Yea. The problem is that the MVC is a basketball conference, so they want teams that are at least decent at basketball. Unfortunately, there aren't many in the region that aren't already at that level or higher. The teams that are left are teams like SIUE, Western, Eastern, etc...and outside of our quickly-fading early-season win streak, there hasn't been a lot of basketball success for any of us lately. Conferences lately have been looking to ways to expand their footprint in large media markets, which would help SIUE's cause (St. Louis area). Also not having football would give them another "leg up", at least as far as the non-football schools are concerned.wiu712 wrote:If Wichita State were to leave the Missouri Valley, a possible non-football replacement would be SIU-Edwardsville.ST_Lawson wrote:It has been rumored that Wichita State has "higher" aspirations.
Another possible "target" might be a school like Arkansas-Little Rock. They don't play football, currently in the Sun Belt (so for them, MVC would be a step up), and are one of the best basketball teams in the Sun Belt (currently in the top 75 of most RPI rankings). Also, the Little Rock area, while not huge, has about 3/4 of a million people in it (~200k in Little Rock itself), so it's a decent sized market and while it's out of the current conference footprint, it's not really that far from Springfield, MO or Carbondale, IL (both are 5 hours or less of a drive).
Compared to those kinds of numbers, Western at this point, is not a very attractive option, despite the history between us and some of the members of the conference and our proximity to many of them.