As expected, the Great West Football Conference to which Cal Poly belongs officially announced Thursday its addition of an all-sports division.
Fourteen sports and six schools – Houston Baptist, New Jersey Institute of Technology, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas-Pan American and Utah Valley – make up the division, Great West commissioner Ed Grom declared.
More, however, could “announce their acceptance in the next few months,” according to a conference-issued news release.
“It provides conference-championship competition for our student athletes and alleviates the difficulties of trying to schedule as an independent,” NJIT president Robert Altenkirch said in a statement.
Texas-Pan American is the only added school already active in Division I. The Dakotas and Houston Baptist (all in their second years of transition) will become Division I counters for scheduling purposes in 2009-10, while Utah Valley and NJIT become active in 2009-10.
The four-year-old football contingent of the Great West will not be immediately, directly affected by the additions, because the only new schools playing football – North Dakota and South Dakota – have already been preparing for their first year on the gridiron within the GWFC.
They take the place of powers North Dakota State and South Dakota State, which both left the Great West following last season for the Gateway Football Conference.
Cal Poly athletics director Alison Cone has emphasized for weeks that Cal Poly will remain a Great West school only in football, and that the school is more than happy playing 17 of its 20 sports in the Big West Conference.
She has, however, reiterated for weeks her support of the division, saying the overall conference’s heightened profile couldn’t hurt in the ongoing quest to attract a coveted sixth team to the GWFC – also comprised of UC Davis and Southern Utah.
The Great West announced the division could help in “attracting recognition to the league’s football success,” and South Dakota president James Abbott said in a statement it will “expand (his) university’s visibility in several metropolitan markets.”
As currently constituted, the five-team GWFC doesn’t meet the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) requirement of six teams necessary for an automatic bid to the postseason.
In a bold move which could eventually have more direct repercussions on Cal Poly, Kevin Gilmore, an assistant athletics director at independent Cal State Bakersfield (which lacks football), expressed to the Mustang Daily earlier this week strong interest in holding out on conference affiliation to join the Big West as soon as possible.
Big West commissioner Dennis Farrell told the Mustang Daily earlier this week, however, that the Big West, under a membership moratorium subject to annual review, senses no “great urgency” to welcome Cal State Bakersfield.
Cal State Bakersfield was one of 11 schools Grom told the Mustang Daily the Great West discussed the division with.
Others widely reported that, at present, apparently rejected the Great West were Chicago State, Longwood (of Farmville, Va.), Seattle and Savannah State. Of those, only Savannah State – which lost at Cal Poly in football 55-0 in 2006 – would’ve been able to become the conference’s sixth football-playing member.