coffee wrote:

I'll keep saying it- Duquesne and Dayton should be the core of an A-10 Football Conference. They are naturally rivals along with Fordham

Atlantic 10 Football Conference
Duquesne
Dayton
Fordham
George Mason
Davidson
Rhode Island
Richmond
Charlotte
VCU

Possibles
Villanova
Georgetown
Butler
Monmouth
Valparaiso

I am a big proponent of the A-10 bringing back football. I think it would be good for the conference, and even more so for the Dukes. Unfortunately, I just don't see anyway it can happen for at least several years.

Since seven members play football, it seems like it could work; but looking at the disparity of their programs shows why it can't. Davidson and Dayton don't offer any scholarships, UMass offers the full 85. Our stadium barely seats 2,000, UMass's seats almost 20,000. George Mason and VCU would have to start varsity programs from scratch to join the conference, while URI and Richmond would be taking big steps down to join.

Butler and Charlotte might seem like good recasts for football; but Butler would have to offer scholarships for the first time, while Charlotte would be playing in an outsized stadium and would have to cut scholarships. I do think Georgetown would be a good fit, but if they joined along with Fordham, the Patriot League would likely go belly up. Delaware, James Madison, Maine, UNH, Towson, Villanova, and William & Mary were football members when the A-10 last had football, but are in a better conference now that is probably a better fit for all of them. Temple seems to be very happy in the American and actually have turned around the football program, so they are unlikely to go anywhere. UConn is in a terrible situation right now for football, but joining this conference might be even worse.

I'd love to see a return to A-10 football. I think the most likely path to that would be to forge some kind of partnership with the Big East to give their football playing schools a home. We need to continue to develop our program though and some of our conferencemates need to make major strides in football before we can make a case for that though.

The most logical look to the conference I can come up with would be a 12 team conference along these lines:

UMass
URI
UConn
Fordham
Duquesne
Villanova
Butler
Dayton
Georgetown
Richmond
Davidson
Charlotte

Last edited by luckymcd (9/19/2019 8:07 pm)