Does anyone know when, in May, the SoCon delegation will visit ETSU since they will meet at Hilton Head the end of the month to vote on replacement members? And, who are they looking at to replace Davidson?

Kenny Hawkins said on the morning radio about a week ago that it will be sometime this coming week. He had the specific days, but I forgot.

(05-14-2013 02:04 PM)PittsburghBucs Wrote:  The thing to remember, however, is that right now VMI football is better than ETSU football.

They have a team. The Bucs and Mercer are just now starting theirs up, and there is no telling how good or poor they will be.

Mercer has a team, too. Granted, they will be playing their first game this fall, but they have a team, have gone through a spring training, have built great facilities, etc. I'm ready to see ETSU take those same steps.

undefined

I believe we are more than ready to see those steps taken here!!!!

(05-17-2013 08:04 AM)Buc66 Wrote:  Does anyone know when, in May, the SoCon delegation will visit ETSU since they will meet at Hilton Head the end of the month to vote on replacement members? And, who are they looking at to replace Davidson?

Looks like next week. They're at Mercer this week.

http://www.macon.com/2013/05/16/2481743/...rence.html

Next Thursday.

http://www.wjhl.com/story/22212239/etsus...-done-deal

Looks like the News & Neighbor actually scooped WJHL on this, or at least published what they knew quicker.

This is from the May 11 edition of the News & Neighbor, of which former Buc footballer and broadcaster Scott Robertson has recently been named editor (after the 'takeover' of his(?) Business Journal). Although the article is several paragraphs long, it's mostly stuff we already knew. However, the "done deal" aspect gets a lot more color :

"'The committee is just here because it's in the conference bylaws that in order to offer an invitation, they have to have a committee to evaluate the situation. They have a conference meeting at the end of May, when they'll invite whoever they want to invite.'

Robertson continues....."Sander spoke as if he believed an invitation was a fait accompli."

And....'Not to be overly optimistic,' said Sander, 'but this pretty much helps us be able to tell football coaching candidates, 'We're probably going to be playing in the Southern Conference.' So as we get into the interview process in the next two weeks, it'll help in talks with those eight or nine candidates.'"


That Ezell news conference at which I suspect the Sander interview took place was Wednesday, May 8, so we're now almost 2 weeks past this interview. One could presume, now, that at least one of the "couple other dominoes need to fall" to which Noland referred, is the official announcement of the SoCon membership. It may well be contingent on that becoming official for some particular coaching candidates to be certain they want on board. And that's just me reading the tea leaves, but it makes a lot of sense, I think.

Didn't Scott Robertson do the piece a few months ago blasting the former version of ETSU Football? In that piece, he mentioned how he played in UT's band, so I didn't realize he had ETSU Football connections. He very well may, I just thought he was tied to UT.

Actually, I'm vague on that. I read his introductory piece where he give his history, but that's been a month or more and I don't remember the details. I do sort of think he's got an ETSU broadcasting connection, but sorry, I'm unclear, now that you bring it up, on those details.

[after some digging...]
Here is that article, from the Feb. 2 edition of the News & Neighbor:

Scott Robertson introduces himself to readers

Go to page 4 of that. On my ancient machine, it took probably close to 10 minutes for that .pdf file to load enough to read it. He indeed was in the UT band, and did color for ETSU for a few years. My apologies for getting the details wrong.
(Or as someone else would say, I'm a liar......)

Testing.....

Anybody else having bizarre behavior when trying to post? Like it looks like my post above *didn't* work, but actually it did....

Are the SoCon folks on the ETSU campus today?

Supposed to be.

You'd think the JC Press would put up and article about it...

(05-23-2013 11:17 AM)Buc66 Wrote:  Are the SoCon folks on the ETSU campus today?

Yes. They vote middle of next week, I believe.

Furman AD states that SoCon does not feel obligated to expand past 10 members:


http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/...Conference

What does the SoCon do in 2014 and 2015 as far as securing enough football playing members? It doesn't look like Mercer will be playing scholarship football by 2014 for sure and maybe 2015, and ETSU won't be up for playing a full SoCon schedule in 2015. What does the conference do in the mean time?

(05-23-2013 05:16 PM)Buc66 Wrote:  Furman AD states that SoCon does not feel obligated to expand past 10 members:


http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/...Conference

Bottom of the article is wrong...you don't need 9 schools to keep the autobid, only 6.

Nine is just an optimal number because each school gets an equal number of home and away games.

SoCon will be just fine until Mercer and ETSU fully come on board with scholarship teams.

(05-23-2013 07:19 PM)chattanoogamocs Wrote:  

(05-23-2013 05:16 PM)Buc66 Wrote:  Furman AD states that SoCon does not feel obligated to expand past 10 members:


http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/...Conference

Bottom of the article is wrong...you don't need 9 schools to keep the autobid, only 6.

Nine is just an optimal number because each school gets an equal number of home and away games.

SoCon will be just fine until Mercer and ETSU fully come on board with scholarship teams.

Any feeling in Chattanooga towards further expansion? How does UTC feel about Coastal Carolina? I'm really not trying to be the salesman for Coastal, but they do look good at least in terms of their recent past. Anybody else on the radar?

http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/article/...join-socon