Go WEST young man (and NORTH)

Started by PaulNewman, October 02, 2021, 02:44:40 PM

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Ron Boerger

Bob has great contacts, but none of the people I rely on for ASC insights have yet backed this up and he's been talking about it for some time.  I can't imagine what the ASC teams will do scheduling-wise during the regular season  given that the C2C doesn't play a regular season and there simply aren't a lot of teams in Texas with that many open spots on their non-conference schedules. 

Maybe the C2C will do some restructuring, but as it stands I can't see this being a long-term arrangement, and especially given how important football is to those schools.

Kuiper

Quote from: Ron Boerger on Yesterday at 07:41:30 AMBob has great contacts, but none of the people I rely on for ASC insights have yet backed this up and he's been talking about it for some time.  I can't imagine what the ASC teams will do scheduling-wise during the regular season  given that the C2C doesn't play a regular season and there simply aren't a lot of teams in Texas with that many open spots on their non-conference schedules. 

Maybe the C2C will do some restructuring, but as it stands I can't see this being a long-term arrangement, and especially given how important football is to those schools.

I agree it's not likely a preferable long-term solution, especially without football, but I don't think it will be difficult to construct a schedule in soccer.  They already play a lot of SCAC teams in non-conference games and they can probably expand that number by adding the former ASC/new SCAC teams to the mix and grabbing some of the non-conference games that SCAC teams used to play against UT Dallas.  Then they can play home and away games against each other for six "conference" games.  Add in a couple of NAIA or DII teams (including perhaps) former ASC member UT Dallas and/or schedule one out of state trip to play two games and they have a schedule.

Kuiper

#677
In further thinking about it, I think they will actually be in decent shape.  There were only 8 conference games in the ASC last year because Sul Ross was reclassifying.  So, if they play home and away against each other, they have replaced 6 of the 8 conference games.  In effect, the teams really only need to replace two additional non-conference games.  Given that the SAA teams will be down a conference game because of Birmingham Southern, a former ASC school now in the C2C could play a weekend at Hendrix in Arkansas and play two SAA teams (which MHB did last year with Hendrix and Rhodes and Hardin-Simmons did the same in 2019) or go to Jackson and play Belhaven and Huntingdon College (which likely has to replace Birmingham Southern, because they are typically on its non-conference schedule).

It's not uncommon for a SCIAC and/or NWC team to travel to Texas each year, but it's usually organized by Trinity because the travel is easier to San Antonio and involves Trinity/St. Thomas/Southwestern.  Sometimes,  Hardin-Simmons is invited down to give a traveling team a third game that way.  Whitman and Pomona-Pitzer both played in Texas last year and one of Whitman's games was against Hardin-Simmons. One year, Hardin-Simmons played in the Trinity round robin directly with Christopher Newport, so it's possible they could get invited again.

In any event, I think the four teams will actually have a lot of non-conference options, mostly because I think the former ASC and SCAC schools still need them as well to construct a feasible non-conference schedule.  Since there are only four of them in the C2C who will qualify for non-conference play and there will be 12 in the SCAC for 2024 (before Trinity and Southwestern leave), they will be in demand even if conference play takes up more slots for those SCAC schools.

Ron Boerger

#678
Good points.  The problem won't be as pronounced in soccer, with its limited number of games, than it will be in other sports where conferences routinely play a double round-robin schedule.