(06-11-2021 05:26 PM)Todor Wrote:  

(06-11-2021 12:38 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  

(06-11-2021 11:38 AM)Todor Wrote:  Arkansas Baptist will likely remain an AII school I think. The GCAC doesn't need them, especially until they establish themselves. Looks like the GCAC has baseball members, but not enough, so that may be of some value.

As it stands, out of the GCAC sports, AB only has basketball and track for men, and baskrtball , softball and track for women.5 out 10_sponsored sports isn't a great match.

The American Midwest is a better option. They don't care what you have, and they already travel to Central Baptist, just north of Little Rock. Also with 3 other Arkansas members, might get the ABC name out more that way.

If you look deeper at the GCAC, it's a better fit than it appears superficially. While the GCAC web site lists all kinds of sports available, most of them don't have enough participation to be "official" with automatic post season bids.

For men, the sports that have enough NOW (before Xavier and Edward Waters leave and Fisk rejoins), and next year:
Basketball 7/6
X Country 6/4

For women, the sports that have enough NOW (before Xavier and Edward Waters leave and Fisk rejoins), and next year:
Basketball 7/6
X Country 6//4
Volleyball 7/6

So you can see that the GCAC is basically a basketball conference with a couple of others thrown in. Most of the schools have a variety of other sports, but not enough to make them official for the conference.

In that regard, ABC would not be a bad fit for the GCAC because they are an HBCU and have basketball. It would be easy for them to add XC and volleyball. And the GCAC, you would think, would be desperate to have them. Philander Smith is literally a few blocks away, for a natural rival.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Arkansas...371492!3e0
To me, the big mystery is why they haven't opted for GCAC membership already.

The AMC would be the obvious alternative; you are right about that.

Does the NAIA have a required number of sports a conference must sponsor (and by sponsor, I mean actually having enough members to qualify a team for nationals)? I did notice they list football on their site, although only one school appeared to offer it. I didn't look at the rest.

Plenty of schools are 15 minutes apart and in different conferences. If proximity were the only criterion, the world of sports would look very different. I would say being a fellow HBCU trumps whether they are 15 minutes or 100 miles apart.

But in all honesty, Arkansas Baptist is a very shaky institution at best. They have a long history of problems with accreditation, following regulations for financial aid, questionable management, high debt, lack of control financially, lack of any sort of decent academic reputation, a lot of poor facilities, poor location in a bad part of town, a real lack of academic offerings at the Bachelor level---where to stop? You Google the place and it just overwhelms you with bad news... I have doubts whether they have a long term future. They carry all of the marks of most schools that have ended up closing.

No, I don't believe there is a minimum for conferences. Maybe they would require it for a new conference being formed but not for one that's been around for so long. And why would they? Let them do what makes sense to them. This isn't the NCAA with all the bureaucracy.

All of the GCAC seems shaky to me. I haven't done any research lately but it seems to me that after Xavier leaves June 30 the strongest school will be Dillard. I think ABC would be right at home. In fact, THAT might be the reason they won't join. They may want to start offering a full menu of sports, and want to be in a conference that has automatic qualifiers for them all.