Sun Belt N O T Interested In Expansion

MeanGreen61 · July 18, 2007

No thanks Jacksonville State :rolleyes:

another article in the B'ham News:

Sun Belt not looking to add JSU

Wednesday, July 18, 2007MIKE PERRINNews staff writer

The commissioner of the league that some Jacksonville State football supporters have their eyes on says there's no room for the Gamecocks.

Meanwhile, Jacksonville State Athletics Director Jim Fuller expressed surprise that a move to the Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly known as Division I-A, was brought to the forefront in Monday's board of trustees meeting.

The JSU board's athletics committee formed an exploratory subcommittee to discover the pros and cons and costs of moving from the Football Championship Subdivision to the FBS.

"Quite frankly," Fuller said, "I've never discussed this issue with anyone. That may surprise you that I was never involved in any type discussion about any Division I-A move.

"I'm somewhat embarrassed that we have to answer to the (Ohio Valley Conference) and we have to see where this is going and what's the process.

"Right now, I'm concerned with winning the OVC again," Fuller added.

Any move from the former Division I-AA would be made easier by the entrance into a conference to help fill a schedule with FBS teams, as the NCAA requires five home games for each member of its football upper echelon.

Wright Waters, the commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference, said Tuesday his league's membership is set and he has no plans for expansion.

"We're at 13 members for all sports and nine for I-A football," he said. "Nine is an absolutely ideal number for a football schedule. It gives you four home and four away games and you play everybody in the league every year.

"That's where we are and we're very comfortable there."

The Sun Belt had been an obvious potential home for the Gamecocks due to the presence of former archrival Troy University and Middle Tennessee State.

"Our focus has changed from looking at membership issues to really looking at the quality of our competition," Waters said. "We've gotten to the point where we'd like to be a top 10 league in every sport.

"When you step back and look, we're not that far away. We were seventh in baseball, softball was in the top 10 and women's basketball was ninth. We've got some work to do in men's basketball and volleyball, but soccer is right there."

Waters said the University of Denver, which does not play football, is likely one day to leave the Sun Belt for a more western league, but he doesn't foresee any other defections or any mass shakeup in other conferences across the country.

"I don't think we'll see that again," he said of the ripple effect of the changes to the Big East and the Atlantic Coast Conference a few years ago. "Twelve is really pretty much the maximum number - although the Big East is at 16 for all sports (eight in football).

"I don't see the ACC expanding. I don't see the SEC expanding and if the Big Ten went from 11 to 12 it won't set off big ripples.

"We have no ambition to get to 12 in football," Waters said.

Fuller said he would work to answer all the questions posed by the board's investigation into a move.

"When our board asks us to check into something, we certainly address it," he said. "We'll address every issue we possibly can, but as I tried to explain to our commissioner this morning, we have no intention to look at any other league than the OVC right now.

"All this has to be preliminary work. Who knows where we'll be 10 years from now, but I didn't get the sense (from Monday's meeting) that it was going to be 10 years."