Annual President's Council Meeting

[Bogus Smith]

Summit League Issues Statements From Annual President's Council Meeting

ELMHURST, Ill. - The Summit League held its annual President's Council Meeting on Monday, June 21 in Chicago and released the following two statements:

League Expansion

The President's Council has agreed to begin the evaluation process for the University of North Dakota in regard to potential admission to The Summit League. This is multi-step process beginning with the collection of institutional information and evolving to an evaluation of membership candidacy and a potential site visit before the end of 2010.

Football Feasibility Study

The Summit League's President's Council agreed to a feasibility study of FCS football and its potential addition as a league-sponsored sport. A committee and consultant will work together to research and provide data for the purpose of evaluating the requirements and viability of adding football to The Summit League. The study will begin this summer and is expected to be completed within the next 12 months.

[theeagleman5]

Oh boy.....there goes the neighborhood....time for ORU to explore other possibilities....are there any?....

[Bogus Smith]

Football not in ORU's immediate future

by: MIKE BROWN World Sports Writer

Oral Roberts University fans can put aside their pompons.

Apparently, the school is less likely to start a football program than it is to bulldoze the Mabee Center any time soon.

"We have no intention of starting any new varsity programs in the near future," ORU athletic director Mike Carter said Wednesday.

Basketball and baseball are ORU's marquee sports. The school has never fielded a football team, unless you count men's and women's soccer. The cost of doing so now could be immense.

So why did the question come up in the first place?

Football not in ORU's immediate future

[Old Titan]

With USD and (eventually) UND joining the league, it makes sense for those six schools that play football to compete for a Summit League football championship.

It does NOT make any sense at all for the remaining league teams to suddenly take up the sport - simply too expensive.

And frankly, rather than spend a single dollar on a feasibility study as proposed, I wish the conference presidents would instead emphasize the need for the league schools to ALL get their facilities up to par in those sports where we already DO crown champions.

In other words, SDSU needs to install bathrooms and a press box at their baseball stadium, and IUPUI needs to renovate The Jungle, before the league starts spending precious time and money on crowning a football champion.

Of course, you never know: adding football to the list of conference sports may just be an attempt to wrest control of the Commissioner's Cup from ORU's grip, by providing yet another opportunity to earn points in a sport in which the Golden Eagles do not compete (ala swimming, diving, softball, etc.).

[Hammersmith]

NDSU, SDSU and (probably) WIU won't be in favor of full Summit football. Leaving the Missouri Valley Football Conference for the group of schools that would be Summit football would be a big step down for our programs. My guess as to what will happen is that we will actually return to the status quo from about five years ago. Back then, the Great West Football Conference was being run out of the Mid-Con offices. The commish of one was the associate commish of the other. When UND & USD moved up to DI, the decision was made to expand the GWFC into an all-sports conference and the word football was taken out of its name. Ed Grom left his job as associate commish of the Mid-Con to be the full-time commish of this new conference.

The GWC had an Achilles heel from day one. Of the five football schools, only two were also members of the all-sports portion of the conference. One of those is already "gone"(USD), and the other(UND) will likely get a Summit invite within the year. Once that happens, there will be nothing connecting the two halves of the conference. At that point, it makes sense to separate football again.

But who would run the football conference? Three of the five schools will be members of the Summit, so we might as well go back to the way things were. The GWFC(or Summit Football Conference or whatever the name will be) will be a separate single sport conference that will be run out of the Summit office and by Summit personnel. The members will be SUU, UND, USD, Cal Poly & UC Davis. By keeping it a separate conference, NDSU, SDSU & WIU will all be able to stay in the MVFC without much in the way of hard feelings. The committee will look at other options, but I think this one is the one they will go with. I've always said that university presidents are a conservative bunch when it comes to big changes like conference affiliation. In the vast majority of cases, they will do the minimum possible to achieve their needs. The Big 12 shakeup almost proved me wrong, then turned around and only reinforced the notion. In the upcoming discussion, the Summit presidents will do the minimum possible to keep UND, USD & SUU's football conference together. That minimum will be a return to the Summit-run GWFC. At least that's my opinion.

[vcboy2000]

Currently the Missouri Valley Conference has 5 out of 10 schools that don't sponsor FCS football, which is why they started a separate conference called the Missouri Valley Football Conference. I say we make a swap. The Summit will give it's FCS sponsorship schools (NDSU, SDSU, WIU, and soon to be Summit members USD and UND) for the Mo Valley's non FCS sponsor schools (Bradley, Creighton, Drake, Evansville and Wichita State). The MoValley can either drop Youngstown State and have 10 institutions that sponsor all sports or add another FCS sponsoring institution for a 12 team league with all sports. Either way, it could drop it's sepearte Football Conference and integrate everything into one system. The Summit would also be sitting rather nicely with 5 additional schools that have great programs in it's premier sports of basketball and baseball. Of course the MoValley would probably laugh at the thought of the idea, but it's fun to think about.