Three Conferences Discussing Regional Scheduling Alliance

College baseball coaches already have a wealth of experience dealing with roster management issues. Now, some coaches and administrators inside the Colonial Athletic Association, Big East Conference and Atlantic 10 Conference are looking to put together a temporary and regional scheduling alliance in all secondary sports to help save money in 2021.

With the coronavirus pandemic cancelling all spring sports and creating some unwanted uncertainty surrounding the college football season, college sports fans have seen some interesting happenings over the past couple of months. Some universities have announced layoffs, others have announced furloughs for athletic department employees, including some baseball coaches at places like Boise State. Some administrators are even struggling with the tough decisions of potentially cutting some Olympic sports.

Many programs around the country are investigating ways they can make life easier for their administrators from a budgetary standpoint, hence the idea of a regional scheduling alliance was created by Connecticut head coach Jim Penders. With the creation of this alliance, it would allow programs in similar regional proximities from the A-10, CAA and Big East to compete without placing a heavy burden on the programs from a financial standpoint.


“We’re working on trying to find a regional solution. It makes a lot of sense in the short term and my hope is that it would take a lot of financial burden away from the schools,” Penders said about the plan. “I first brought it up on a conference call with Big East coaches two weeks ago and I asked if anyone would be dead set against this. No one was. Essentially, we left the meeting looking to explore which other conferences would be willing to navigate this with us.”

The idea from Penders’ standpoint was to find some leagues of similar stature who have large geographic footprints. The A-10 and CAA came to mind, with the A-10 having teams in the Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. The CAA has teams ranging from Northeastern in Boston to College of Charleston. In other words, plane flights, i.e., expensive trips, are the norm for some programs in those leagues.

Penders spoke with several coaches from those leagues, including Rhode Island’s Raphael Cerrato, Northeastern’s Mike Glavine, St. John’s Mike Hampton, Seton Hall’s Rob Sheppard and Fordham’s Kevin Leighton. All those coaches, he said, were on board with the general framework of the alliance.

“I got on the phone with a bunch of our neighborhood programs and looked at programs/conferences that would have big cost savings from playing more of a regionally-based schedule,” he said. “Those guys all seemed pretty enthusiastic about it, and my athletic director was open to any and all suggestions as a way to save money. After all, one of the reasons we want to do this is to help our athletic directors save some money.”

“At the end of the day, we’re all trying to make sure we keep as many kids in uniform on Opening Day 2021 as we had on Opening Day in 2020,” he continued, “We owe it to the game and the people who play it. I think anything has a good chance of happening right now. It has a chance, but everyone has to be on board. This is an alliance that would not only apply to baseball for one year, but also other secondary sports.”

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What would the framework for this scheduling alliance look like for baseball, and potentially, other spring sports?

Though the alliance discussions are still very much in the early stages, the general idea is that the scheduling would be done with a pod approach.

For instance, the Colonial Athletic Association would not have conference play like usual. Instead, a program like College of Charleston would only play teams in its region (South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia) during the usual conference portion of the schedule. No regular season conference champion would be awarded in any of the three leagues and conference tournaments would be played. However, the tournament seedings would be based on RPIs.

No official pods have been put together throughout the discussion phase of this proposal, but programs like Connecticut ideally would be paired with Hofstra, Seton Hall, St. John’s, Massachusetts, Northeastern and Rhode Island, among others. The same kind of arrangement would be assembled for programs from these leagues in the Mid-Atlantic region, while the South Carolina-North Carolina and Virginia grouping could include Charleston, UNC Wilmington, Elon, George Mason, Davidson, Virginia Commonwealth, James Madison, William & Mary and Towson.

“We’re looking at this from a standpoint of conferences with similar constraints and geographical hallmarks,” one Colonial head coach said. “This would only be a one-time deal and would help eliminate air travel and expensive, long trips. It would help promote the idea that we’re trying to improve student-athlete safety.

“This would be a smart solution as a one-year deal until everyone gets back to normal,” the coach added. “This is going to be a collaborative effort amongst mid-major programs to minimize risk and expenditures from a travel standpoint. This will allow athletic departments to trim their budgets without teams having to cancel games to do it. This approach would give teams a full 56-game schedule without too much of a financial burden. I get the feeling from what I know that a lot of northern programs in these leagues really want this to happen. We’re on board, but I think those programs really want this to come to fruition.”

Specific details about the potential alliance are coming, but it’s clearly an idea that has many coaches from the Big East, CAA and A-10 openly engaged and intrigued. Sources say the A-10 and CAA seem to be all onboard with the idea, while it will be interesting to see if the idea resonates with other Big East athletic directors besides UConn’s David Benedict.

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One potential roadblock to a proposal such as this is the presence of some programs with no obvious geographic partners from the other two leagues.

Creighton out of the Big East and Saint Louis out of the Atlantic 10 are two prime examples of this, while Butler and Xavier, located in Indiana and Ohio, respectively, aren’t exactly close to teams from the CAA. They only share geographic proximity with Dayton out of the A-10.

What do you do with those programs?

“Creighton was the program initially that I thought would have the toughest time with it,” Penders said. “But then again, they’re on a flight for pretty much every conference game, so maybe it’s something they could get on board with.”

Creighton long-time head coach Ed Servais doesn’t have a dead set opinion on the A10-BigEast-CAA alliance just yet. He’s waiting for more concrete answers from his administration. But in a new world where the phrase ‘that’ll never happen’ can no longer be used, he’s being proactive in other ways, meeting for weekly Zoom calls with other coaches from the nation’s Heartland, while also meeting with fellow Big East skippers.

Servais has been meeting with coaches from Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri State, Iowa and Illinois State, along with some input from Nebraska, about college baseball’s immediate future from a scheduling standpoint. What if Creighton and these programs have to do their own regional scheduling because of state travel constraints? Should programs, moving forward, play doubleheaders on Saturday and one game on Sunday to trim some costs? Those two questions are just two of many that have come up in the Ritch Price-led Zoom calls, along with other calls involving Big East coaches.

“It kind of started out as a discussion on regional scheduling. If we have to do it, how would we do it — and quickly?, Servais said. “We’re in a really unique situation right now. My fear is that we get left behind at a school like Creighton, but we’re not going to let that happen. I’ve heard anything from our administration. Until then, we’re going to continue to believe we’ll have a regular conference schedule. We’re not really sure if we’re going to lose any games or not at this point.

“There aren’t a lot of benefits to not having football,” he continued. “But this might be one of those times.”

The fallout from the coronavirus has already hit some athletic departments hard, and that impact will be magnified this fall if a vast majority of conferences do not allow fans to attend games. The doomsday scenario would be no football at all, which would not bode well for athletic departments or the long-term health of some baseball programs.

With all the uncertainty, coaches from the Big East, CAA and A-10 are looking short and long-term. They want to make sure they find creative ways to trim their budgets. They also want to make sure they actually have a program in a few months.

Everything is on the table.