Quote from: scottiedoug on May 09, 2016, 09:59:45 AM
Maryville is the only USASouth school close to Berea.  I can not imagine what the league Presidents were thinking. I assume they know about travel budgets and time spent on busses....

Not the first time the USASouth reached for a school. CNU to Huntingdon was one of the longest conference trips in DIII football. Didn't last long of course. But yeah, not sure I get the Berea move, but I don't really know what they might bring either. Brevard and Pfieffer are great. There is now a nice Northern grouping with the VA/NC/TN schools, and a southern grouping with the GA/Huntingdon grouping.

Berea made the move to D-3 from the NAIA for definite reasons.

Perhaps they landed in the USA South because the 8-team SAA wasn't the match that they wanted or vice versa (Centre might have some insight on this).

Berea is not a member of the Associated Colleges of the South.

The Heartland CAC may not have been right for them.

Why does the ODAC need them?

The Presidents AC really doesn't "need" Thomas More to get "keep" the Football AQ anymore. Do they need TMC for anything else? Why add another  KY school?

It is kinda, "who is left"?

I have no issues with Berea as a school, but the USA South needs to get off this kick off their "Oh, you want to move to D3? Here's your membership!" movement we've seen.
As mentioned, travel time is going to be terrible. I wouldn't be surprised if we hear grumbling out of administrations in a few years.

By the way, here's something interesting after looking at a map:
Berea to Ferrum, 340 miles 6:12 (240 "as the crow flies")
Berea to Huntingdon, 476 miles 6:54 (377 "as the crow flies")

My last post got me thinking about the 2016 and distances between schools, so for your off season viewing pleasure:

at Berry (168 mi., 2:48)
at Hanover (276 mi., 4:37)
vs. E&H (154 mi., 2:24)
at Methodist (394 mi., 6:17)
vs. NCWC (435 mi., 6:67)
at Ferrum (278 mi., 4:38)
vs. Averrett (319 mi., 5:13)
at LaGrange (283 mi., 4:16)
vs. Huntingdon (350 mi., 5:08)
at Greensboro (302 mi., 4:43)

and for future schedules, Brevard is 156 miles; 2:41 from Maryville

Definitely a disadvantage of the USAS. Contrast that with this from W&L:

OOC
At JHU               229 miles, 3:47
At Sewanee       461 miles, 7:00
home CMS        yeah, that's a flight across country....

home E&H        167 miles, 2:34
at Catholic         197 miles, 3:17
at Guilford         151 miles, 2:47
home H-SC        91 miles, 1:52
home RMC         154 miles, 2:11
at Bwater           56 miles, 0:58
home Shenandoah 127 miles, 1:58

W&L's only opponents over 200 miles are the 3 OOC games. Other than DC traffic, they don't have a 3 hour bus ride in conference, so I don't think they do an overnight besides one or two OOC games a year. M'Ville doesn't have a conference bus ride under 4 hours until Brevard joins. To be fair, W&L is pretty close to the center of the ODAC, and Catholic/Shenandoah, Guilford/E&H have much worse driving times. But M'ville is pretty much center of the USAS also. The times from Lagrange and Huntingdon to Ferrum/Averett/NCWC are atrocious.

For football this isn't the end of the world, one weekend game a week, but I don't know how these young people do it for mid-week athletic contests. In some sports that are jammed up I expect the USAS to break into two divisions with minimal overlap besides the tournament. A northern part and a southern part. And then just stay merged where they need to create the geographic hodgepodge to keep an AQ.

Here's something to think about:


M'Ville in USAS  sorted by distance 
at Ferrum (278 mi., 4:38)
at LaGrange (283 mi., 4:16)
at Greensboro (302 mi., 4:43)
vs. Averrett (319 mi., 5:13)
vs. Huntingdon (350 mi., 5:08)
at Methodist (394 mi., 6:17)
vs. NCWC (435 mi., 6:57)


M'Ville hypothetically in ODAC, sorted by distance (after Catholic leaves)
E&H (154, 2:24)
Guilford (297, 4:37)
W&L (319, 4:51)
H-SC (359, 5:52)
Bwater (369, 5:30)
Shenandoah (440, 6:32)
RMC (447, 6:42)

For football, at least, the USAS is a better fit for travel than the ODAC for M'Ville. As crappy as the distances are, they could be worse. In fact it gets much worse if you add in the other sports. The NW Georgia and Atlanta schools which are 3-3.5 hours from M'Ville versus schools like EMU and Randolph which are 4-6 hours at least. Let alone VWC which is 544, 8:01!

Shenandoah was USAC when I was at MC. The route seemed like 4 turns, but 99.99% was I-81. Long and boring on a bus.

VWC is a little longer than the CNU trip from Maryville, but when you get over 450 miles, it's all the same. Your point of one weekend game vs. multiple week games is spot on.

A major factor in Maryville's leaving the ODAC was travel distances.  It has been quite a struggle since then, until lately, and now it seems to be trending back to struggle.  Maybe not for football, but for some sports it is a mess.  Part of the point of D3 is to have athletes be students.

Administrators already are grumbling. Splitting into two divisions that are themselves big enough for a conference will mean that many teams do not play each other except in tournaments.  It is hard to build rivalries that way, or to know who is "out there" even in your own conference.

I am not sure college presidents are listening to their athletic directors.

There is no doubt that low density areas of the country for DIII, the SE, SW, Rocky Mountain states, and many of the flyover states, are problematic. I think the SE is getting better. At the rate of DIII additions I can see there being enough density for the USAS to split into two better fit geographic conferences in the relatively near future. For certain sports like football and lacrosse you might have to stay combined, but for high participation sports like soccer, basketball, T&F, etc I think it won't take too much more before it gets better.

Personally I think the NAIA is dying in certain geographies. Mainly those areas where DIII is already strong. For schools with any kind of academic accountability in their athletic admissions, I think DIII will be very attractive. The NAIA's attempt to form a clearinghouse is limiting the appeal of their wild, wild west admissions for many schools, and closing the gap with the NCAA model, making it less interesting as a stand alone.

While I think there are certain geographies where NAIA will continue to do well because they have the density DII/DIII lack, I'm looking at the flyover states and the SW especially, in areas where DIII or DII are growing I believe you will keep seeing defections and I think this describes the SE. There are a bunch of NAIA schools in MS, AL, a pair in NC, and a ton in TN, SC and GA. A few more defections in the TN/GA area, especially, will allow another DIII conference in the SE and schools to realign geographically.

If I was the northern part of the USAS I would be calling a few of the TN, both NC schools and the lone VA holdout to see if their athletics match up. If I was the southern grouping, I'd be looking at the GA, MS and one or two of the AL schools. That would solve the problem pretty efficiently.

Adding to your point of NAIA in the SE, when it comes to football you see a split between really good teams to really poor teams with just a few landing in the middle. University of the Cumberlands in SE KY has been pretty good lately, playing in the Nat'l championship game a few years back. They played Carson-Newman (D2, TN), who is pretty good in their own right, to a tight game last year.

Most of the football NAIA schools in the SE would probably be a better athletic fit for D3, while a few could transition to D2 fairly easily. Carson-Newman was NAIA back in the day and made the move to D2.

Here are two VA examples:
UVA-Wise moved from NAIA to D2 a couple years ago and have been 2-9, 2-9, 1-9. Their last year in NAIA (2012) they were 3-8.
Bluefield is NAIA and since 2012 have been 1-10, 3-8, 0-11, 0-11.
Bottom line: Either handing out partial scholarships is the only way to get kids on campus, or the schools have money to burn in athletics.

Last thing:
Maryville and E&H both beat FCS start-(back)-up East Tenn State last year. Non-scholarship vs. scholarship, granted they were pups. ETSU won 2 games last year: NAIA's Warner 42-9 and D2's Kentucky Wesleyan 42-27. KWC has been NAIA, D2, and at one point D3. That tells me some schools need to drop the scholarship athlete dream. Warner needs to be FL's 1st D3 school and KWC needs to go the Brevard route (UVA Wise too).

I wouldn't recommend any FL schools go DIII. Especially Warner in Lake Wales. FL is huge north to south. Lake Wales is almost 500 miles from Atlanta. Huntingdon might be the closest DIII football school at just over 500 miles and 8 hours. There is no way any schools in FL can go DIII unless they get enough to form a conference all at once.

As someone who once a year drives in a motor home from Birmingham to the Okeechobee area I can tell you a bus from a school in FL to a school out of FL would be a tortuously long and expensive. Even worse than many of the TX schools except perhaps Sul Ross State.

True. Don't know why I didn't think of travel time given the 15 minutes I wasted at the office yesterday on Google maps.

Quote from: Scots13 on May 10, 2016, 11:30:19 AM
My last post got me thinking about the 2016 and distances between schools, so for your off season viewing pleasure:

at Berry (168 mi., 2:48)
at Hanover (276 mi., 4:37)
vs. E&H (154 mi., 2:24)
at Methodist (394 mi., 6:17)
vs. NCWC (435 mi., 6:67)
at Ferrum (278 mi., 4:38)
vs. Averrett (319 mi., 5:13)
at LaGrange (283 mi., 4:16)
vs. Huntingdon (350 mi., 5:08)
at Greensboro (302 mi., 4:43)

and for future schedules, Brevard is 156 miles; 2:41 from Maryville

Kinda like ASC distances and Sul Ross State is 300 miles west of Abilene where you have McMurry and HSU and 300 miles west of Brownwood where you have Howard Payne. Belhaven is about 280 miies east of ETBU in Marshall.

But that is what it takes to have a football program in Texas.

And the idea of not having football in Texas is unlikely to become the latest craze in the state....

It's not a football story per se, but this board may have more activity than the basketball boards. I interviewed Conference Commissioner Rita Wiggs about the conference's expansion.

www.d3hoops.com/notables/2016/05/usa-south-expansion-Q-A