Van Club - Secretary of Agriculture (Barley & hops expert)
"Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong" E. O. Wilson
"I'm not crazy my mother had me tested". Sheldon Cooper
My boss hates it when I shorten his name to Dick, mainly because his name is Steven.
Van Club - Secretary of Agriculture (Barley & hops expert)
I know I posted some thoughts/info on this issue a few days ago in a different thread, so I'm trying not to be redundant, but I have a question I'm asking specifically to better understand your perspective. Isn't the issue at hand less a matter of "who makes the most sense" and more a matter of "who is the most realistic possibility at this point in time?"
For example, I recognize that Mankato has a lot of appeal, but Mankato has made absolutely no indication that they're even interested in going D1, and St. Cloud certainly doesn't have the budget for it unless they cut football. At this point, Augie is the only school in that list of three that has an athletic director saying, "Yeah, we're at least talking discussing it and seeing what's possible" (to paraphrase).
I mean, Summit fans could come on here and say Duke and North Carolina would be great additions to the Summit League, but in terms of realistic possibilities, I'd say it's not likely to happen. I feel like that's the situation you're facing right now if your options are Mankato, Augie, and St. Cloud. From my understanding of the D2 landscape, St. Cloud and Mankato are substantially less realistic options as is stands, today, than Augie, even if Augie would come in and be less impressive than you'd like out of the gate.
Like I said, I understand the appeal of a more Twin Cities-focused school being involved, particularly from a financial perspective. I'm just curious about whether or not you think either option is plausible, or if you're just indicating they'd be more ideal than the only option that appears to be plausible in the near future (meaning Augustana).
At the same time, Glen Taylor might call Mankato's athletic director tomorrow and say, "Here's $10 million, get rid of football and jump to the Summit League" and Mankato might be holding a press conference on Monday to announce the big move. I'm just basing these thoughts on what I understand about all three programs in their current status.
Disagree - Augustana due to endowment is able to support more full scholarships in Bball than most other NSIC teams. So they're able to attract more scholarship players than say Mankato or Moorhead. At D1 they would be required to have full scholarships as would everyone else. No advantage.
Your opinion of Augustana as a dominant basketball program is inflated - Conference record over the last 5 years has Moorhead as #1 with 85 wins 77.3% - with Augustana second at 84 wins 76.4% followed by Mankato with 83 wins 75.5%. Over the 5 years they've only had the best record once in those 5 years. They've been a good steady upper third of the conference but not consistently better than others.
Mankato has a nice facility ... close to the Twin Cities, good football program and D1 hockey. St. Cloud has those same things.
I think these lower tier D1 conferences have a lot of different concerns
- travel, is the city easy/hard to get into for conference members?
- attendance, does the region/area/city support the school with decent attendance numbers?
- location to metropolitan areas, I think that is why Omaha was a slam dunk - bigger city more sponsorships, attendance, travel
- does adding the school negatively affect other programs? Does adding a SFalls school help or hurt other Summit teams?
- If Mankato, St. Cloud and UND joined, could the Summit ever consider a hockey conference? Potential revenues ...
- Football is a big driver - both positive and negative
- Makeup of the conference, aside from Oral Roberts - conference is a bunch of public schools - might have an impact.
I think Augustana is an out-of-the-box consideration. Not sure it fits the conferences profile.
Moorhead is currently at the scholarship max in men's basketball: http://www.inforum.com/sports/429198...n-ii-standards
So unless I'm misunderstanding your point, I don't think Augie has any certain advantage there. Almost positive Mankato is at the D2 max as well.For example, the Dragons have men's basketball, track and cross country and wrestling. The combined Division II limit for all those sports is 31.6 scholarships. Therefore, MSUM could offer 21 equivalencies in all those sports. Those scholarships, however, didn't need to be equally distributed sport-by-sport.
The Dragons offered 10 of those equivalencies in men's basketball, which is the Division II max. They also allocated 5.5 for wrestling and 5.5 in men's track and field and cross country to get to that 21 maximum under current league rules.
Last edited by MrAugustana; 07-06-2017 at 09:12 PM. Reason: added bolding for clarity
These are all good thoughts, a handful of which I hadn't considered. But unless I missed something, I think it still comes around to one of my main questions: Isn't the issue at hand less a matter of "who makes the most sense" and more a matter of "who is the most realistic possibility at this point in time?" In terms of what the Summit is facing in the event that IPFW jumps ship and the UMKC/NMSU/Grand Canyon options don't pan out, it starts to get perilous for the Summit, unless I'm misunderstanding the situation. If Mankato and St. Cloud aren't even at the "considering the jump to D1" point right now, it seems like the Summit can't rely on either of them moving up anytime soon.
Obviously there are a lot of hypotheticals involved, including whether or not Augie itself is even ready/able to make the jump anytime soon (which is obviously questionable at this point anyway). I'm just not seeing indications from some of the other nearby D2s that they are even considering a jump. But I'm not super plugged into the Minnesota side of this discussion, so maybe you know more right now on that front than I do.