacrosse starting next year. Meaning Florida and Cincinnati will be departing the AAC and the AAC immediately loses 2 good programs. And be replaced with Coastal and Charlotte.

Florida is the geographic outlier in that new group, but wondered if JMU ever had a chance to be an affiliate member. The AAC just got significantly weaker in women's lacrosse so not too happy about this.

The conference got weaker, but I don't think it hurts us too much. Their OOC schedule is always incredibly difficult.
It will be easier to win the conference.
Another thing is that we aren't tied to the AAC like we are to the Sun Belt, so if the conference continues to get weaker, JMU could always leave to go to a better conference. If there's any program deserving to be in a power conference, it's women's lacrosse.

It’s a downgrade, but I suspect we continue to prefer the American for now.

Would just need one more SBC school to sponsor to get a Sun Belt conference going with Temple, ECU, Charlotte, Vandy and maybe try to add Delaware and Liberty to go with JMU, ODU, CCU and ??? App???

I could imagine Vandy wantting to jump to the Big XII eventually with their proximity to their schools over a more coastal oriented league.

But as JMAD03 said the OOC (usually schools like JH, UMD, VT, UVA, UR, BC, UNC) will continue to be strong.