(04-07-2021 07:22 AM)dan10 Wrote:  

(04-06-2021 03:18 PM)solohawks Wrote:  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

That would be fine as well. The issue however is JMU. They arent staying FCS which throws it all off because without JMU W&M would have less than 0 interest in that conference and the dominos begin to fall again. I also agree about football/basketball but thats only true if every gets along and believes in the same things, which they dont. Giving Richmond and Villanova (or Rhode Island, New Hampshire etc) staying power messes it all up because they are speaking only from football without a care for the other sports. Thats a problem and why we are dysfunctional now. Staying FCS in football is fine but you then have to replace both JMU and W&M (I would have 0 issues with W&M staying after JMU leaves).

So with those other 2 spots do you pick up a couple of patriot league teams that sorta have football, do you stick with HU/NU? Would those Patriot league schools even want to sponsor full scholarship football? Thats where it gets hairy and why I think you almost have to decide whether you want football or basketball, because without that decision and true leadership it will always be a convoluted mess.

I would say bring on Bucknell and Lehigh as those other two, but Lehigh likely wont join without Lafayette. I feel like those 3 would almost have to be a joint grouping. Which at that point drop UMBC as the third. That would give a pretty small footprint where longest northern travel would be Towson to Lafayette which is like 2.5 hours

I think limiting the FCS affiliates to only Villanova and Richmond would be fine. It would give core members a conference with their football rivals without letting the full members be overrun by affiliates. JMU may wants FBS but they need an invite. They already turned the Sunbelt down once so while the may want FBS it may be awhile. W&M has had the opportunity to leave for the Patriot League already and didn't. If JMU left, would that change? I dont know.

Either way if the CAA gets to 12 NOW with JMU and W&M and placed in the north division, then whomever replaces them if they do leave will be Northern members. As long as they are below Philly I dont think think the Carolinas division would argue too much.

Unfortunately this is just an idea because there is no trust or vision.