Kansas City is a great basketball town, perhaps the best college hoops town in the country. Starting city for the NCAA and NAIA BB champiopnships. Long time host for national and conference championships: NCAA, NAIA (also the home office for the NAIA), Big 6, Big 8, Big 12, MIAA. Great facilities: SPRINT, Municipal, Kemper. Great fans. Great metro wide high school basketball for college recruitment--currently under recruited.
What KC lacks is a competitive, home town D1 university basketball program in a competitive, regional, nationally ranked D1 conference. UMKC in the MVC solves that problem.
With Creighton University leaving the MVC, creating a vacancy in the conference. The MVC would like to have a 10 member school basketball conference. Without question the best city for a new MVC member is KC. KC is the Queen City of the Missouri River, the biggest city and posible fan base in and on the River, the best possible location for a new MVC member school in the and trhe MVC region
Why UMKC and the MVC. Just like the real estate saying: “its location, location, location”. UMKC/KC are centrally located in the MVC region: five schools west and five schools east of the Mississippi, 200 +/- miles from Wichita , MSU and Drake, 250 miles from NIU and MVC headquarters and Saint Louis. This geographic closeness creates conference rivalry, especially between UMKC, Missouri State, Wichita State, Drake, and Northern Iowa. Rivalry results in fan interest and gate revenue, plus regional rivalry will draw visitor fans to KC from Springfield, Wichita, and Iowa--for Iowan’s, going to KC is almost like going to heaven!
UMKC is a public university with 14,000 plus students. UMKC has been a D1 school since the mid 1980s. UMKC is a former member of several lower ranking confewrences. As the Summit Conference folds
after this year, to maintain a conference affiliation UMKC will join the re-structuring WAC. Next years WAC will stretch from Chicago to south Texas to Southern California to Seattle.
UMKC in the MVC is a great fit for UMKC, the MVC , member schools in the MVC, and Kansas City. Member ship in the MVC will increase UMKC's recruting capability 10 fold! With better recruiting UMKC can raise its RPI to the same level as pther MVC schools.
I have seen, read, heard mention of other possibel schools and cities as possible MVC membership. The most often mentioned are Oral Roberts U in Tulsa and SD State and ND State. all great schoools and viable MVC candidates. But all things considered they do not present the same potential for the MVC as does UMKC and KC.
KC-MVC-UMKC a great fit!!!