As I will continue to make clear, I don't have a preference on which way Augie does (or doesn't) go, but I do enjoy engaging in the conversation with you guys, so I hope you'll humor me for a second.
Regarding the first thing in bold (the friggin NCC boring you): Do you feel like NDSU adding USD, UND, etc. has been a negative for the Summit? Does playing SDSU/USD/UND bore you? Asking genuinely, not in an accusatory tone. As an outsider looking in, reviving the rivalries between NDSU/SDSU/USD and now UND seems to be one of the best things to happen to the Summit League since NDSU has made the jump to D1. Again, that's just from the outside looking in. So what I'm trying to understand is why adding one more team from the NCC is such a negative when it seems adding so many other NCC teams has sort of energized the Summit League in (what appears to be) a pretty fun way. I've also seen multiple fans mention wanting to add Northern Colorado back in, which, unless I'm missing something, is also an old NCC school. Not saying you are saying that specifically, just that I've seen Northern Colorado come up more than once as a "let's add them back in" school.
I know UNC is a different type of school than Augie and they're already D1, have had success at the D1 level, etc., but to be clear, when I talk about Augie going D1, I'm
always working off of the assumption that the Augie administration is going to do it right and put the right financial support, institutional support, etc. into going Division I. As I've said more than once, I can understand how if Augie comes in with the same lackluster support of athletics that they suffered from in the 90s and early 2000s, I'd be disappointed as an XDSU or UXD fan too. And as an Augie fan. But if Augie does put the money together and has the pieces in place to be competitive, I don't see how an addition of
that version of Augie is dramatically, dramatically worse than adding Northern Colorado back in (or adding another struggling school like UMKC...or already being in a league with a school like Western Illinois, which has constant budget issues and isn't really a power in the conference either). Again, it's all dependent on whether or not Augie's administration really steps it up vs. stumbling their way into an ill-advised transition.
Next question regarding the second bolded section (the schools that sound more interesting and fun than Augie): It comes back around to the question I've asked before... has anyone heard from
any sources that any of those three schools are even
thinking about considering a switch to the Summit League? Because it's great to set your sights on 3 different, non-NCC schools in order to spice things up a bit, but you could also set your sights on adding Kansas, Duke, and Villanova to the Summit League, and if there's no interest from those schools, it would seem that thinking they'd be "more fun," while accurate, might still be unrealistic/unlikely.
Also, if you're worried about schools (like Western Illinois) leaving and screwing up auto-bids, adding some of these teams like Seattle and adding a new strain on the travel budget might not be the best path for the survival of the Summit League. That being said, I don't know anywhere near as much about travel budgets and those kinds of things as others on here do, so it's possible that's a really misguided comment.
Anyway, I'm not asking these questions to prove that Augie should go D1 or that the Summit would be dumb not to add Augie. I mostly just appreciate the conversation. Like I said before, if the decision gets made tomorrow for Augie to stay Division II, I'll be perfectly fine with that. Especially if it lets us put this conversation to bed permanently.