Realignment perspective from a new D1 school...

[DarthGrumpy]

UMass Lowell is jumping up to D1 in College Sports replacing Boston U (going to the Patriot) in America East. Overall, I am puzzled that Mass is going for this because of the budget issues at the flagship UMass (Amherst); but, that’s what sometimes happens with a very determined Chancellor wants something done.
http://www.boston.com/sports/colleges/2013/02/14/umass-lowell-joining-america-east/JvZl3l8QhA0A3CYPe6wShP/story.html
This should not impact UConn much (I hope!) as UMass-Lowell’s facilities are sub-par except for Hockey (Tsongas arena) and baseball (LeLachuer Park, which is on the campus and is shared with the Red Sox’s A farm team), which are both top-notch.
What I really found telling and the reason for this post is what their AD said. She’s right. I just hope that through all of this conference realignment craziness, UConn’s leadership understands this point.

“At many universities, Division 1 athletics is the front porch of the institution. Whether that’s right, wrong, fair, or unfair, it’s the way people view an institution. Their first image of an institution, in a lot of ways, is what happens with their intercollegiate athletic program. That’s the world we live in, and we want to take full advantage and make sure our best foot is forward.​

​

“This is a new era, obviously, for athletics, but for the institution and the region it’s very important. Division 1 athletics can position our university, regionally and nationally, in a way that I’m not sure we could otherwise. It’s one of those transformational moments.”​

 

[Adios]

....and we have some people who think we should join the "C7".

Tonight proved we don't need them.

 

[zls44]

Poor NJIT.

 

[brasssbonanzaa]

This has been rumored at Lowell for a while. They recently purchased Tsongas and now are outright owners, so that gives them a free and easy facility to use for hockey and men's and women's basketball. They've also got a few other fairly good facilities from my understanding that are more than up to par with America East schools. The school itself is fairly large, I believe there's roughly 10K students, and they do get a pretty good following for hockey, so getting a few thousand a game at D1 basketball isn't unrealistic for them. Merrimack is also rumored to be investigating moving D1.

 

[Whale22]

It's actually a pretty amazing story for those that follow hockey. They were literally voting on whether to drop hockey about 3 years ago. In that short span they brought in a new coach, made the NCAA's, bought the arena, and basically turned around the school nevermind the team. They had big contingent come down for regionals last year.....Dont quote me on timing of story and details but thats basically what happened. An athletic program lifting the stature and brand of an entire school...hmm...that happens?

 

[thatguyed]

Their band is far from D1.

 

[Whale22]

i think the teams to pay attention to are
-umass(amherst)
-mizzu state
-utep
-ga st
-ecu
-udel
-ohio

eventually, your going to have a league down south of all the sun belt/cusa types together who will fill a mac like role under the sec. your also going to have big publics up north looking to go big like uconn, udel, ohio and umass.

Ohio U is private

 

[Whale22]

Forget that I am wrong....Ohio U is public. On my third tour to Cancun we happened to have same spring break as a bunch of Ohio U co-eds and i distinctly remember having this argument and this girl insisted they were private. I guess I've been going around all these years with that in the back of my head. I stand corrected. Sorry HFD you are right. Must have been the tequila.

 

[kingdobbs]

It's actually a pretty amazing story for those that follow hockey. They were literally voting on whether to drop hockey about 3 years ago. In that short span they brought in a new coach, made the NCAA's, bought the arena, and basically turned around the school nevermind the team. They had big contingent come down for regionals last year.....Dont quote me on timing of story and details but thats basically what happened. An athletic program lifting the stature and brand of an entire school...hmm...that happens?

Although to be more accurate, it wasn't a vote that happened with the UML campus itself, but rather from the board of the entire UMass system, on whether or not to consolidate the athletics programs of the entire system (including the Boston and Dartmouth campuses in addition to Lowell; the med school in Worcester does not have its own athletics) at the flagship U in Amherst.

Because of the history behind how the UMass system was built (in essence, the non-Amherst campuses were formerly independent entities, or part of the state teacher's college system, that were brought in to become part of the "flagship" system during the sixties and seventies; this is in contrast to the UConn system, where its satellite campuses were all built deliberately to be satellites), there's some conflict over how independent the various entities are/should be, and that there's some in the system who think that the other campuses should become further subordinate to Amherst in order to enrich it.

 

[Da_Aisijimo_Gou]

UMass Lowell is jumping up to D1 in College Sports replacing Boston U (going to the Patriot) in America East."

Good for Souleymane!