(10-13-2017 07:34 PM)Michael in Raleigh Wrote: There are some stipulations, though. I know that some certain number of schools have to have been together for a minimum number of years before the NCAA will certify them to break off and form a new league. Otherwise, the new league wouldn't become an official, NCAA-recognized conference with automatic bids. Without the minimum number of teams having already been together, they'd instead become like that Great West Conference from several years back: a small conference with no automatic bids to any NCAA tournaments.
This is correct. A new conference would spend 8 years in no-autobid purgatory, based on the rules passed in 2011. The old continuity rules (6 schools together for 5 years) were replaced with "continuity" being a thing conferences have, not a thing that schools have with each other.
Quote:Back in 2003, the football Big East schools considered breaking off from the non football schools, but couldn't.
Right. Back then, the rule was 6 schools for 5 years. The Big East Football Conference schools were going to break away from the basketball schools, the BEFC at that split second being Syracuse, Pitt, West Virginia, Rutgers, BC and about-to-be-FBS UConn. Plan was to bring in Louisville, Cincinatti, UCF and try to hang on to Notre Dame. BC bolting for the ACC ruined that plan, and Notre DAme I guess didn't want to see a split (Notre Dame would have given either group 6-schools-for-5-years), so the 16-team hybrid happened, with the plan of separating once both sides had their continuity squared away. But by that time, everyone was having too much fun playing Scrooge McDuck with swimming pools full of NCAA tourament money.
Quote:Additional meetings of the football conference members occurred between July and October 2003. In the course of those meetings, it was realized that the break-up scenario would not be feasible because the new football conference would lose its automatic NCAA basketball tournament berth and possibly its BCS bid, as well as the Big East name. Further, the football schools had not been together long enough to satisfy certain NCAA rules.
IT would have been feasible, and it would have happened, if BC hadn't jumped to the ACC. Without BC, the football schools didn't have 6-schools-for-5-years.
Quote:Does anyone know the number of schools that have to be together and for how many years in order for the NCAA to recognize a new conference with automatic bids? That answer may shed some light on when and who may some day break away from the Sun Belt and/or C-USA to form some new conference.
Before 2011-12, it was 6 schools for 5 years (with a 7th school added). Now, it doesn't matter. If, hypothetically, the 7 oldest ACC schools wanted to break away, it's no different rules-wise than UNC forming a conference with North Dakota, New Orleans, Nebraska-Omaha, Northern Illinois, North Texas and NJIT. (That's what the rules say. In reality, there would be a huge legal and financial brawl, and the rules would change to accomodate the new balance of power.)
(10-13-2017 11:12 PM)Michael in Raleigh Wrote: With the Catholic 7, they had been together for exactly 8 seasons prior to their withdrawal in the summer of 2013. 7 since 2005; 5 since 1980; and 4 since 1979.
By the rules in force at the time, that didn't matter. However, if it had gone to court, it would have been a major point in the C7's favor that the old Big East Prenup had been written relying on the old continuity rules. But since the new Big East wasn't going to take an NCAA tournament bid from the "haves" in favor of the "have-nots", it was waved through.
Quote:When the 8 original MWC schools (New Mexico, AFA, CSU, Wyoming, Utah, BYU, SDSU, & UNLV) withdrew from the WAC in 1999, all but UNLV had been together in the WAC since at least 1980.
Again, those were the old rules. Those rules were tossed overboard to save the WAC from dissolution in 2011-12.