If we go to 12 who do you want (choose 2) poll?

[MissouriValleyUnite]

Didn't Bill Self and Barry Hinson both coach at ORU before Sutton? If my memory is correct, they've made more right decisions than wrong ones with their basketball program...

UWM hired Bo Ryan and Bruce Pearl, yet almost everyone is against UWM because of their athletic department being a complete yet

What's the difference? UWM is caught up in public school bull crap causing them to fall backwards.
ORU is caught up in private school, religious, bull crap that is causing them to fall backwards.

One of those is easier to "swallow" from a PR perspective, and I'll give you a hint as to which one it is: it doesn't involve a travel partner for Missouri State

Nah, here's the difference.

UWM's success was tied entirely to two short-stinted legendary coaches. Pearl leaves, and UWM hasn't registered a top 90 RPI in 12 years.

Bill Self leaves and ORU improves. They won 3 straight conference titles 9-11 years later. NCAA at-large (until a Selection Sunday bid thief knocked them out) 15 years later.

[mvfcfan]

I'll take ORU over UWM any day of the year. I just showed a model where Murray State and Oral Roberts do not drop the league ranking at all. It stays at #11 with them in the league. Oral Roberts and Murray State have traditionally been good and they both came off their worst seasons in a while. We have nothing to lose by adding those two teams. Another fact is that uniftw hates Oral Roberts because he disagrees with their religious views, not because he dislikes their sports programs.

Murray St and Oral Roberts are both MVC caliber programs that we need to seriously look at adding for the 2018-19 season.

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On a side note I posted polls on the NDSU and SDSU boards to see what their opinions on joining the league are. Here's an update on all of the polls.

NDSU= 18-3 YES
SDSU= 14-3 NO

Oral Roberts= 16-2 YES
Northern Kentucky= 2-2 TIE

Murray State= 66-3 YES

The NDSU and SDSU result being opposite is kind of odd. Oral Roberts supports joining, while Northern Kentucky doesn't seem to really have that big of a fan base.

[uniftw]

Another fact is that uniftw hates Oral Roberts because he disagrees with their religious views, not because he dislikes their sports programs.

Not true....in it's entirety.

Drake, Bradley, Loyola, Evansville, Creighton all have religious ties to their university. I went to a small, private, Lutheran college for a year to play football before an injury ended that and I transferred to UNI. I have my masters from a small Catholic university. I grew up going to a protestant church for Sunday school, church service and then Sunday evening service every year until I left for college. I went to a youth program at church every Wednesday created to learn Bible verses and study the bible. That program ended at age 12, at which point I went to a Wednesday night youth group gathering at my church through going to college that took a more "adult/teenage" approach to the Bible. I was baptized into my church at age 13. I went on multiple mission trips, outside of the US, with my church to build schools, churches and talk about the Bible through middle school and high school. Both of my children were baptized as infants due to what my wife being raised Methodist and that being their tradition.

Are we currently going to a church? No.
Have I found many things with organized religion (of all kinds) that I disagree with and have left any kind of organized faith? Yes
Does that impact how I view schools? No

ORU and Liberty fall under a different sect of private schools and a different set of things I have issues with. So yes, you are correct in that I would prefer to stay away from ORU for those reasons. To be fair, schools like Grand Canyon University, Kaplan, U of Phoenix, etc... all fall under the same basic umbrella, but there is a special place for schools like Liberty and ORU.

[rally]

So here's a serious question. I know that the MVC and MVFC are not technically the same conference, but in reality they are. Some of the members on this forum are against NDSU and SDSU because we are a basketball first conference. What I don't understand is if we are basketball first than why does our football seem to always have more success than basketball as of late? The past 6 seasons the MVFC has made the national title game. One year it was even an all-MVFC title game. Basketball on the other hand gets 1 bid and typically doesn't get any farther than the second round.

If 130 of the top schools leave the MVC behind, the MVC will compete for National titles in basketball in whatever's left behind in the second tier as well. Not a logical comparison.

[mvfcfan]

Updated results on the XDSU message boards.

NDSU= 32-4 YES
SDSU= 24-7 NO

SDSU must really like having the SL tournament in Sioux Falls is all I can think.

[mvfcfan]

So here's an idea and I already know I'm going to get flogged for this. The 5 public schools from the MVC could split off and join the 5 football playing schools from the Summit League. This essentially would leave the privates without a conference, but no need to fear there would be 4 other schools from the Summit League without a home (Denver, Ft Wayne, Omaha, Oral Roberts). I imagine with the current football schools being part of the MVFC we would be the ones taking the "Missouri Valley" name just like the current Big East schools did. And while I don't particularly support this idea, I don't think it is so bad that it shouldn't at least be considered.

So I did some more math based off of the Sagarin ratings at the end of last season.

The (new) MVC
ILST= 81.56
INST= 69.86
MSU= 73.57
UNI= 72.80
SIU= 72.26
NDSU= 71.60
SDSU= 70.46
UND= 70.88
USD= 71.94
WIU= 62.09
AVERAGE= 71.71 (ranked #11)

The (new) Summit League
BU= 68.18
DU= 65.33
UE= 71.85
LUC= 75.41
Valpo= 76.45
Denver= 69.65
I?PFW= 72.80
UNO= 70.87
ORU= 66.68
AVERAGE= 70.80 (ranked #14)

Amazingly the schools throwing money at the "FCS Pit" are outperforming the schools that don't. And before someone says it's because the Summit League teams are thrown in there lets compare the averages of just the MVC schools. The MVC publics score a 74.01 while the MVC privates (with Valpo) score a 71.44. So I just want to throw this out there that the privates' mindset of adding non-football schools is not necessarily a great idea and it doesn't mean that their basketball is going to be better just because they don't have football. The publics, as clearly shown, could ditch the privates and be perfectly fine without them. Our new MVC would still be ranked 11th which is what it is already when you replace Wichita with Valpo. And our new MVC would have a ton of potential. Obviously the new Summit League would be a temp solution. I could see several of those teams scrambling to join the WAC, Southland, and Horizon League. None of those conferences are particularly that attractive.

[uniftw]

Get rid of USD, UND, WIU. Keep YSU out of the "new league"

Replace with with SFA, Murray State and New Mexico State and I might...almost....think about biting.

[Jsnhbe1Birds]

Get rid of USD, UND, WIU. Keep YSU out of the "new league"

Replace with with SFA, Murray State and New Mexico State and I might...almost....think about biting.

Add UTA for SFA and Grand Canyon for NMSU and go to 12!

[MOST]

To eliminate all the repetitive Blah Blah Blah in this thread the three middle USA/mid major conferences (MVC, Summit, Horizon) need to sit down and agree to a plan that benefits, insures the survival, and maintains the competitiveness of all three conferences.

Missouri Valley Conference: Need to recognize that MVC public schools need/want to reduce travel costs--become a localized, regional school bus conference. Also, schools east of the Mississippi have a bias against MVC schools west of the Mississippi---travel costs plus the Mississippi is a psychological barrier (age old east VS west bias).
Reduce its footprint. Eliminate some schools and add some schools.
Eliminate schools west of the Mississippi and add schools east of the Mississippi.
Schools to eliminate: Northern Iowa, Drake, Missouri State.
Schools to add: Northern Kentucky, Wisconsin Milwaukee, Wisconsin Green Bay, Oakland, Fort Wayne, Wright State (maybe-out of geo footprint).

Summit League: will be a maxed out NINE (9) school conference, plus have to overcome UNI and MO State vocal bias against the Dakota and Nebraska schools.
Keep NDSU, NDU, SDU, SDSU. Nebraska Omaha, Oral Roberts (maybe).
Eliminate: IPFW, Denver, IUPUI, Western Ill.
Add: UNI, Missouri State, UMKC, Drake (maybe).
Possible adds: None--no other quality BB/FB schools west of Mississippi-east of the Rockies.
Comment: A better BB conference than current MVC, the very top FCS FB conference.

Horizon League. Going to lose some teams--will struggle to add quality replacements.
Lose: NKentucky, Wisconsin Mil, Wisconsin GBay, Oakland, Wright State (maybe)
Retain: Ill. Chicago, Youngstown St, Cleveland St. Detroit Mercy.
Add: IPFW, IUPUI, Western Ill.

[MOST]

added to my last:

Horizon possible adds: Eastern Illinois, SIU-E, SE Missouri

After all this shake and bake all three conferences will probably continue to be one (1) bid NCAA Tournament conferences. Sad but highly probable.