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Originally Posted by Avid Flyer Dayton should get proactive. My understanding Neil Sullivan already has a plan in place should P5 go to 20 game round robins. Get together with like minded schools who have demonstrated the $$$ and support for their programs and form a new conference. National Collegiate Conference. Have a East West division where all the basketball teams play one another but the olympic teams only play the teams in their conference (thereby eliminating the expensive travel cross country). Schools: Gonzaga, St. Marys, BYU, Wichita State, SMU, Dayton, SLU, UMass, Rhode Island, just a few off top of my head. Brought this up in another message board and someone said we don't want to give up the automatic bid. Well if we couldn't repeatedly get 4-5 at large bids per year then we have chosen the wrong programs. Just a thought, anyone

You wouldn't lose the automatic bid. The rules are that you need seven schools that have been full div1 members for eight years. They may have relaxed it even more. The New Big East was technically a new conference and they have an automatic bid.

What if the A10 and MVC (and I guess one other school) got together, realigned into three conferences, and had a scheduling agreement among those conferences?? You could essentially end up with three 8 team conferences with three auto-bids. You could also play fourteen conference games (double round robin), and then on the last week of the season you would play your mirror from the other leagues. By that I mean the first place team would play the other two first place team, the three second place teams would all play each other, and so on.

That would basically ensure that at least two of the OOC games for the better teams in each league were against quality opponents, and they would occur late in the year prior to the conference tournaments. That would be 14 conference games and two OOC games per the scheduling agreement. That still leaves room for a full OOC schedule.

The big thing you could do is ditch the crap media deal and collectively negotiate a much better one that all three conferences would be affiliated with. The teams and the markets that the three leagues would be in could probably pull in a pretty impressive deal.

Hell, you could expand on that concept and rope in the West Coast conference, and have three OOC games at the end of the year. The WCC's addition of Pacific kind of screws up the logistics, but something could be figured out. Or...on the second thought, no it won't. This won't happen. It's just a concept/idea that I've had for quite some time.

	Rhode Island RHODE ISLAND The University of Rhode Island was chartered as the state's agricultural school in 1888. The school became the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 1892. Located in southern Rhode Island, URI is a quintessential New England campus - rural in feeling yet close to the city of Providence, the state's capital. Linked to the city, the beaches, and nearly every corner of the state by both rail and public transit, the campus is easily accessible from Boston and New York URI currently offers 100 majors in seven degree-granting colleges. There are more than 12,000 students on the Kingston campus, about 3,000 in Providence, and a complement of about 700 faculty. Fellow members of the A10 Conference. Nickname is the Rams.

	Massachusetts MASSACHUSETTS UMass Amherst, the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts system, sits on nearly 1,450-acres in the scenic Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, 90 miles from Boston and 175 miles from New York City. The campus provides a rich cultural environment in a rural setting close to major urban centers. UMass enrolls over 20,000 undergraduates and 5,000 post-grad students. Fellow members of the A10 Conference. Nickname is the Minutemen. Women's teams known as the Minutewomen. Sports achievements include NCAA Final Four appearances in men's basketball and women's soccer.

	Saint Louis SAINT LOUIS Saint Louis University is a Jesuit, Catholic university ranked among the top research institutions in the nation. The University fosters the intellectual and character development of more than 12,700 students. Founded in 1818, it is the oldest university west of the Mississippi and the second oldest Jesuit university in the United States. Located in St. Louis, MO, and just five minutes from the Gateway Arch, SLU offers 85 undergraduate programs and over 50 graduate study tracks. Over 99% of the SLU faculty hold the highest degree in their respective fields. Fellow member of the A10 Conference. Nickname is the Billikens, but also commonly known as "Sloo", the phonetic pronunciation of the school's initials. Athletic claims to fame include multiple national titles in men's soccer and men's basketball star Larry Hughes.