(02-13-2017 03:02 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  You need 6 for an NCAA bid.

This is true in most non-revenue sports. It's why you see conferences get to 5 members in a sport like Men's soccer form their own league with an associate. It give your schools a 1 in 6 chance (were all things equal).

Note: this is why I expect the WAC Men's soccer to split in 2018, as they will have 12 teams, 7 permanent members. It makes no sense to carry 5 associates and reduce the chances a full member gets a bid by almost 50%. Perhaps the MWC will finally sponsor the sport (5 members, 3 in the WAC, 1 in CUSA, 1 in P12) by snagging one of the WAC associate members (probably HBU) - that would probably force the P12 to take Sac State from the Big West to replace SDSU.


While a conference will want 10 members for stability and Basketball double round robin, for a lot of sports where not all schools sponsor, the aim is simply 6. You need 6 team (3 men, 3 women) sports and 6 individual sports to qualify as a conference.

Individual sports are super easy, as the only thing you do is host a conference meet. Adding an associate in one of those is nothing, just an entry fee. As a result only one team (Francis Marion Men's Golf) is an independent, as pretty much all conferences are open to associates. They are called individual sports because teams do not qualify for NCAA regional and national championships, but individual athletes (Golf, Tennis, Track, Swimming, Gymnastics, Cross Country, etc). Schools are pretty much on their own to build a schedule.

With no money in most of these team sports, the trend is for conferences of 6 to 8. And since not all schools sponsor there are a lot of collaborations between conferences to get everyone placed.

I think the MW is only set to sponsor a sport if there are 6 full members supporting it. No reason to sport the sport if only 5 members are going to be the only ones supporting men's soccer.
The MW is pretty hardline on affiliates and besides the Hawaii football they only other affiliate is Colorado College which was added to help support scheduling.
If the MW was more open to affiliates, the they would probably have added more baseball schools since the MW only has 6 teams.