(04-17-2017 01:55 PM)AZcats Wrote:  

(04-17-2017 02:42 AM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(04-17-2017 02:29 AM)AZcats Wrote:  

(04-16-2017 08:25 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  http://newsok.com/article/5545610


An al D2 Oklahoma conference could be forming in D2 with these schools.

SW Oklahoma State
SE Oklahoma State
NW Oklahoma State
Central Oklahoma
NE Oklahoma State
Rogers State
Cameron
Oklahoma Baptist
Oklahoma Christian
Southern Nazarene
East Central Oklahoma

Would Oklahoma Panhandle State step on the brakes and stay in D2 to join this all Oklahoma conference?

This would put the Great American Conference's Arkansas schools for having enough members. This might be the point we could see Arkansas Tech and maybe Central Oklahoma to make the move to D1?

GAC members left:
Arkansas Tech
UAM
Henderson State
Harding
Southern Arkansas
Ouachita Baptist

Could they get UAFS, Hendrix, University of the Ozarks and Lyon to join as an all Arkansas conference?

Quote:I know both Arkansas Tech and Central Oklahoma could fit into the lower D1. What it sounds like, UCO is spending more money on athletics than some of the lower D1 schools. They might struggle at first in the Southland, but rumors of schools like Lamar want FBS so bad from the Southland that anything could happen.

Seriously? NO! Not gonna happen. The article lacks credibility.

Barry is an Oklahoma sports writer. There is a lot of smoke going on in Oklahoma.

Doesn't matter who he is, the article has too many flaws that in reality can't be done as suggested. Please, stop promoting Arkansas Tech to D1 because it's never going to happen for many reasons.

Berry Tramel is the lead sports columnist at The Oklahoman in OKC. He is knowledgeable on OU, OSU, and the OKC Thunder. He's no expert on small colleges. He printed what the consultant gave him, verbatim. This is most likely someone being paid by one or more schools. Whether all the schools would go along is anyone's guess. The public schools in OK are strapped for cash, and would love to cut the length of bus trips. I'm sure there is some support for this. If you're East Central or Southwestern, for example, this sounds awesome.

It's not like in the old NAIA days, when many states had one or more conferences. Since there is apparently a cap on the number of D-II conferences, there are a lot of moving parts involved in re-creating the OIC. They can't simply just break away tomorrow and say, "We're re-starting the Oklahoma Intercollegiate Conference!" This would involve payment of exit fees, restructuring existing conferences, and accomodating non-Oklahoma members of the GAC and Heartland conferences. I don't see these conferences cooperating, like the consultant believes with the Heartland. Easier said than done.

This jives with a discussion from last fall on the D2 message board:

http://www.d2messageboard.com/showthread...k-the-oic!