A year ago, Wichita State announced that consultants would evaluate the athletic department’s options for leaving the Missouri Valley Conference and adding sports, most prominently football. The football piece of that study appears to have faded from discussion.
Wichita State president John Bardo declined comment Thursday. Any move made by WSU, athletic director Darron Boatright has said, would include all sports.
People in the WSU athletic department decline to speak publicly regarding the issue, citing the sensitivity of the matter or their unfamiliarity with the process and the administration’s movements toward that goal.
Yet the possibility of leaving of MVC is taken seriously by multiple sources in the department, some of whom believe it to be a likely outcome. Others are much less certain. All say leaving the MVC for the American is the desired goal of the university and some have gone as far as to calculate travel expenses in a conference that stretches to Connecticut and Florida.
Other concerns expressed by athletic department personnel include the stability of the American and the competition level among individual sports.
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Report: ‘Upper levels’ of American Athletic Conference looking at Wichita State’s potential