Consider NMSU to MVC Olympic Sports Only

[GoShockers89]

Also, weren't the non baseball playing schools of the MVC allowed to vote the 1st time, and all voted no (Drake, UNI)

This is accurate. Those schools banked no favors with that weird decision.

[BirdFan 4Life]

Our golf team at Illinois State went to Las Cruces for 2 years right before Halloween for the Aggies Fall Tournament and we loved it out there. Can't beat the weather when the Midwest has started to get dicey and cold around this time. If anything I think it's an advantage for the MVC for sports like Golf, Baseball, Softball. I know at ISU these programs are already flying all over to places like Texas, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, etc. in late Fall for Golf and early Spring for all 3. Baseball and Softball are your biggest teams, so if they can do it, Basketball can fly out there once a year.

I'm with the Wichita Fans on here, this conference needs to think bigger and look for quality of programs that will help the Conference and diversify our product. I think adding a NMSU as the best possible basketball program currently helps the MVC right now. The Belmonts, UIC's, UMKC's, ORU, Valpo's are always going to accept a bid from The Valley. Let them duke it out, grow, and get closer to our level before we make a hopeful move on one of them based on what they might become.

[valleychamp]

Also, weren't the non baseball playing schools of the MVC allowed to vote the 1st time, and all voted no (Drake, UNI)

This is accurate. Those schools banked no favors with that weird decision.

lol, That is absolutely not true.

[unipanther99]

Yes, that baseball rumor needs to go away.

On NMSU, I don't hate the idea, but it doesn't do much for the current members of the conference. Does anyone recruit New Mexico?

I like the Aggies more than Oral Roberts, Belmont, Loyola, or the Dakotas. Maybe a wash with UIC, Murray State, or Denver.

[BCPanther]

Troy Dannen (UNI AD) has said repeatedly that we don't have a baseball vote, nor should we.

You can look right at Indiana State and Evansville for the reason that Dallas Baptist didn't get in right away...

[lurkingdog]

Back when the Aggies were in the Valley, we had West Texas State (now A&M) as a travel partner. And with TU and Wichita, the conference footprint leaned southwest. Not anymore.

[isumvc1]

Troy Dannen (UNI AD) has said repeatedly that we don't have a baseball vote, nor should we.

You can look right at Indiana State and Evansville for the reason that Dallas Baptist didn't get in right away...

absolutely not true BC, I know for a fact INS voted to add Dallas Baptist.

[BCPanther]

Troy Dannen (UNI AD) has said repeatedly that we don't have a baseball vote, nor should we.

You can look right at Indiana State and Evansville for the reason that Dallas Baptist didn't get in right away...

absolutely not true BC, I know for a fact INS voted to add Dallas Baptist.

Apologies.

Who the hell voted no??

[squirrel]

Technically, UMKC is in Missouri.

Squirrel, my man. A short geography lesson: The Kansas City Metro area is 2 million plus population. UMKC is in Kansas City, Missouri--not Kansas. Kansas City is a metro area split between Missouri and Kansas--KC MO is a city in MO (400,000 to 500,000 population). KC KS (population o/a 175,000) is a city in Wyandotte County KS and is west across the state line from KC MO. Johnson County Ks is just south across the Kansas River from KC KS. Johnson County has a population o/a 400,000 plus with several towns and cities (Olathe, Overland Park, Lenexa, Shawnee, ++). Back over in Missouri is Independence with 150,000 population, North Kansas City (North side of the Missouri River) and several othe small MO cities and surban towns. And, there are (I think) 5 D1 universities in Missouri: MizzoU, Missouri State, South East Missouri State (?? in the Ohio Valley Conference??), UMKC, and SLU.

Thanks for the pointless lecture.

[DoubleJayAlum]

Also, weren't the non baseball playing schools of the MVC allowed to vote the 1st time, and all voted no (Drake, UNI)

This is accurate. Those schools banked no favors with that weird decision.

lol, That is absolutely not true.

I am almost certain that there was an article in the Wichita paper, linked here once upon a time, that discussed the baseball decision and the fact that schools without baseball were allowed to vote. I suspect the age of the article has caused it to move beyond the Wichita Eagle's pay wall, so linking now may not be a possibility, but perhaps somebody has a good link?

My recollection however was a little different than what GoShockers89 said though. I thought that one Iowa school voted "no" while the other, which was allowed to vote, chose to abstain (I don't think the story identified which Iowa school was which). I do think that even having the right to vote on an issue when you don't even field the sport is a bit strange and defies common sense. To not field a sport and then vote "no" on expanding that sport can give the appearance of horse trading (I'll vote for your issue X, if you vote a certain way on this issue), even if that isn't the reason for the vote.

Since you asked earlier in the thread, champ, here are some other concerns that the western schools feel have gone against them or been deliberately used to hold their programs back:

(1) One other baseball related criticism was the awarding of this year's tourney to IlSU, when several of the western schools (CU, WSU and MSU) have much better facilities and have invested great sums of money in expanding their programs. I know that Ed Servais and Gene, two people that generally don't agree on anything and don't even like each other very much, were lockstep in their frustration over this issue (Gene was even quoted in the Wichita Eagle as thanking CU's AD for verbalizing the frustration on this issue). To award the tourney to IlSU, with their present baseball facilities in comparison to the western schools is a smack in the face and does absolutely nothing to encourage investment. It essentially says, you don't need to spend money to upgrade facilities and if you do, you won't even get a better chance of hosting conference tourneys. The message: why frickin bother.

(2) The awarding of the soccer conf. tourney to anyone else when Creighton has one of the finest facilities in the entire nation, as well as one of the top 10 programs nationally, was ridiculous. It actually took Creighton threatening to pull its soccer team out of the MVC all together, just to be awarded a chance to host the event once. Truly unbelievable.

(3) Failure to even reasonably consider Kansas City or another closer venue for the conference bball tourney.

(4) Bracketbuster. Creighton's disgust of this event dates back to the second or thirg year it was implemented. The timing, in the middle of a conference race, was always silly and it rarely helped MVC schools get into the dance (and with a loss often could have been the reason MVC schools did NOT make the dance). More importantly, several of our peer conferences refused to participate (A10, MWC, CUSA) while others let schools opt out (WCC, Horizon, WAC). THE MVC on the other hand, made every single member participate. I'd also add that the timing of the event, inconjunction with the league tourney starting a week early, causes the MVC to play a really tight schedule wherein three games in one week usually has to be absorbed somewhere.

(5) The Tv Deal. The remarkably weak TV deal, which consisted primarily of the MVC buying time on regional FSN/Comcast, for games that were not even seen in large parts of the country. To make matters worse, the conference did not give the limited TV spots to its best teams each year, but instead made sure that everybody got a chance to be on TV. While this may have given everybody a nice warm fuzzy feeling, it proves to be a waste of limited resources as a casual fan is not going to tune into a televised game between two MVC play-in teams going at it on a Sunday afternoon. As a result, your best programs miss out on a chance of increased exposure and the conference as a whole gets nothing for the game as nobody tunes in to see two programs with losing records.

(6) Unwillingness to help move conference games so that member schools can ink home and home deals with BCS schools or schools with national reputations. On at least two occasions in the last decade, Creighton had a chance to schedule a home and home with a national power (one time it was Georgetown, the other time was Gonzaga). In both instances, the games would have had to have been played on December dates where conference games were already locked in. Creighton asked the fellow conference schools to move the games, but they both refused (I remember one school was MSU when Barry was still there, but do not recall the other school involved). CU then appealed to the league office, but the league refused to do anything about it. As a result, Creighton lost out on home and home series with these two schools, which would have helped bolster SOS/RPI numbers, plus result in additional revenues (ticket sales) than a typical opponent would have garnered. I suspect other MVC schools probably experienced the same thing. If the league was really interested in increasing its profile, it should have stepped in and made the other schools move the games for the overall benefit of the conference as a whole. The Horizon league, CUSA and A10 have been known to do such things in the past, but not the MVC.