Douple: Summit may go to 12 or 14 Members

[s2c]

Curious if any ORU fans have seen this:

Q&A with Summit League commissioner Tom Douple

Q. With 10 teams now, will the league grow even more?

A. The approach we have to have is put expansion on the front burner instead of the back burner. There has historically been a lot of movement, and we need to be out there to see who?s available and what that would do with our league. That continues to be an issue and we want to keep it that way and try to be proactive rather than be reactive.

Q. Is there consideration to split the league into geographic divisions?

A. You can go different ways if we expand divisionally. Those are some options, but we won?t expand with 10.

Is 12 the answer, or 14 the answer? That?s some of the discussions we foresee in the future. Are we happy with 10? Do we need to shore ourselves up and go with 12 or 14? There are pros and cons for both. That?s what we?re going to start to analyze. The past year has been busy with expansion and developing the Summit plan. I think we?ll settle in next year and get everybody on board.

Q. But it seems as though that?s inevitable when you look at the distance between some schools.

A. There are a lot of conferences in our same boat, obviously. The WAC, Conference USA, the Sun Belt. We?re not the only ones in this unique situation ? the Atlantic Sun. We?re well aware of it, and it does add some additional burdens in our conference, but it?s one they all accepted and they recognize that, and we try to accommodate as much as we can in scheduling and so forth to be physically wise.

Sounds as if more expansion will happen sooner, rather than later.  Any thoughts be on the Summit going to 12 or 14 teams with divisions.  The schools likely wanting consideration are:

South Dakota (1st year DI transition)

North Dakota (1st year DI transition)

Southern Illinois-Edwardsville (1st year DI transition - large school in suburban St. Louis)

Houston Baptist (1st year DI transition)

Texas - Pan American (independent for a number of years)

Utah Valley State (completes DI transition in two years, SUU travel partner)

Oklahoma City U (considering DI move)

Northern Kentucky (considering a DI move - building a ~ 9000 arena in suburban Cincinnati)

Bellarmine (considering a DI move - Catholic school in Louisville with huge endowment)

Would ORU want OCU in the Summit?  SIU-Edwardsville is the most geographically centered, and downtown St. Louis organizations are supporting their DI move, presumably so StL can host future Summit tournaments. 

[tmh8286]

Further expansion would be another aggressive move by Douple.  My only hope is that we work to improve the quality of the league, and not just the quantity.

I don't see a problem with adding OCU to the Summit League, provided they met the criteria above, and actually there could be some benefits to ORU - an in-state opponent that would lead to a natural rivalry, easy and cheap travel - the team could sleep in their own beds the night of the game.  But I'm not in favor of adding teams that aren't going to come in and compete.

[Toby]

Adding any of those teams would pretty much fly in the face of a MVC styled "Summit Plan"... if we're not supposed to play sub 250 RPI teams why would we add them as members? At least the Dakotas are state schools committed to winning NOW and are actually an upgrade from Valpo (in terms of resources and facilities not tradition).

[89rabbit]

Just a heads up s2c is a fan of the University of North Dakota.  So he is very excited about this news, and very prone to believe that the Summit will expand to 12 or 14 members as that would help his schools tremendously.  They along with the University of South Dakota are playing their last year in D-II in '07-'08 and are looking for a conference home in D-I.