(06-12-2023 09:34 PM)Todor Wrote:  

(06-12-2023 08:26 PM)FoUTASportscaster Wrote:  

(06-12-2023 03:15 AM)Todor Wrote:  

(06-11-2023 10:39 PM)johnintx Wrote:  

(06-11-2023 05:53 PM)FoUTASportscaster Wrote:  Oral Roberts would be a coup for WAC in basketball and likely put the WAC in the top ten. They were 11th this year and that was with perennial title winner NMSU in a very down year. Their baseball addition would likely make the WAC a two-bid league somewhat often.

I’m not sure how travel costs are in the Summit.

I heard on the broadcast tonight that the baseball team often takes 12 and 13 hour bus rides. I presume those are their trips to the Dakotas. Kansas City and Omaha are their closest trips in the Summit. I don't know if their basketball teams fly, or not.

In the WAC, UTA, Tarleton, SFA, and ACU aren't next door, but they're reasonably close. The rest of the WAC is a haul from Tulsa, especially on a bus. The advantage of the WAC for ORU would be exposure and increased recruiting presence in Texas.

The broadcast got it wrong if they are talking about this season. ORU only went to the either Dakota school once, and that was for the Summit Tournament in Fargo. No other trips all season could have been that long. St Thomas is under under 10 hours and that was longest trip I saw outside of the Summit tournament and the trip to Oregon.

Until conference realignment settles down, ORU would have no reason to join the WAC without having any idea who might still be around in a few years. They already got the shaft by the Southland by some of the same schools who are now in the WAC. I don’t think they are anxious for a repeat fiasco. The WAC is currently the least stable conference around, and as long as it has multiple schools in Texas, not to mention football schools in Texas, it will remain so.

I get you have an axe to grind, but you may be exaggerating a bit. Sam did the same thing that NMSU did, and that’s find a home for their football at the highest level. Lamar had a change of leadership and after a disastrous year, went back to a less challenging conference. Incarnate Word was never part of the WAC, so you can’t add that into the mix for instability. They are also horrible in every non-football sport, to that was a net add for the WAC.

While the WAC could be hit by CUSA or the WCC, the Summit, OVC, Southland, Am East and Southern are in the same boat. Difference is the WAC is the most competitive of the conferences listed across all sports.

By being in Texas, it also gives access to a growth area.

The first college basketball I ever went to many years ago was a WAC game. I’ve followed the conference my entire life and have spent most of my life with it being a local conference for me. There isn’t a year since I was old enough to watch sports that I haven’t followed the WAC closely. This goes back decades before New Mexico State even joined.

If anything, saying the conference is unstable pains me. By unstable, I don’t merely mean members come and go. That’s all conferences. I mean unstable, like could go completely out of business or resort to trying to buy time being wildly out of compliance with membership numbers and not being able to meet membership numbers to maintain autobids.

There aren’t enough schools left to add to form a conference if a few more schools leave. There isn’t anyone else left to add to sustain it. We’ve been thru all of them. And burned thru way more D2 call ups than any conference should. We added schools in a Missouri, Chicago, near the Louisiana border in the last decade. And it remained unstable and kept losing members. And with realignment being an ongoing affair, there simply aren’t enough schools in the West to sustain a conference.

If you don’t like my statement that the WAC is the least stable conference, please the list which conferences are? Most conferences simply reload when they lose members. The WAC is at the end of the road in that regard.

Many conferences would lose all of their members if the schools found more attractive homes. And those conferences raid other conferences for members or add D2 schools. There’s no one left in the WAC pipeline my man.

Any AD in the country can see what could happen to the WAC and no one is voluntarily joining this mess if they have other options. And ORU does.

Provide a list of conferences that are more likely to go under.

I did in my original post. There are several conferences that are on shaky ground and may not survive. The OVC was the latest one this past year. However, none of those shaky ones were in the top 15 basketball conferences this past year. I never said the WAC wasn’t shaky. I just don’t think they are in the worst shape.

Your first post I responded to also said the WAC is unstable because of the Texas schools. I don’t believe that to be the case either.