NCAA Division 1 College Basketball. Brought to you by the 346 participating institutions of higher learning and the 32 conferences they compete in. All the academic sharpness you can handle can be found on some of those sprawling campuses. But if you are a true follower of college hoops, you almost have to forget everything you learned in elementary and middle school, particularly where U.S. geography and basic mathematics are concerned. One look at the basketball conferences will explain why.
CHANGE IS THE CONSTANT
So yeah, college athletic programs move between conferences all the time and for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the new conference is seen as an upgrade and a better fit for that particular school. Maybe a school with a large football program feels it could benefit from moving to a conference with other large football programs. And if one conference has a mass exodus at once, the remaining schools have to scramble to find the right situation conference-wise (see Big East Conference).
And, of course, the ever-expanding Division 1 has new entries all the time, and those schools need to find membership in a conference that a) fits them athletically and b) has room for them. In recent years, all this movement has resulted in some rather awkward situations, for those of us persnickety enough to notice.
FIRST, THE MATH BASICS
The Big Ten Has 14 Teams; The Big 12 Has Ten Teams
The Big Ten Conference is the oldest collegiate athletic conference in the country, fielding top-level competition in all sports, and for decades was home to ten academically-strong colleges and universities located in upper Midwestern states such as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin.
Penn State University joined the Big Ten nearly 30 years ago and Nebraska joined in 2011 raising the number of teams to 12 while not disrupting the geographic integrity of the conference. Of course, they couldn’t change their name to the Big 12 because one already existed. nor could they do it after Rutgers University and the University of Maryland came aboard in 2014, increasing its membership to 14. (In other words, 10+2+2 equals 10.)
The Big 12 Conference (formerly the Big Eight before adding four teams from another conference) lost a few members to various competitors in all the football shuffling a few years ago and ended up taking on Texas Christian University along with the University of West Virginia, the only conference school in the Eastern time zone. Most of their other schools are located in the South Central United States and the conference is now down to ten teams in basketball and football. (In other words, 8+4-4+2 equals 12.)
So if the conferences were properly named based on membership, the Big Ten would have become the Big 12 (but couldn’t) and then the Big 14, while the Big 12 (formerly the Big Eight), would have become the Big Ten (but can’t).
To be fair, the Pacific-12, with the ability to change its name to match its membership without stepping on the toes of another conference, has always been able to include the number of teams in its conference name (Pac-8, Pac-10, etc.).
Evidently, college math has changed over time.
EAST IS WEST, NORTH IS SOUTH
Chicago State University Is In The Western Athletic Conference
The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) is one of the more wacky conferences in terms of the location of its members. It currently includes two schools in California and one each in Arizona, New Mexico, Washington, Texas, Missouri and Utah (another Utah school, Dixie State University, joins in 2020) along with Chicago State.
While the Chicago State kids — and the ones from the University of Missouri – Kansas City, also out of place in the WAC Conference — certainly won’t mind trips to California, Arizona and New Mexico in January and February, there has to be some hardships that go along with having to travel so far for conference road games. And with all the state-hopping some of the smaller Division 1 schools do during their November and December pre-conference schedules, a travel break once conference play begins should be a given.
New Jersey Tech Is In The Atlantic Sun Conference
New Jersey Institute of Technology — based in Newark, New Jersey — is a relatively new NCAA Division 1 basketball program, having joined in 2009 following a successful run in Division 3. After a rough start, the clearest evidence that their program was on the upswing came in December of 2014 when the Highlanders defeated then No. 17 University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Like most schools making the jump to a higher level of collegiate athletic competition, finding a conference fit is a major challenge. As proof, one need look no further than these same Highlanders, who despite their proximity to several Division 1 basketball programs and conferences, ended up in the Atlantic Sun Conference — ironic on a bunch of levels — which features schools primarily in the Deep South, including four in Florida and one each in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia.
Pretty sure the NJIT kids have no issues with a few trips to Florida during January and February, but their closest conference road opponent is 400 miles away (Liberty University).
The Northeast Conference, with a number of schools in New York (Long Island University, St, Francis of Brooklyn and Wagner College), New Jersey (Fairleigh Dickinson) and Pennsylvania (Robert Morris and St. Francis of PA), would seem like a better fit in terms of geography and competition. Ditto the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (Iona, Manhattan, St. Peter’s, Rider, etc.).
The Atlantic 10 Conference currently has 13 teams, including the University of St. Louis, and Creighton University (Omaha, Nebraska) is in the Big East Conference, so this stuff is catching. We’re coming to the day when every Pacific-12 team will join the Big East Conference, and vice versa.
COLLEGES AREN’T THE ONLY CULPRITS
When baseball had two divisions in each league, the Eastern time zone’s Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds were in the Western Division while the Central time zone’s Chicago Cubs and St’ Louis Cardinals were in the Eastern Division of the National League.
In the National Football League, the Dallas Cowboys were in the Eastern Division of the NFC for a time while the New Orleans Saints and the Atlanta Falcons were in the Western Division. Something about rivalries.
The map isn’t totally upside-down yet, but when a college/university squad has to cross three times zones to play in a conference game, we’ll know it’s over. That day is coming.
