The Big South checks in

Here's an interesting piece from Lynchburg, Va. about the Big South Conference's football media day, one that uses the Great West Football Conference as a negative example of what can happen to a football conference. Apparently members of the Big South are feeling bullish on the future there. In 2004, when the Great West officially came on line, the Big South was a five-team league, but is now adding schools and may be able to start its clock toward an automatic bid into the NCAA football tournament as early next year.

The Great West, meanwhile, is still trying to figure out what it is going to do in 2008, when North Dakota State and South Dakota State leave for the Gateway and the replacement Dakota schools still count as Division II teams. A two-game conference season is basically useless and, unless some schools have gone Division I without telling anyone, there are no expansion targets out there. In 2008, UC Davis is scheduled to play North Dakota, but not South Dakota. UCD athletic director Greg Warzecka said the program was wary of playing two D-II counters in a year because that might impact negatively on its playoff chances. Cal Poly currently is playing USD instead of UND. Southern Utah probably will play both.

Two years ago, actually, there was some discussion in the Great West about forming an affiliation with the Big South. The plan would have called for a six-game conference season, with teams playing home game and one road game against a school from the other league. I'm not sure exactly how far the discussions got. The plan broke down for two reasons. Big South schools would have seen a major rise in travel costs, given they can mostly bus to everything. Also, it's hard to see just what the Big South schools (private schools like Liberty University or Elon) and Great West schools (big public schools like UCD and NDSU) ever had in common other than football.