Bison137
Professor
Posts: 16147
Reg: 01-23-06
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06-09-20 02:45 PM - Post#308812
Two possible northeastern conference changes:
1. A report has NJIT leaving the Atlantic Sun to join America East - a move that makes a lot of sense. A decade ago, all of the northeastern leagues rejected NJIT, which at the time was moving up from D2 but had horrendous facilities. Since then they have built a new 3500 seat basketball arena, added lacrosse as a sport, and built a new outdoor stadium for lax and soccer.
Most of America East's membership consists of fairly large public universities, so NJIT is a fit from that standpoint. And it also works geographically.
2. Various reports have Robert Morris looking to move to the Horizon League or possibly the MAAC. RMU has a really nice new arena, easily the best in the NEC, is not at all close to other NEC schools except for St. Francis, and outspends the rest of the league in basketball. Both the Horizon League and the MAAC would be upgrades in terms of quality, although travel cost would go up somewhat.
The big issue is what to do with football. The NEC refused to allow Monmouth to continue in the league for football when it moved its other sports to the MAAC, so it is unlikely they would let RMU stay for football only. Very unlikely the Patriot League would accept them due to academic issues, so they might be forced to follow Monmouth into the Big South. The other option would be to join the non-scholarship Pioneer League.
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