KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The outgoing commissioner of the MIAA said Monday that there are no apparent roadblocks to the University of Nebraska at Kearney joining the league for competition in 2012.
UNK announced Monday that it would seek permission to join the MIAA at an Aug. 17 board of regents meeting.
The MIAA is in the process of expanding from 10 to 16 teams for football and from 11 to 16 overall. Lincoln (Mo.) will return to the league in 2011. Southwest Baptist will be back in 2012. Southwest Baptist had remained in the league for other sports but dropped off the MIAA football schedule when UNO joined in 2008.
Also expected to come into the league in two years are UNK, Lindenwood (Mo.), Central Oklahoma and Northeastern Oklahoma State. The Oklahoma schools accepted invitations last month.
“I suspect with Lindenwood and Kearney that we'd try to get it wrapped up by this fall, the middle of October or so,” MIAA Commissioner Jim Johnson said.
UNK's return would likely extend its football series with the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The teams won't play next season as UNO becomes locked into a 10-game MIAA schedule. But they could resume playing in 2012 should UNK leave the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
“That game has always meant a lot to us,” UNO coach Pat Behrns said. “It's always been a big game. Now there would be a place in the standings that goes along with it.”
UNK would also re-establish rivalries with teams it used to play in the old Central States Intercollegiate Conference: Fort Hays State, Emporia State, Pittsburg State and others.
UNK would be following Fort Hays from the RMAC to the MIAA. Fort Hays made the transition in 2006.
One major difference in leagues: MIAA schools can award the Division II limit of 36 scholarships; RMAC schools can award just 28.
The transition won't be easy for UNK, Fort Hays coach Kevin Verdugo said.
“The way everybody else in this conference is operating, you have to come to the realization that it's going to be different from what you are accustomed,” he said. “Scholarships, facilities, the talent level from top to bottom ... it's different from what we played before. Even the size of the coaching staffs in the MIAA is something the normal fan may not understand.”
Several MIAA coaches offered mixed views of the expansion movement. Filling schedules will be easier, they say, but those schedules will be packed with high-level teams.
“the downside is that the teams they are adding are further away, so you're adding to travel for your team and your fans,” said new Central Missouri coach Jim Svoboda, the longtime Northwest Missouri State assistant. “And right now, the league is beating one another up as it is. But the bottom line is I don't have any control over it, so we'll play in the league they establish.”
Johnson said the league will be careful to operate as a single unit to prevent the breakups that have occurred from Division I's Big 12 to Division II's Gulf South and Lone Star Conferences.
“We're going to work hard not to use the term ‘divisions,'” he said. “We need to learn from what's going on around us. We're in this position, in terms of expansion, because of realignment in other leagues. And what those folks will tell you is that some of that fracturing occurred because — as they grew — things became divisional.
“Our programs want to maintain the identity of the MIAA. We'll certainly have to group schools to build schedules. but I think you'll see one set of standings and one champion.”
Mel Tjeerdsma, head coach at Northwest Missouri State, has often said he'd welcome a full schedule of conference foes. It's become difficult to schedule nonconference opponents for his Bearcats, who have played in five straight national championship games.
But a 16-team league presents its own issues.
“When it gets to that point, the challenge is going to be on the athletic directors to figure out how this is all going to work,” Tjeerdsma said. “You can't play everybody, so how are you going to determine a champion?”
It won't be with a conference championship game, Johnson said, since new Division II rules allow only 11 weeks to play an 11-game schedule. Carving out a week to play a championship game would leave other conference teams with just 10 games.
“We may look at something like the Big Ten model in football, where you're not going to play every team every year,” said Johnson, who will start as athletic director at Pittsburg State of the MIAA in September. “Could we have two 11-0 teams some years? We could, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing.”
Johnson said league presidents have expressed a commitment to staying in Division II.
“If we do this, we don't want to be undoing it in four or five years,” he said. “Were the 12 (presidents) sitting around the table committed to it? I think the answer had to be a resounding yes. Things can change, obviously, but I think there's no question right now that we've got 12 (conference) members and four prospective members who are committed to Division II.”
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444-1027, rob.white@owh.com
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