Lack of Commitment to an Athletic Conference
By Dave Schmidt of THE SENIOR REPORTS – www.theseniorreports.com
August 20, 2012
Educators at both the High School and College levels continue to confuse me, especially in athletic departments. Over the past several years athletic conferences at all levels change membership faster then the old mood rings use to do. This includes all levels of college and high school and they all do it in a way I would not want students to learn valuable life lessons.
What fired me up?
Today nine D2 school’s announced they were leaving the century old West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and form the new Mountain East Conference. A simple explanation is they wanted to form a conference of like members (who had football) and leave behind the others to fend for them selves. True reason, earlier in the year the conference voted not to accept Virginia-Wise (who has football) as a new member. So how do you overturn a vote that follows the by-laws? You announce you are leaving the conference and starting a new one “of like members”. Then the next step is to find other like members who (have football) want to join. Why have by-laws and rules?
I might mention that one of the nine members joining the new conference does not have football or have even suggested they want to start one. The Mountain East spokesperson says in a radio interview, “our consultant said 11 is the perfect number for a football conference.” You are kidding right? They couldn’t find a 12th football member to join the group, so they settled for someone to fill that slot. Wow….how long will that work.
Now this is where I see a very bad trend in athletic conferences. Three schools join the 9 defectors of the WVIAC (who have football) to make a total of 12 members. The three schools lost a lot of respect in my eyes. Why? “Conference jumping” at its very worse as all three in the past year had been members of the new Great Midwest Athletic Conference (G-MAC), while two have them also supposedly committed to join conferences for football as associate members. Now they bolt before even playing an athletic event in any of those conferences. My question is who is making these moves after committing to be members of other conferences? It does make you wonder how these schools operate in other areas of the education system. Not a good way to make friends and burning bridges at the same time, very sad in my mind.
What do student athletes learn from this –
If it doesn’t go your way, find a way to get out of it and by-pass the rules.
Commitment, who needs it, if it doesn’t work leave and go somewhere that looks better no matter what problems it might cause for others.
Team work, who needs it, what ever meets our needs, because we can always move on.
I am just real disappointed in educators and how they operate in this “shady” way. I do know that in this process not everyone was upfront with all of the league members with their intentions in the WVIAC.
Today it just happened to be the WVIAC schools, but this article has been building up after seeing numerous examples of “Conference jumping” at all levels. My advice to you, treat your conference the way you hope it treats you. This way is very unprofessional and very hurtful to the future of athletics.
Take your time before you “commit”.
More story links on the WVIAC and Mountain East –
www.theseniorreports.com/ncaad2.htm