I'm a long time reader (fan of TAMUCC) and as my favorite time of year comes to a close tonight with the national championship, I've slipped into full off-season mode.

There seems to have been a lot of chatter of how bad the league (outside of you guys the past few years) is. Conference realignment is always a "fun" off-season topic, so here's my question:

Would you take a Texas-only version of the Southland (below) over what we have now:

Current Members:
SFA
SHSU
Lamar
TAMUCC
HBU
ACU
UIW
New Members:
UTRGV (it's inevitable at some point)
UTA (they already left, but their bball program would be great to have back)
DBU (a premier baseball program replaces some of the value of Louisiana schools)

Obviously this will probably never happen, but I know I would like this better. UNO was the only non-Texas basketball team worth anything this year (had Jalan West and Zeek Woodley stayed healthy that may have been different).

You could keep a football version with the LA-ARK schools, while TAMUCC, UTA, and UTRGV bring in new football programs eventually.

SFA has the closest ties to any of the other schools with the Battle for Chief Caddo, so I was curious how what your thoughts would be?

As a TAMUCC fan, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Keep travel in Texas, gain a new market/recruiting presence in DFW, and I really don't think there's any drop-off in quality of basketball or baseball, which is all I really care about.

Welcome to the board. I wouldn't be for this. It really wouldn't improve our conference. Best case scenario we would still have the same conference rpi. definitely drop ACU and UIW from this list (they just drag the league down). Idk who to replace them with if ur goal is a Texas only conference.

Edit: uta would be a good addition. But I think dbu is d2 so d1 transition

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Welcome to the board. I wouldn't be for this. It really wouldn't improve our conference. Best case scenario we would still have the same conference rpi. definitely drop ACU and UIW from this list (they just drag the league down). Idk who to replace them with if ur goal is a Texas only conference.

Edit: uta would be a good addition. But I think dbu is d2 so d1 transition

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I think RPI could possibly increase (albeit slightly) because you wouldn't have as much at the bottom weighing the top down by shrinking to a 10 team league. And as pointed out, UTA would be better than anything we lost.

As far as DBU goes, you're right in all sports but baseball. They'd have to catch up in basketball, but their baseball program is a D1 national power and consistently in the tournament. I think ACU could finish in the top 3-4 of the league in basketball next year so the transition from d2 can be done quickly.

I've always thought the traditional SLC had the most upside. I'd still like to see a TX, LA, AR and OK conference

West
SFA
Sam
Lamar
A&M CC
HBU
Oral Roberts

East
Central Arkansas
NW St
SE La
McNeese
Nicholls
UNO.

I'm not a fan of this either. I'm not sure why you would want to keep it Texas only. The current members in Louisiana are not that far away. Dallas to Edinburg is a haul.

UTRGV is a bottom feeder in the basketball only WAC and, although it isn't a strong conference, IMO New Mexico State, Grand Canyon, and Cal State Bakersfield are all better than any of the Southland basketball schools (SFA at its recent peak could probably contend for top 3). UTRGV might want to move to the Southland to save on travel and so they could win more games but they wont help the strength of the conference.

If we are dreaming, sure, it would be nice to have UTA and Oral Roberts but both of them had their reasons for leaving and I doubt either one would rejoin.

SFA88 said:

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I'm not a fan of this either. I'm not sure why you would want to keep it Texas only. The current members in Louisiana are not that far away. Dallas to Edinburg is a haul.

UTRGV is a bottom feeder in the basketball only WAC and, although it isn't a strong conference, IMO New Mexico State, Grand Canyon, and Cal State Bakersfield are all better than any of the Southland basketball schools (SFA at its recent peak could probably contend for top 3). UTRGV might want to move to the Southland to save on travel and so they could win more games but they wont help the strength of the conference.

If we are dreaming, sure, it would be nice to have UTA and Oral Roberts but both of them had their reasons for leaving and I doubt either one would rejoin.

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In the real world, I don't know why you would want to keep it Texas only either. This was just a theoretical question I had of which conference you'd rather be a fan of, since I tend to enjoy following in state schools more and the others have been so bad in basketball the past couple of years.

Agree UTRGV doesn't add much immediate value, though I think they do start to commit more to their athletic programs now post-merger.

I think the SLC is in need of a shakeup of some sort. Football and baseball have been the banner sports, while basketball has been more of a red-headed step child. Not exactly sure how you improve that.

UT-Arlington would be nice to have back, but I don't see them leaving their current situation. Texas State is another school I would like to see come back, as they could help across the board, but again, they won't be leaving their current situation either.

I'm not opposed to going into other states outside of Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Maybe scope out Missouri and see what may be there...

PurpleOut said:

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NYC Buckets (a blog and good twitter account for college hoops) is doing a new/fake conference alignment release. He just released the worst 6 today with a new conference called the LaTex conference composed of most of the current Southland.

He doesn't have SFA in any of these conferences, so I'm guessing he has us in a bigger conference that he'll release tomorrow. Again this is solely based on hoops.

http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/05/realignment-conferences-32-through-27/

Here is his first article explaining what he's doing: http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/05/realignment-week-explainer/

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Excerpt from the so-called LaTex Conference piece: "...this is basically the current Southland Conference minus a few schools, including one that won't be showing up for quite a bit longer."

As you stated, one has to assume that that last reference is to SFA.

I would like to see that conference. A whole lotta travel, but it would be a step up difficulty wise. The two WAC teams probably have the most cach right now, but I think we could still be the cream of this conference with some work. It would also be a true measure if we've gone forward since the Kaspar years.

Us versus Florida Gulf coast , New Mexico and GCU would been really nice. Maybe GCU could teach us a thing or two about fan atmosphere. My favorite part of the article is when he said "This conference is a much more logical place for schools that have outgrown their current conferences, like Stephen F. Austin,".

I have no ties to GCU and I agree that we need to pump the brakes on saying they have outgrown the WAC when 2017-2018 will be their first year in D-1. To say they are fake, however, is a little strong. They started in 1949 as a Southern Baptist university. They did not have a big endowment and were about to declare bankruptcy when they chose the for-profit route.

According to USA Today, during the 2014-2015 school year TAMU sports brought in revenue of 193 million dollars. Just because a university has a 501(c)(3) status it does not mean they are any less for profit. Until very recently, the NFL was a 501(c)(4) all while they were bringing in about 10 billion dollars in revenue.

Meanwhile tuition and fees at most universities outpaces inflation as do salaries. It is my strong belief that most universities (especially the large ones) are very much for-profit.

For profit university don't really care about their education. The more students they enroll the more money individual employees make. It creates a system in which unqualified people go to college n fail. Plus a lot of non profit schools don't give out bachelors or associates degree but useless certificates

GCU has a much larger on-campus enrollment than SFA does but you are correct they have many many more online students. I put to you that isn't relevant. Most, if not all, universities have online classes. A quick check shows me that I can receive several undergraduate and graduate degrees online at SFA. A family member of mine recently received an MSN from Loyola University Chicago Online. Students demand online classes and, if they want to compete, even traditional universities must offer them.

As for keeping the investors happy, non-profit universities do that too but they call them boosters and donors. What happens at OK State if T. Boone Pickens is not happy, Oregon with Phil Knight, Texas with Red McCombs and Jim-Bob Moffet, Alabama and Paul Bryant Junior? Pick a non-profit university and I bet they are eager to keep their top boosters and donors happy. There is a slimy underbelly at universities that we are better off not knowing about.

Although I have hired many Devry grads that were better programmers than some of the big university grads I have hired, you raise many legitimate concerns about these for-profit universities. It is just that there have been too many scandals, too many rape cover ups, too many blind eyes turned to child molestation for me to hold the vaunted non-profit universities in the same high regard in which you hold them.