(04-05-2017 01:21 PM)geef Wrote:  

(04-04-2017 11:37 AM)esayem Wrote:  When will Denver finally settle on a conference? It they had a consistent basketball team they would be a great Olympic addition to the MWC.

I can speak to this with a bit of knowledge. DU's situation isn't one of not being able to settle on a conference - it's really an issue of being a geographic oddity in nearly every sense. They're elite-level in a handful of sports - soccer (men in the Final 4 this year), lacrosse (nat'l champs 2 years ago), hockey, skiing, and gymnastics. They're very good in others, like golf and tennis, in particular. The issue is that their profile looks much more like that of a Big East or ACC school, with the exception of sub-par basketball (and no football, in the case of ACC). They jumped from the Sun Belt to the Summit primarily because it was a somewhat better fit. They have history with North Dakota St and Omaha in hockey, and the Summit has far more alumni living in metro Denver than the SBC schools did. It's still not a good fit. The administration would love to be in West Coast Conference for a number of reasons, but the WCC hasn't bitten, despite taking BYU a few years back. The best regional(ish) and cultural fit (more private schools than the Summit) may actually end up being the Missouri Valley. The problem with the MVC is that the losses of Creighton and likely Wichita State remove the two western most members of the conference, leaving DU on an island......

Denver left the Sun Belt because the Sun Belt had adopted new membership standards requiring members to play 15 sports in the conference.

That's why they jumped so fast for the WAC. They were one year away from their grace period expiring and being forced into independence with New Orleans.