CAA adopts "extreme flexibility model" for Olympic sports scheduling in 2020-21

CAA schools have to play the minimum number of games to meet NCAA sports-sponsorship requirements, but they don't have to play a full conference schedule. So Charleston men's or women's soccer might play Elon and UNC Wilmington home-and-home, JMU and William and Mary once, and then OOC the rest of the way, replacing trips to the Northeast with games against SoCon/Big South schools. They'll figure out how to do playoffs later (but hopefully before the season starts, you'd think) but the presumption is that not everyone will play the same number of CAA games, so that sounds like seeding via winning percentage.

Note that this does not apply to football or either basketball.

Could CUSA do this? Should CUSA do this? It would help avoid or limit the Texas to Mid-Atlantic or either to Florida trips, but is the travel savings enough to make up for the lack of consistency with schedules?

In CUSA basketball and football will remain similar to what we always had. With some changes to play schools closer to each of us. The sports that no one but the NCAA really cares about will see major scheduling or limits in games played. Wouldnt be surprised to see the schedules limited to the less amount of game required by the NCAA

Quote:To cut costs, C-USA will reduce its men’s and women’s basketball tournament from 12 teams to eight. In addition to the change of basketball seeding, the bonus play format will not be used moving forward.

Among the other changes, the C-USA volleyball tournament will be reduced from eight teams to four with the No. 1 seed hosting. Soccer, softball and baseball tournaments will remain at eight teams, but the number of their conference regular-season games will be reduced.

Stadium’s Brett McMurphy first reported Monday that fewer teams would enter the basketball tournaments and C-USA Olympic sports would play fewer regular-season games.

Western Kentucky athletics director Todd Stewart, who sits on the C-USA competition committee, declined to comment because the league office has not yet officially released the plan.




Soccer, softball and baseball postseasons will only see a reduction of conference games played in the regular season. Soccer has traditionally played 10 regular season conference games, softball has played 24 and baseball 30.

In a recent interview with the Daily News, Stewart said the future scheduling adjustments could keep teams playing within their conference divisions until the championship. C-USA East Division teams wouldn’t play a team in the West Division until the tournament. In that same interview, the AD said the league is looking at scheduling agreements with other Group of Five conferences that make the most sense geographically.

“I think there’s a really good chance we’ll be able to come up with scheduling alliances in all the sports with exceptions of football and basketball,” Stewart said. “I hope we can because it makes a lot of sense, but I feel like we definitely will in other sports. After 2020-21, how can we play more regional games and fly around the country less for all sports?