The conference and football discussion on the podcast thread got me thinking about the original CAA and what led to the mess we are in now.
I found a treasure trove of old articles that pretty clearly lays out what happened
https://www.dailypress.com/topic/sports/...ery_search
After ECU and American decided to leave and the A10 flirted with Richmond but turned them down. The CAA was down to 7 teams, the 6 VA schools and UNCW. There where two goals Yeager seemed to have, a Carolina replacement for ECU so UNCW wouldn't be isolated and getting CAA football up and running. At the time the CAA only had 3 football schools playing in A10 football: JMU, W&M, and Richmond.
It appears that they pieced together a 14 team all sports league with 8 football playing schools: *=Football School
Delaware*
GMU
ODU
VCU
Richmond*
JMU*
W&M*
VMI*
UNCG
UNCW
Furman*
Wofford*
The Citadel*
Charleston
However during the planning of this Richmond was using this new football conference as leverage to get into the A10. A10 football had 10 members at the time, so losing 4 of those members to this new conference would have left it in a tough spot. Admitting Richmond kept the A10 as a football league, which entitles you to more voting rights in NCAA matters.
Once Richmond did the deed, the 14 team all sports CAA fell apart and the 6 remaining schools were left scrambling, yet committed to each other. JMU and W&M turned down interest from the SoCon while JMU, W&M, and GMU turned down interest from the AE. From the looks of it W&M really saved the CAA. An attempt was made to get all 6 schools in the AE for a full merger but that was shot down as some non football northern AE schools prevented the super majority requirement from being met in order to expand. After that did not work out the CAA got the 4 AE schools to join and the rest is history.
Looking at it all, it seemed the pursuit of football was what killed the league. This article in particular was interesting:
https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-xpm-2...story.html
"We could go out and get an eighth school and satisfy our need to be above the NCAA minimum and accommodate (UNC) Wilmington geographically - we could do that next week and stop there," Yeager said. "But at the same time, we have an opportunity to think outside the box a little bit and do some really creative things. We can really change how we operate and how things look."
His creativity and desire for football led to Richmond leveraging an A10 invite, which led to panic and a poor foundation for a conference, consequences we are still suffering today. It also left an unfulfilled promise to get UNCW a Carolina based partner, a promise that would remain unfulfilled for over a decade. Looking back i wonder how differently things would have been if they had just added a UNCG or Charleston, focused on basketball, and called it a day.