(04-06-2021 02:49 PM)dan10 Wrote: (04-06-2021 10:43 AM)solohawks Wrote: (04-06-2021 10:01 AM)dan10 Wrote: (04-06-2021 09:55 AM)solohawks Wrote: (04-06-2021 09:04 AM)dan10 Wrote: That goes to the point of what direction and footprint the CAA truly wants, right? . Not sure current leadership has even made that basic distinction. We have not even gotten beyond the point of being a leader and showing direction, we are still allowing the schools and all of their varying interests to drive the sinking ship. That needs addressed before you even get to your proposed step 1.They naturally overlap because those schools started in the AEast before saving the CAA at the time
Agreed. From the Northeastern POV, if UNCW and CoC leave, the conference could very easily add some members above DC and tighten the footprint up north.
Therein lies the core problem of stalemate between parties that don't want to be together.
The easiest solution would be for AEast to focus on the Northeastern footprint while CAA focuses on the MidAtlantic footprint.
Getting everyone to agree on that though would take leadership, which we do not have.
Yup you get it. Until you break that important hurdle, everything else is just mental gymnastics.
Do you have a preferred solution from the Drexel perspective?
Unfortunately Drexel is part of the problem, not the solution. It will be interesting to see what a new AD will do and what direction they want us to go. That is very much to be seen. However Drexel was one of the few schools who truly used the FLO money to put games on locally. So to many of our fans, it has felt mostly like the old days since many home games have been on local tv broadcasts. With that said, this season had so few home games that it didnt matter.
I think the league needs to become truly focused. I dont think a league that supports basketball and half of a football league, while allowing non members to just play football will ever work. Once NU and HU dropped football, the CAA should have made a decision one way or another, instead they waffled and still let non full time members speak for full time members for decision-making. So if this league is going to have any hope of flourishing it needs to decide whether it wants football or not. I dont think it can work well having 1.5 of those sports.
If the league decides that basketball is the route I think it is in Drexel's best interest to stay and make it work, since we do not have very many peers that we align with as far as school demographics and academics. NU is one of the few that matches well. When the split happens, us and Delaware will split in different ways, despite the history. If the league does that I agree a south division and north division makes the most sense and is easily feasible. Replacing the football schools would not be that big of a task.
If the league focuses on football, Drexel obviously is an odd man out. If a new mid atlantic conference is not created then our only realistic choices would be to drop down to the Patriot League or back to the AEast.
The 3rd option would be for the league to try and keep current members together and get to divisions, but I think that would mean the league should drop football only schools unless you bring any of them on as a full time member and likely drop the autobid while still allowing the teams to play an abbreviated conference slate. The football schools would never go for this option.
The option I would want ideally would be a new conference to be created that focuses on academic driven research universities that are mostly private in the mid atlantic. Schools with a basketball focus. One that would likely be a mesh of CAA, AEast, Patriot, MAAC schools. Something like: Drexel, NU, Delaware, Bucknell, Lehigh, Lafayette, maybe Rider, maybe HU, Binghamton, Colgate, Boston U, and maybe another like Fairleigh Dickinson or Navy if you can pull that off.
Thank you for the detailed response.
I personally don't think it has to be either/or for football and I believe at the FCS level there is no reason football and non football schools cannot work together.
For the CAA I believe the biggest thing that needs to happen is to pick a geographic direction. The 4 team core of the CAA is JMU, W&M, Towson and Delaware. When you look at the landscape of east coast FCS, those 4 schools make a lot of sense together and the geography isn't that bad. Throw in Drexel and UMBC, who should be added to the CAA, as non football basketball focused schools to partner with Delaware and Towson and you have a 6 schools with the maximum driving distance of 5 hours. That's a solid sensical division.
Those 6 schools then need to decide which direction they want to go. Do they want to create a northern division with Hofstra and Northeastern or do they want to create a southern division with Elon, UNCW, and CoC?
I think the easiest solution would be for Northeastern to go to the America East with its hockey rivals with the CAA taking UMBC and then Hofstra either joining the MAAC or the America East as well. Alternatively both Northeastern and Hoftsra joining the private school Patriot League would allow that league to have seasonal geographic divisons.
This would free up 2 to 4 slots in the CAA to add a Winthrop, UNCG, Campbell or whomever else they would want.
In my realistic perfect world I would like to see a 6 team Carolinas divison of
Elon
UNCG
Campbell
UNCW
Winthrop
CoC
The other half of the conference would be the MidAtlantic divison of
JMU
W&M
Towson
UMBC
Delaware
Drexel
This is a sensible geographic, basketball focused conference that protects the FCS football schools auto bid with 6 core members and Richmond & Villanova as a guaranteed 8 regardless of what the northern schools do. Every school has a travel partner. The farthest trip would be from Philly to Charleston.
Hoftsra and Northeastern would benefit being in basketball centric leagues in the same footprint.
The CAA is no better than the MAAC, AEast, or Patriot League, so I really don't understand why they would object