Hat tip to
Blogging the Bracket, who had the old continuity rules linked
here
Quote:31.3.4.5 Additional Requirements, Men’s Basketball. The member conference must include seven core institutions. For the purposes of this legislation, core refers to an institution that has been an active member of Division I the eight preceding years.
Further, the continuity-of-membership requirement shall be met only if a minimum of six core institutions have conducted conference competition together in Division I the preceding five years in men’s basketball.
There shall be no exception to the five-year waiting period. Any new member added to a member conference that satisfies these requirements shall be immediately eligible to represent the conference as the automatic qualifier.
We're talking about the basketball autobid. The Great West may have qualified for an FCS autobid, or may have been close, I don't know.
The Great West multisport conference started play in 2009-10 with UND, USD, NJIT, Houston Baptist, UTPA, Utah Valley and Chicago State. (The Great West operated the year before, but didn't have regular season conference competition, and didn't have Chicago State, so didn't have 7 schools.)
How many of those 7 schools had 8 years in Division I?
UND and USD joined Division I in 2008
NJIT upgraded starting in 2006(?)
Houston Baptist in 2007.
UTPA and Chicago State were Division I for a long time.
Utah Valley joined in 2003, so they would start counting in 2011.
So the Great West would have had to hold together until 2016 to have everybody count as "core Division I members" and get an autobid.
For 2011-12, they lost South Dakota to the Summit. That dropped them below 7 teams, but the other 6 got their 2nd year of continuity.
For 2012-13, they lost North Dakota, so they were down to 5 members, nobody had continuity, and three schools with 8 years in Division I.