Follow-up comments on possible OVC teams:
U of Indy was mentioned as a DII "move up", although their board of trustees just recently turned down the possibility of going DI. They could change their minds, but at least for now, they're not going anywhere.
I've seen some talk saying that some of the schools in the new United Athletic Conference aren't so happy about how things went down with some of the schools that are moving up for CUSA. I think that some schools thought there'd be something like a 10-year period where they could all work together to build up and try to move up "en masse" to FBS, but then Jacksonville State and Sam Houston, and shortly after, Kennesaw State, all got invites up to CUSA and said "see ya" to the UAC. Then you have Eastern Kentucky, who is frequently mentioned as another possible CUSA invite when there's more shakeup in the FBS ranks (which sounds like it's coming sooner rather than later), and Lamar, who joined the then WAC/ASUN for just long enough to look around and then "nope" on out of there back to the Southland.
Now that we have a vested interest in what happens in the OVC, what I'd really like to see happen is the UAC falls apart.
EKU moves up to CUSA (or maybe Sun Belt...depends on who needs teams at that point).
Southern Utah and Utah Tech join up with the UAC Texas teams (SFA, Tarleton, Abilene Christian, UTRGV) plus maybe Northern Arizona from the Big Sky (they're a pretty far outlier already), and possibly a few Southland members to form essentially a new, more stable WAC with FCS football.
Meanwhile, the remaining teams: Central Arkansas, North Alabama, and Austin Peay all move (or move back in APSU's case) to the OVC.
Think about that for a minute...
Austin Peay is right in the middle of the conference footprint and despite them leaving a few years ago, I don't know that they burned many bridges, plus the OVC is still probably wanting a few more football teams.
North Alabama is a bit further out, but not crazy far. It'd be a flight for us, but we're still pretty compact.
Then Central Arkansas...generally pretty good football team, not that far outside the footprint, and if you look at the "olympic sports"...a perfect travel partner for Little Rock (literally 35 minutes up the road).
If they pick up APSU, UNA, and UCA, then the OVC is at 10 football playing members and doesn't have to do the Big South football partnership anymore. If they do the schedule like the MVFC has been doing the last decade or so, 10 teams means you skip 1 conference member every pair of years, but play everyone else. 8 conference games, 3 OOC games (or 4 if in a 12-game season), and we're all set.
For basketball, they're at 14 teams. Pair up travel partners of UALR and UCA, Lindenwood and SIU-E, WIU and EIU, SEMO and UT-Martin, TN Tech and Austin Peay, TN State and UNA, and Morehead State and Southern Indiana.
I know the odds are against that happening, but it sounds like a pretty solid conference to me.
Barring that, another possibility that I think would be pretty decent would be for Indiana State to join the OVC for just football, then YSU and Robert Morris (pretty close to YSU and already plays some OVC teams in football due to the OVC+Big South partnership). It expands out the footprint a little, but YSU and RMU would be travel partners, so that would help with the "olympic sports".
The problem is, there's not a lot of great options that are really tight within the existing footprint of the OVC, so if you're adding anyone, you're probably going to have to look at expanding at least a little. INSU and Austin Peay are the closest ones to the middle of the conference, UNA and UCA aren't that far away, YSU and RMU are a bit further.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin