G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

[BlueBlood]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

I may have gone of the deep end.

Do you think there was ever a plan for two new private school D2 conferences, not just one? Here's what got me thinking. The G-MAC is essentially turning into the All-Ohio D2 conference that was envisioned 10 years ago. Its the same group schools. KWC and TNU knew about that vision, knew how many OH schools were possible, yet joined anyway. They also knew that there is a severe lack of current D2s in between them and the Ohio schools. So, there weren't and still aren't a lot of expansion targets in their area.

Much like the NAIA AMC conference schools had a plan to go D2 and re-create their conference in D2, is it possible that the TN/KY NAIA schools had the same vision? TN schools TNU, Union, and Lee recently transitioned from NAIA to D2. Shorter (GA) did too and is just over the TN border. We know that MSC schools G-town and Cumberland applied. Quite a few of us thought that others would likely follow them, as the MSC more or less imploded. If you add all those schools up (and include KWC and maybe Christian Brothers), you get a really nice group of smaller, private, mostly faith-based TN/KY schools. Its a southern version of the G-MAC. Instead of private schools temporarily being in the "big school" GLIAC, you have private schools temporarily being in the "big school" GSC.

The schools who originally started creating the G-MAC (CU, UC, NDC and Urbana) were in a holding pattern until the conference was set up and the private GLIAC schools were ready to leave the GLIAC. I'm staring to wonder if TNU was in the same holding pattern - and the G-MAC was prepared to sponsor/"hold" schools from both OH and KY/TN (including TNU, Cumberland and G-town) until all the pieces were in place.

I wonder if the only thing that halted the plan was the G-town / Cumberland denials.

Union, Lee, Christian Brothers, Shorter, Cumberland, TNU, KWC, Georgetown, Campbellsville, L-W, Cumberlands, Pikeville, etc?

[BlueBlood]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

Obviously the mention of Ashland during the Mark Elliott radio show was the attention-grabber . However, he also mentioned that the G-MAC would like to set up divisions and that divisional play would greatly minimize TNU's excessive travel. When I look at potential division breakdowns, I just don't see how they will get much relief. If you go with EAST/WEST divisions, TNU still goes to NW Ohio and Michigan. If you carve divisions NORTH/SOUTH, TNU still goes to WV (Interestingly, N/S divisions would basically be "Old G-MAC" / "New G-MAC"). Unless the G-MAC is adding a couple schools decently close to TNU, I just don't see where they get much relief. They are reducing the Cleveland trips (in half, presumably) - that's about it.

[Wabbott9]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

That's pretty damn funny!

And sad at the same time. The GLVC website has conference schedules posted, sometimes out to the 2018-2019 school year. I get that you probably can't make new schedules so soon, but you could pull the old ones, since by including St. Joe's they clearly aren't right no matter what.

[UFSwimDad]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

Re: GLVC News. Whatever happens on that front might not be found out for a while. I've yet to see evidence that the GLVC knows St. Joe's is closing.

That's pretty damn funny!

[Wabbott9]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

Re: GLVC News. Whatever happens on that front might not be found out for a while. I've yet to see evidence that the GLVC knows St. Joe's is closing.

[BlueBlood]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

This article makes it sound like the schools come from only two conferences. In reality, the MSC and the Sun both had a bunch of associate members, so the teams are from a couple different conferences.

http://www.tennessean.com/story/spor...ague/80950984/

[BlueBlood]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

Isn't one of the NAIA's conferences close to 20 teams?

Its a football association only. None of the conferences had enough football teams. Instead of fighting each other over associate members, they all joined into one scheduling alliance.

[UFSwimDad]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

Isn't one of the NAIA's conferences close to 20 teams?

I did read about that

[ctrabs74]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

I couldn't imagine a 20 team league. If the big boys aren't going for it then neither should D2. I am with you I think in basketball you should play everyone in conference. Now with football I can see maybe having something like what the big ten. We play 6 in division and two outside. And I think they rotate the two games other than the rivalry game

Isn't one of the NAIA's conferences close to 20 teams?

[UFSwimDad]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

I couldn't imagine a 20 team league. If the big boys aren't going for it then neither should D2. I am with you I think in basketball you should play everyone in conference. Now with football I can see maybe having something like what the big ten. We play 6 in division and two outside. And I think they rotate the two games other than the rivalry game

[schnautza]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

if they went the route the GLVC went (maybe still does?) and not every team plays each other during the regular season.

They've addressed the issue of not playing everybody every year - Currently, GLVC is divided into four 4-team pods that rotate every other year. You play everybody in your pod twice and everybody else once for a total of 18 games. The pods stay within your division but you keep your travel partner the same. For example, the first two years it was USI-BU-UIndy-SJC, and then the past two years we've had USI-BU-McK-UIS. Our next pod rotation should be USI-BU-UWP-Lewis for 2 seasons (the most brutal setup possible), although with the closing of SJC, it will be interesting to see how they approach it this season.

I'm personally not impressed with this setup, largely because we will always have 2 games with the toughest team in the league, whereas other teams get easy travel partners. And I love the rivalry it creates, but it really makes it difficult to compare records at the end of the season to determine division champions when the entire division doesn't play the same schedule.

[kwcpantherfan]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

I've said it before on the board, but just my own opinion on the conference size question is that ideal is around 12 ... 16 at the most. I'd be fine with 16 plus Ursuline so there's 17 on the womens' side. IF the conference was to grow bigger than that my biggest complaint would be if they went the route the GLVC went (maybe still does?) and not every team plays each other during the regular season. So if we did have 20 schools, then my preference for basketball scheduling would be that everyone plays everyone else once. Maybe if you needed to add another game or two you would do either travel partners play home/home each year, or rotate who plays whom 2x but I strongly dislike the concept of having teams in the conference that you don't even play every year.

Obviously football would work a little differently since you don't play 19 conference games (not that every school has football, but you get my point) so that's a different animal. But specifically for basketball I don't like the concept of leagues that are bigger than 12-16.

[UFSwimDad]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

Ahh Heck, let's just go with 20... Two divisions of 10 or 4 pods of 5. :)

Prob not what a lot of folks want but I would be cool with it. Go big or go home!

[ABjo]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

BTW - 16 versus 17 is a wonderful debate to be having.

Ahh Heck, let's just go with 20... Two divisions of 10 or 4 pods of 5. :)

[BlueBlood]

Re: G-MAC All-Sports and Conference Business Thread

BTW - apparently divisional trophies are a thing:





I'm cool with it (not for football - but for sports that might have 8 or 9 schools in a division). Again, something else we couldn't have even dreamed about discussing a few months ago.