Looking at the main conference realighnment board I saw a post about Hartwick dropping D1 sports.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-849023.html


That leaves the Sun Belt with 5 soccer teams: AppSt, Coastal, GaSo, GaSt, and Howard.



Where's the backup plan from the front office?

(04-28-2018 09:23 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  Looking at the main conference realighnment board I saw a post about Hartwick dropping D1 sports.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-849023.html


That leaves the Sun Belt with 5 soccer teams: AppSt, Coastal, GaSo, GaSt, and Howard.



Where's the backup plan from the front office?

Not much out there. Central Arkansas plays in the Missouri Valley. Houston Baptist and Incarnate Word play in the WAC, but that's actually closer to them than the Eastern basted Sun Belt soccer group.

I think what makes the most sense is to just MERGE the Sun Belt and Southern Conference leagues for Men's soccer. Might not be under the SBC flag.

(04-28-2018 10:11 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 09:23 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  Looking at the main conference realighnment board I saw a post about Hartwick dropping D1 sports.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-849023.html


That leaves the Sun Belt with 5 soccer teams: AppSt, Coastal, GaSo, GaSt, and Howard.



Where's the backup plan from the front office?

Not much out there. Central Arkansas plays in the Missouri Valley. Houston Baptist and Incarnate Word play in the WAC, but that's actually closer to them than the Eastern basted Sun Belt soccer group.

I think what makes the most sense is to just MERGE the Sun Belt and Southern Conference leagues for Men's soccer. Might not be under the SBC flag.

The SoCon apparently wouldn't let Georgia Southern and App State leave their men's soccer program in the conference. I doubt they'd go along with this.

Now the Big South might be open to some kind of merging.

(04-28-2018 10:11 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 09:23 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  Looking at the main conference realighnment board I saw a post about Hartwick dropping D1 sports.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-849023.html


That leaves the Sun Belt with 5 soccer teams: AppSt, Coastal, GaSo, GaSt, and Howard.



Where's the backup plan from the front office?

Not much out there. Central Arkansas plays in the Missouri Valley. Houston Baptist and Incarnate Word play in the WAC, but that's actually closer to them than the Eastern basted Sun Belt soccer group.

I think what makes the most sense is to just MERGE the Sun Belt and Southern Conference leagues for Men's soccer. Might not be under the SBC flag.

If we're talking merging, I say let's merge with MAC soccer. They have trouble keeping their membership up for that.

Right now MAC Soccer consists of:

Akron
Bowling Green
Northern Illinois
Western Michigan
SIUE
West Virginia


Have a North/South division with the MAC being north and the 5 Sun Belt schools in the South.

(04-28-2018 10:14 AM)EigenEagle Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 10:11 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 09:23 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  Looking at the main conference realighnment board I saw a post about Hartwick dropping D1 sports.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-849023.html


That leaves the Sun Belt with 5 soccer teams: AppSt, Coastal, GaSo, GaSt, and Howard.



Where's the backup plan from the front office?

Not much out there. Central Arkansas plays in the Missouri Valley. Houston Baptist and Incarnate Word play in the WAC, but that's actually closer to them than the Eastern basted Sun Belt soccer group.

I think what makes the most sense is to just MERGE the Sun Belt and Southern Conference leagues for Men's soccer. Might not be under the SBC flag.

The SoCon apparently wouldn't let Georgia Southern and App State leave their men's soccer program in the conference. I doubt they'd go along with this.

Now the Big South might be open to some kind of merging.

Big South has a full 10 members.


Edit: Atlantic Sun has 6 members. Adding the Sun Belt 5 would be 11... If we kept association with Howard.

(04-28-2018 10:17 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 10:14 AM)EigenEagle Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 10:11 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 09:23 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  Looking at the main conference realighnment board I saw a post about Hartwick dropping D1 sports.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-849023.html


That leaves the Sun Belt with 5 soccer teams: AppSt, Coastal, GaSo, GaSt, and Howard.



Where's the backup plan from the front office?

Not much out there. Central Arkansas plays in the Missouri Valley. Houston Baptist and Incarnate Word play in the WAC, but that's actually closer to them than the Eastern basted Sun Belt soccer group.

I think what makes the most sense is to just MERGE the Sun Belt and Southern Conference leagues for Men's soccer. Might not be under the SBC flag.

The SoCon apparently wouldn't let Georgia Southern and App State leave their men's soccer program in the conference. I doubt they'd go along with this.

Now the Big South might be open to some kind of merging.

Big South has a full 10 members.

The Big South probably won't let Coastal park their men's soccer there. Maybe just join the MAC en masse. Both the MAC and the Belt understand that their conferences are football first, but they need to have something for their teams that play men's soccer.

App State Women's Field Hockey is already a member of the MAC. Might as well add Men/Women's soccer to it.

Sun Belt,

Maybe you should ask USA to kindly restart its men’s soccer program. We were great back in the day.

Sincerely,

USA Fans

Why no soccer for USA, Troy, ULL, ULM, TXST, Ark State, little rock, UTA

(04-28-2018 12:53 PM)GSUALUM17 Wrote:  Why no soccer for USA, Troy, ULL, ULM, TXST, Ark State, little rock, UTA

Title IX and $$

(04-28-2018 01:01 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 12:53 PM)GSUALUM17 Wrote:  Why no soccer for USA, Troy, ULL, ULM, TXST, Ark State, little rock, UTA

Title IX and $$

Title IX can be gotten around by adding both Men and Women. Correct?

(04-28-2018 01:02 PM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 01:01 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 12:53 PM)GSUALUM17 Wrote:  Why no soccer for USA, Troy, ULL, ULM, TXST, Ark State, little rock, UTA

Title IX and $$

Title IX can be gotten around by adding both Men and Women. Correct?

Title IX killed a really good USA men’s soccer program. We already have Women’s soccer. We would have to add something like beach volleyball, which I’m not opposed to. We are on the Gulf Coast and it makes sense.

(04-28-2018 01:02 PM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 01:01 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 12:53 PM)GSUALUM17 Wrote:  Why no soccer for USA, Troy, ULL, ULM, TXST, Ark State, little rock, UTA

Title IX and $$

Title IX can be gotten around by adding both Men and Women. Correct?

Yes, but that means schools that add a men's sport, have to add a women's sport, and that's another set of scholarships that have to be funded and facilities that have to be built.

In AState's case, we're already under some Title IX Pressure to add another Women's sport. Last thing we need to do is make it worse by adding a Men's sport that frankly, we don't need.

(04-28-2018 12:02 PM)SkullyMaroo Wrote:  Sun Belt,

Maybe you should ask USA to kindly restart its men’s soccer program. We were great back in the day.

Sincerely,

USA Fans

This + a million. I'm also good with the idea of starting Sand Volleyball. Facilities are either already there for men's soccer and sand volleyball courts would be a minimum financial investment. Also, could host some great events over in Gulf Shores/Orange Beach.

Adding men's soccer would put AState in a position of needing to add at least two women's sports instead just the one we are looking at now.

(04-28-2018 01:02 PM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 01:01 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 12:53 PM)GSUALUM17 Wrote:  Why no soccer for USA, Troy, ULL, ULM, TXST, Ark State, little rock, UTA

Title IX and $$

Title IX can be gotten around by adding both Men and Women. Correct?

Unless you're a Power 5 team with endless money, I see no reason to have more non-revenue sports than you need to remain DI. For Southern, State, and Coastal it's how we make up for not having some of the men's "running" sports.

Come on. App's in the mountains and we have running sports and soccer and wrestling.


Step it up, Georgia.

(04-28-2018 01:36 PM)Usajags Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 12:02 PM)SkullyMaroo Wrote:  Sun Belt,

Maybe you should ask USA to kindly restart its men’s soccer program. We were great back in the day.

Sincerely,

USA Fans

This + a million. I'm also good with the idea of starting Sand Volleyball. Facilities are either already there for men's soccer and sand volleyball courts would be a minimum financial investment. Also, could host some great events over in Gulf Shores/Orange Beach.

Sadly, USA's athletic department loses 20 million a year. That falls on the students and taxpayers. Unless someone can figure out how men's soccer and college beach volleyball can make money or at least get close to being revenue neutral, it shouldn't be happening. Men's soccer would be 10 scholarship equivalents (so make it 20 for the women's sport that would need to be added). Plus travel and coaching and we can just call it another 1.5-2 million to do it. Also note that USA does NOT have a lot of close teams in the conference and there's only 1 Division 1 men's program within a 6 hour drive of Mobile. So travel costs would be high.

We could cannibalize our other programs to have men's soccer, I suppose, but what would people suggest USA drop to add football? It would be a men's sport. USA frequently wins the Bubas Cup so it might be a bit of an issue to drop a successful men's program (or two or three) to get the men's soccer to financially be doable.

I wish USA had men's soccer. Its just not a priority at this point.

It would be fine with me if App dropped the men's program and kept women's.

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The lack of soccer programs is little weird. Soccer is one of the flagship sports alongside football, basketball, and baseball.