March 22, 2005
Atlantic 10 to dissolve football
The Atlantic 10 is set to dissolve football following the 2006 season, opting instead to focus on "core sports". With this decision, the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) has extended invitations to all 12 A-10 schools to join the CAA for football, beginning with the 2007 season. According to sources, 11 of the 12 A-10 schools have accepted this proposal. Recently, Richmond made it official and it now seems that all 12 Atlantic 10 schools will compete as the CAA.
Richmond had considered a move to the Patriot League, but opted not to join as the Patriot only allows need-based scholarships for football players. The Spiders will remain in the Atlantic 10 in all other sports (except Women's Golf (CAA)).
Comments:
posted on March 22, 2005 1:04 PM — link — abuse?Kevin Donahue said:
That's a great question, isn't it? The teams are switching conferences because the A-10 no longer wants to allocate the resources (and in turn require member schools to allocate resources) for football. It's not entirely unheard of for smaller conferences to fold an entire sport - it's just usually not football.
posted on March 22, 2005 1:25 PM — 164.117.144.15 — link — abuse?
The short answer is that the A-10 never should have sponsored football in the first place, or, more accurately, the football conference never should have affiliated itself with the A-10. The long answer:
There are only three all-sports A-10 members. 6 of the current 12 A-10 football members will be CAA members for other sports as of the fall of 2006, and Richmond (one of the all-sports members) was a longtime CAA member before they moved to the A-10 in the fall of 2001 (replacing Virginia Tech).
This move has been a long time in the making. The football conference, then called the Yankee Conference, was bolted onto the A-10 in 1997 due to NCAA rules changes diminishing the power of single-sport conferences in the NCAA rulemaking process; the other contending suitor was the CAA, and honestly, it was a bit of a surprise that the A-10 won out given the higher shared membership with the CAA. Most of the A-10's football powers are CAA schools (Delaware, William and Mary, and I-AA national champion James Madison), and most of the A-10's core members don't even sponsor scholarship football.
Otto Fad said:
posted on March 23, 2005 7:29 AM — 24.28.44.133 — link — abuse?
Josh, you are correct. The A-10 did not want to give up football. Even for a midmajor league like the A-10, there are benefits (tangible and otherwise) to sponsoring I-AA football. For example, there is the BCS stipend money used for marketing. Also, I believe that the A-10 used this money to fund a TV production facility (since sold to an "outside" firm) which was used to promote ALL A-10 sports.
Also, the A-10 charged the highest membership dues in I-AA. Believe me, this was not a question of the A-10 "allocating resources" to its FB league. The conference enjoyed plenty of bennies and is not willingly giving up the sport.
The reason the CAA couldn't take over earlier was because there were just five FB schools in the CAA, not enough to form an automatic bid conference in I-AA FB. Once Northeastern agreed to move from the AEC to the CAA, the numbers shifted enough to give the CAA the upper hand over the A-10.
Although 2006 is supposed to be the last year of A-10 FB, I strongly beleive that 2005 will be the final season and that a deal will be struck next Dec-Jan to start CAA FB one year earlier.
posted on March 23, 2005 8:25 AM — link — abuse?
Good call, Otto. Great site, BTW.
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Dwight Shih said:
posted on March 22, 2005 12:59 PM — 67.86.12.239 — link — abuse?I don't get it. If everyone in the A-10 is going to play football in the CAA, then what is the point of the A-10 discontinuing football?