Brian Cavanaugh writes:
>  At this time only 3 members have the sport at the varsity
>  level - Canisius (ECAC WEST), Fairfield (ECAC South)
>  and IONA (ECAC South).  But the league would consider
>  accepting other schools as "adjunct members" to fill
>  enough spots to have some sort of league set up.
...
>  Who could be a part of this ???????
>  That's what's being looked at now.  there are a lot of
>  schools out there that might want in on this.  Such as
>  Villanova, St. Bona's, Navy, Army, Duquesne, Penn St.
...
>  This is in the TALKING stages right now - mere infancy.
>  But I can see some possibilities.  Some of the PURE
>  D-I people may laugh at this but let me point out
>  that some of the FAR and AWAY basketball conferences
>  were laughed at too.... when they started .... and now
>  look at basketball as compared to 15 years ago.
 
I sure don't think it's something to laugh at...for several years here,
we have been discussing the programs which are DivI technically but
play in the ECAC East/West/etc. and haven't been able to qualify
for the DivI tourney because they play fewer than 20 DivI games.
If it is feasible, I think it certainly makes sense for all of these
schools (or a bunch of them) to get together and form their own
conference - they're at the same level, basically, and by playing a
20 or so game conference schedule, when the adjunct members like the
club teams finally become full-fledged DivI teams, they'll be as eligible as
other DivI teams for the DivI tourney.  The next step would be continuing
to improve and get some nonleague games against teams from other DivI
conferences to get more exposure.  Like Coach C says, this is how many
conferences get their start.  The CCHA was laughed at once.
 
I understand this is in the planning stages, but I think it's an
exciting possibility...as I said in the subject line, maybe the MAAC will
become the 5th DivI conference.  This wraps up a whole bunch of teams in
various stages of being outsiders into one, like the ECAC small school DivI
teams and some of the top club teams.
 
I wonder whether teams like UConn and Holy Cross would receive offers to
join this league...UConn was rumored to be interested in HE but I was
recently told by HE commish Stu Haskell that there weren't any other
serious applicants (other than UMass which wasn't officially in at the
time).  HC is also DivI, yet they might be happy where they are with
the school's trend towards de-emphasizing athletics.  Off-season
scuttlebutt is off to a flying start...
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Mike Machnik           [log in to unmask]    [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                  *HMN* 11/13/93