I'm curious what other people think about this:

UMR to leave MIAA for Great Lakes Valley Conference following 2004-05 season:


(June 29) -- UMR has accepted an invitation to join the Great Lakes Valley Conference effective at the conclusion of the 2004-05 season, thus ending a 70-year affiliation with the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association. UMR will be one of three new schools in the conference beginning in the fall of 2005 along with Drury University and Rockhurst University, increasing the size of the GLVC to 14 schools covering the states of Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Kentucky. The UMR program will compete as a member of the MIAA for the 2004-05 season before becoming a full member of its new conference the following year.

related links:
http://campus.umr.edu/sports/glvc2.pdf
http://campus.umr.edu/sports/glvc1.pdf
http://campus.umr.edu/sports/glvc3.html

i have some friends that go to Drury university and they were telling me that moving to the great lakes will make them the warmest school in the conference. they also said that the other schools in it are not as good. this will give umr a better chance at conference championships because the competition is not as good.

Here's what I've heard:

a) Truman doesn't like it, because it makes them the worst team in the conference.

b) With only a small number of schools in this conference, it's basically license to play anyone we like. Out of conference. Which is basically a nice way of saying that our football program will get paid by other schools so that they can win.

Does anyone know how the budget of the various sports programs here at UMR balance out?

14 schools is not a small conference...thats 2 more then the big12, 3 more then the big10, 4 more then the acc...if anything it will give the football team a chance to win since the conference is weaker then current one that we are in

if UMR's Sports was better i might acuttly come out to see the games..

Might as well come out anyway. After all, you've already bought a season pass whether you realize it or not.

The best way to screw them over is use their services.

ya that is true.. becuse its part of the fee's

Hmm, maybe this has changed since I swam way back in the early 90's but Drury used to be NAIA, not NCAA, which really changed what they could do with scholarships and was part of the reason they had such a good swim team (more scholarships for it than UMR and other NCAA D2 schools). If they are NCAA D2 (as the conference is) now that might change all that for them, that could be interesting.

Since swimming is the only good sport here that is any good and since conference never really mattered for us anyway (it was always nationals that we cared about) I don't think this changes a thing. Of course no one cares about swimming either so its a toss up.

This is going to add more travel time though. Parkside will be at least a 7.5 hour drive (I used to drive to Madison a lot and Parkside is pretty close) and I think that is closer than some of the other conference schools. This conference sprawls.

Travel expenses to further away universities are more, somehow this will get passed back to students, so I think is probably a bad move.
Just drop to D3 rather than D2 and maybe we could win some games.

Sports are a humungous waste of time.

*Blink*

To bad the ACC is up 11 teams this year and 12 next

big X has eleven as well

I'm not too in to sports, but it would be nice to see the UMR football team to win a game every now and then....

My bad. Regardless the great lakes is still goin to be bigger and isnt a small conference.[/quote]