Realignment Rumors

At the beginning of the month, I opined on the current state of the UT Arlington Athletic Department's place in the current landscape of college athletics, specifically in regard to their lack of a football program limiting the potential conference landing spots should the Western Athletic Conference lose one more member.

In it, I mentioned the few, limited possibilities as California Baptist is likely a prime target for the West Coast Conference and Tarleton State's Football Bowl Subdivision aspirations will likely lead to a Conference USA spot at a minimum. With few to no institutions willing to join, the WAC is in a rough spot. 

UTA potential could have a home in the Ohio Valley Conference, joining fellow Sun Belt Conference cast-off Little Rock. The Missouri Valley Conference and UTA briefly flirted before nothing formal advanced prior to UTA joining the WAC. The Atlantic Sun Conference likely would be receptive too, but I know of nothing actually occurring between the two. 

All of them present drawbacks, a couple of them are the same, primarily who is the nearest geographical rival? In the OVC, it would be Little Rock and the University of Tennessee-Martin. In the MVC, it would be Murray State (Kentucky) and Southern Illinois as Missouri State will join CUSA next year. In the ASUN, Central Arkansas and North Alabama are the closest rivals. Not a single one of those excite me and I can't see one school in any of those conferences increasing attendance or attention. No in-state schools or long-term rivals exist. 

Well, I read something on X, formerly Twitter, about the remnants of the WAC and the Summit League itself in meager talks. Specifically, it mentions the Summit adding the three Utah schools and UTA. I wonder why Abilene Christian isn't mentioned as I've seen nothing to link them to other realignment talks.

There are a few things to unpack here, but primarily, for me this is the worst of all the choices when it comes to membership schools and locations. Oral Roberts University is about 300 miles from UTA and would be the travel partner. It is roughly a five-hour bus ride, so take that for what it is worth. Otherwise, with UTA, it'd be a border-to-border conference with members in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Missouri. There's also an outlier in Denver University.

That outlier is what helps the Utah schools, though they are 500 to 600 miles from Denver U. But this is the definition of an airplane league. With the exception of ORU, which is a long bus ride, every conference game would be a plane ride. Ready for some UTA versus North Dakota Fighting Hawks softball games?

While a conference home is better than independence, these options leave me less than thrilled for the next domino to fall in the conference reshuffling. 

The only geographic conference that would make sense is the Southland Conference, but A) at 10 football members and 12 full members, there may not be room, B) I could see the SLC adding a football member to bolster the ranks but a non-football causes a lot of scheduling issues and C) if UTA goes back, the effort of the last decade plus will have been a wasted endeavor. The SLC is a weaker conference than when UTA left, though they took steps in recent years to reverse that trend. But UTA's peers are not Incarnate Word, Houston Christian or much of the Louisiana schools. But due to point A, I don't see that coming into play.

Rejoining the WAC worked for me because there were six Texas schools when the Mavs jumped in. Those schools were generally competitive and as a whole, the WAC moved up the competitive pecking order considerably in most sports. There's no other similar landing spot in the WAC falls through.

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but if UTA added football, they'd have a home easily. CUSA, due to the competitiveness of the rest of the Maverick sport programs, location and the institutional profile, would invite UTA in a heartbeat, even if the football program was worse than UT El Paso's. It seems the Mountain West wants in Texas and had TCU at one point. I can't help but think that UTA would have a great chance at that spot if they added the sport. UTSA and Georgia State showed the blueprint for start-ups with FBS aspirations. It can be done, there just has to be a will.

Without it, UTA faithful may be looking at the University of Nebraska-Omaha for its next heated rivalry.