[Sly Fox]

I have to admit this is highly disappointing. I wonder if it is effective immediately or it they will spend one year makign the transition.

I have a feeling the folks over in Farmville are hanging from the chandeliers. Their chances of getting in just improved consderably now that the lone western team is gone.

[LUconn]

On the radio at the beginning of the baseball game they said immediately.

[Sly Fox]

Then by all means we'd love to have some of their athletes right now (particularly hoops & baseball).

[ATrain]

I have to admit this is highly disappointing. I wonder if it is effective immediately or it they will spend one year makign the transition.

I have a feeling the folks over in Farmville are hanging from the chandeliers. Their chances of getting in just improved consderably now that the lone western team is gone.

Yeah, they're pretty happy about it from what I hear.

[WinthropEagleFan]

On the radio at the beginning of the baseball game they said immediately.

On BSC's website, they said they'll spend one more year in Div. 1 before moving down...

http://www.bsc.edu/communications/news/ ... 6_ncaa.htm

Chairman of the Board James T. Stephens said that Birmingham-Southern would seek reclassification from the NCAA prior to June 1. The college would continue to compete at the Division I level in the 2006-07 academic year.

[LUconn]

they'll probably have a stellar freshman class next year

[A.G.]

How will losing BSC affect sports such as softball, where the conference already is losing TAMCC?? If I am counting correctly, that would leave the league with only 5 members in 2007-08, which would mean the Big South would lose the automatic bid. Anyone (FSN32?) have any insight on this?

[Sly Fox]

Nice find, WEF. That should slow down the rush to raid BSC's rosters. But I'm guessing unless students are seniors-to-be or independently wealthy, they'll begin transferring immediately. But I believe the NCAA waives the one-year if sitting out if your school drops Division I athletics (not 100% sure of this).

As for softball, I wonder if the A-Sun would be cool with letting G-W leave a year early in that sport under the circumstances.

[ATrain]

Maybe add Longwood for Softball...and considering that they swept Liberty in a doubleheader, AT OUR OWN PLACE, and that Farmville does produce great softball talent, I don't see how we can argue against letting them in for at least softball.

[WinthropEagleFan]

Nice find, WEF. That should slow down the rush to raid BSC's rosters. But I'm guessing unless students are seniors-to-be or independently wealthy, they'll begin transferring immediately. But I believe the NCAA waives the one-year if sitting out if your school drops Division I athletics (not 100% sure of this).

As for softball, I wonder if the A-Sun would be cool with letting G-W leave a year early in that sport under the circumstances.

Well, BSC has said they'll honor all athletic scholarships for all current students for the full 4 years and all incoming recruits will have their scholarships until they are juniors. Now I expect alot of transfers anyway, but the money part of it isn't an issue...it'll be more the desire to want to continue to play Div. 1 sports somewhere else

[thekid]

I see BSC baseball coach, Coach Shoup just went across town to often top 25 baseball team UAB. I guess a lot of his players will try and head with him. Last year's Freshman of the year, however, Billy Froelich went over to Winthrop for next season. UAB is getting one heck of a baseball coach.

[WinthropEagleFan]

This article about BSC dropping men's basketball and baseball next season addresses the softball concern:

http://www.al.com/sports/birminghamnews ... xml&coll=2

Apparently part of their condition of being able to leave the league quickly is that they'll try and petition the NCAA to compete at the Division I level in softball for one extra year so that the conference doesn't lose the automatic bid before Gardner-Webb comes in...

Also, this article ( http://www.buzzfans.com/sports/story/58 ... 2566c.html
) mentions that the Big South baseball tourney was scheduled to be in Birmingham this year...they're obviously going to move it, with plans on having it come to Lynchburg if possible (since Liberty was next in line to host), but if they aren't able to do it, they'll re-bid it...

[Sly Fox]

You can always play up in one sport in the NCAA. We used to be Division I several years before moving the rest of our sports up from Div II. I hadn't heard about Birmingham Southern offering to help us out like that with softball. That would certainly be of great assistance. They seemed to be a race to dump scholie money across the board.

[Chris Lang]

Whether or not LU can host next year will be dependent on the Hillcats' schedule in '07 and whether or not they have anything else scheduled there. They hosted the ODAC tourney at City Stadium this year, so I don't know if that's back for next fall. Obviously, hosting it at the school is out of the question.

[SuperJon]

This is yet another reason why I think any talk of I-A football should be put on the back burner. We need lights for baseball, softball, and soccer before we do that. We could make so much more money having games at night than in the afternoon. I realize it costs money (somewhere in the 100K range for lights for baseball, maybe a little more) but that should be our next goal.

[A.G.]

Oh, yeah! I can't wait to freeze my keister off some late March evening as we host the likes of Marist, Rutgers, and other teams no one around here cares about seeing.

[SuperJon]

I'm not talking early March games. Night games in April on the weekends are awesome. As we all know, there isn't much to do in Lynchburg, and night games would attract a pretty good amount of people.

[A.G.]

Perhaps that would help LU attract some of the ACC boys into the area. Plus, it would be great to get an atmosphere for the conference games like there has been for night time soccer games.

[SuperJon]

That's exactly what I'm talking about. We could probably draw more people to a UVA or VT (even though they're horrible now) game at night, as opposed to when people are in class. I'd probably be able to go to a lot more games that way. I missed a ton of games last year because of classes.

[Sly Fox]

Yeah it sucks when classes get in the way of the college experience.

[SuperJon]

Classes ruin college.

[A.G.]

Yes. Must. Go. To. Class.

Otherwise, you might be working with a rescue squad as an EMT the rest of your life.

[Sly Fox]

That was off the hook.

[TIMSCAR20]

We definitely have some comedians in the making on this board: AG, Luconn, Medic and Purple Haize are usually good to make me laugh once or twice in a day.

[bigsmooth]

SJ, only VT is horrible in baseball. cmon man!