I decided to post this in the main thread, but was afraid Chicago State readers wouldn’t see it there so put it here as well for you all-

Now that Chicago State is joining the NEC, I think that having a school outside the Northeast (Chicago State) isn’t a big deal. Any school looking at D1 would likely have the NEC as an option, or nothing. Also, having a limited amount of members outside the core footprint isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Compared to the NEC being picked apart, even taking on 1 Midwest school is fine.

When numbers start to get low, AD’s can start to get nervous and start looking around, and all of a sudden a couple members bolt and everyone is in a bind. So I think the NEC core membership may be a little more united than some conferences these days and truly out to maintain what they have.

What they have is a group of low funded D1 programs that like being D1 and want to maintain that level, even though most of them don’t currently have plans/desire to keep trying to spend more to move up the food chain. There are other conference, like the MAAC, America East, or others that could potentially pick off a few members, but I think handful of core NEC long time members are sticking around if possible because a conference like the NEC gives them the best bang for their buck, gives lots of programs access to NCAA championships without spending millions more than they can afford.

That’s the best case scenario, schools sticking together making the NEC work. Another scenario for the Northeastern (geographically) schools is that a couple of members get picked off, and the schools left add more non northeastern schools to maintain the conference. If a Midwestern school was available to be a Chicago State travel partner, that would work out well. If a couple of schools in the east, but south of current membership, that could work as well.

What’s interesting is most people do t not necessarily think of football when they think if the NEC. But it is indeed a football conference, and I think that dynamic is an important one for them. I have no doubt they intend to maintain football, so managing that in the northeast alone might become challenging and get them to branch out more.