Morning Mashups: CAA, SoCon Meetings Have Everyone Talking

Conferences across the country are in the middle of meetings that could impact the future college basketball landscape. Of course a lot of that depends on the decisions made around football.

So that has a lot of people talking about what could possibly happen, including the wild idea of the Colonial dropping football altogether.

Here are some of the things that you should be reading around college basketball:

Let's start with the easy one. The CAA is meeting and they are trying to decide on the future of the conference, something that I advocated should take them longer than a few days locked in some conference room at a hotel with bad coffee and stale danishes.

This is a decision that should take some time, after they have seen how things work this coming season, or even the one following. It shouldn't just be a knee-jerk reaction because they want to be first to the game.

It is the best offer and one most well thought out that makes a team move, not just the first one that jingles the phone.

And it isn't like there aren't a lot of options for them to consider. The Richmond Times-Dispatch ran them down, and just evaluating all of these teams, and all the teams that come along with them in the non-revenue sports, could take a lot of time.

Yeager won't discuss potential candidates, but the strongest basketball additions seem to be in the South. Yeager declined to comment on an ESPN.com report that quoted Southern Conference commissioner John Iamarino as saying Yeager had contacted him about talking to some of his schools, presumably Davidson, the College of Charleston and Appalachian State, a football power.

There also are Coastal Carolina (Big South) in basketball and football, and, at the northern end, Boston University (America East) as a basketball addition.

...

The premier conference in FCS may look at some Northern schools, including Stony Brook, Albany or Monmouth, to help ease travel for Maine and New Hampshire.

Those choices may change though, especially if the Southern Conference's new tournament format is exceedingly appealing to the teams.

Under the new rules, the division winners and the next two best records in the conference will receive byes out of the first round. Previously, the top two finishers in each division got the slots, even if someone in another division had a better record.

The conference will also move from an 18-game to a 16-game conference slate, which has added benefits as described by the Chattanooga Times Free Press:

It also essentially eliminates the need to play SoCon games in December, so schools have two more chances to schedule BCS conference schools or other mid-major teams to improve team and conference RPIs.

"Our conference needs Division I nonconference games," said Shulman, noting that his Mocs will play seven of those games in McKenzie Arena this season. "It gives people an opportunity to be more creative with scheduling. It's going to work out well."

There is one other idea out there, which could change the candidates for CAA membership again, and this one is a doozy.

CAAHoops is floating the idea that the conference should just drop football altogether.

Clearly football-a tremendously expensive gamble if you don't play BCS-is compelling institutions to make hasty and irrational decisions. It's tearing apart the fabric of great basketball constructions. It will happen again and there's nothing a conference can do about it.

Well, there is one thing. Stop the madness. Freeze it out like a dermatologist excises a wart. Yep, football and dreams. That's the root of this problem so we need to eradicate that lethal mixture before it rips out our innards again.

BAM! How do you like them apples?

The move would eliminate the impetus for schools to leave, and give schools the ability to pour more resources into basketball.

That sounds a lot like a conference that has had some success in college basketball: the Atlantic 10.

Of course, that is a big money decision, and one that can't be taken lightly. It almost definitely won't be taken over the next few days.

But it is an intriguing one, and one that could solve a lot of the conference's woes and give it a strong new identity, not as the "premier conference in the FCS," but as the best mid-major basketball conference.

Food for thought, much tastier than stale danishes.