Posting about this came much later than we had intended, but we wanted all of the fallout to have settled. Plus, we wanted to make sure we had all of the details right and knew for certain how the league intended to proceed.

As a refresher, Notre Dame College announced just prior to the start of this season that they would be joining the brand-spanking-new Mountain East Conference. The new league will basically consist of a mass exodus/mutiny among members of the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, along with a few other folks including Notre Dame. It is set to begin play for the 2013-2014 academic year, and will open with an eight-sport offering for both men and women. The line-up will include the primary staples we think of in football, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, track, etc.

Given that NDC hadn't even begun it's first season of GLIAC football when the announcement was made, the departure wasn't preceded by a significant amount of notice. Not surprisingly, it wasn't met with a lot of enthusiasm by the bulk of the GLIAC fan-base either. Despite that, at face value one has to see the logic behind what NDC is doing: They're new to Division II, and while they did join the GLIAC as an associate member for football and a few other sports, the Falcons were going to be independent for the bulk of their programs. That's a tough racket any way you slice it, so finding a league that would provide a home and a schedule for the vast majority of their sports certainly had to be appealing. The Mountain East will offer a full compliment of sports, and is a relatively decent fit geographically. On the whole, the decision seems to make sense.

Of course, no transition of this nature is without negatives. We start along those lines with the harm that might come to their still forming reputation. It won't be easy to be a new outfit that, well, "bolted" as early as it could from the conference that gave them their first shot. The GLIAC did need them to a certain extent, but also gave the Falcons some instant cache that they couldn't possibly have had otherwise. It's not like Notre Dame had any other strong, viable options and the GLIAC lent some significant credibility in NDC's first D2 season. And don't think this isn't lost on folks within the program...we have it on good authority that moving out of the GLIAC for football actually created some disappointment for many among the Falcon family. It's hard to argue with that, especially given the top-to-bottom reputation that the GLIAC has developed and displayed in full force this year.

Another big negative is that the terms of membership in pretty much every league in the country contain language around fines for leaving without proper notice. This is typically an amount that can't be taken lightly by anyone, especially in D2. The terms of this arrangement between the league and NDC won't be disclosed, so the amount of the fine (if there even is one) is anyone's guess. Even with that potential burden in mind, NDC still saw this as their most attractive route. As an aside, some wondered if Indianapolis had to pay when they left the GLIAC. In short, they didn't and that was because they gave the prescribed/appropriate amount of notice of their intentions. UIndy was a long-standing associate member of the GLIAC (and still is for a couple of sports) but has also been a full member of the GLVC for many years. Once the GLVC successfully expanded their roster to gain full status from the NCAA for football, it certainly made sense for the Greyhounds to move their football membership to the league where they are a primary member for nearly all of their other sports. They did things by the letter of their agreement with the GLIAC, and are still on excellent terms with the league.

So, what does the GLIAC do moving forward? Well, there is still one year left on their current two-year schedule cycle and there really isn't anything that can be done with that. If an option had presented itself that made a ton of sense for the league to simply "scrap" year two of the cycle and start over, the membership may have opted for it. The only thing that could have possibly made that work was for another associate member to materialize, but that really wasn't going to happen...let alone quickly enough for the league to say they wanted to start over from scratch for next year. So, it made keeping year two as it sits the most logical route.

Of course, that option presents its own challenges...most notably, what does everyone that had Notre Dame on the schedule do with that week that is now open? One route that was investigated was a one-year "alliance" of sorts with the GLVC. One of their members, Urbana, is making the same move to the MEC that Notre Dame is. Of course, that will also leave a similar set of holes in the GLVC schedule. The two leagues considered having the GLIAC teams scheduled to play Notre Dame play the team from the GLVC that was schedule to play Urbana that same week. This option actually had some positives to it, but one big negative was that the GLVC was only set to play an eight-game league schedule...two less than the GLIAC, and this would leave two of the GLIAC clubs still with an empty week. That lack of equity was a huge problem, as was the question surrounding who would get home games. In the end, the option just didn't make enough/the right sense and failed to materialize.

What did make sense and is now the end result we have moving forward is for the league's members to simply play the schedule as it is. Of course, the entire South Division will only play a nine-game conference slate, and that same fate awaits Grand Valley, Northwood and Hillsdale from the North. The league's "order of finish" will be calculated by winning percentage as opposed to strictly "record". Of course, since the South teams will all only have nine games this really won't impact that Division's standings. It could, however, wind up impacting the North and the Overall races. That is an extra source of intrigue for next year. As for the open week, any club that wants to fill it can do so...and some already have, most notably Grand Valley who very quickly jumped on the opportunity to add another home game for 2013 and scheduled Truman State.

So what about the future beyond next year? Well, the league is basically "taking it as it comes" at this point. What else can they do? The current roster of members is the 15 clubs that remain, and the next schedule cycle (for 2014-2015) is being developed for those members. We haven't heard anything definitive on what they are planning as far as divisional schedules/alignments are concerned, or how the order of finish will be calculated. Of course, even that schedule will be contingent on the league's current line-up not being exposed to any further upheaval. Given how much change we have seen in all of college sports lately, the notion that the GLIAC's roster will remain static hardly comes with any guarantees. Suffice it to say that potential changes to the league and how it will address them should prove worth watching in the coming years.