Butler announced yesterday that they would move from the Horizon Conference to the Atlantic-10 Conference a year early and would play women's and men's soccer in the A-10 this fall. That can cause a few scheduling problems. The women's schedule has not been released yet and there are only two othere Horizon teams that show games with Butler. The men's schedule was released a month ago and shows a full slate of games with Horizon teams. I am sure chaos reigns somewhere.
Also note that Virginia Commonwealth has made a sudden(?) move from the Colonial Athletic Conference to the Horizon Conference. The women's and men's schedules were posted earlier on their website and were entered in the SIS system. However VCU has since pulled both schedules. Chaos is rampant.
Will a move to the A-10 force Butler to invest in the Women's Program? Don't know much about them but it doesn't seem like they have been a actor in the Horizon for years.
Doesn't look like a middle of the pack team. 1 winning season in 6 years in a bottom conference. Year School Overall Record League Record 2006 Butler 5-11-3 (.342) 2-4-1 (.357)2007 Butler 10-9-1 (.525) 5-3-0 (.625)2008 Butler 11-11-0 (.500) 4-4-0 (.500)2009 Butler 7-11-2 (.381) 3-4-1 (.438)2010 Butler 9-11-0 (.450) 6-2-0 (.750)2011 Butler 8-10-2 (.450) 3-5-0 (.375) TOTAL 50-63-8 (.446)
At .500 or above in the league for three of six seasons? That's the very definition of middle of the pack.
Didn't mean to cause an argument. All I was saying is the A-10 is a step up from the Horizon and they are a 6th place team. They tied Xavier and X finished 11th. No disrespect to Butler but the past 4-6 years have been the worst in the program's history.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va.--Atlantic 10 Conference Commissioner Bernadette V. McGlade released the following statement on Butler University’s accelerated admission into the A-10: “The Atlantic 10 is looking forward to welcoming Butler immediately for participation in our league. We are willing to make all necessary schedule adjustments and modifications to accommodate Butler’s entry into the A-10 on July 1, 2012. “The unexpected circumstances that precipitated Butler’s request to move immediately were unfortunate, but we will welcome Butler into the A-10 as a valuable new member. The Atlantic 10 has the potential to have the strongest year in league history in 2012-13 with 16 outstanding programs.” So does anyone know what the unexpected circumstances were? Will the A10 split into a West East division, or are they already playing that kind of schedule? I would think St. Louis and Xavier are happy to have a closer trip than the east coast. As far as Butler, I heard that they had a Japanese junior national team player lined up for this fall, but don't see it on their website. Anyone heard anything about that?
The unexpected circumstances were the Horizon League banning Butler from conference tournaments because of their scheduled departure, meaning they couldn't win any automatic bids for NCAA Tournaments.
Butler's been funding women's soccer, but the program hasn't really gotten much traction under current leadership. The move to the A10 may create more pressure, since they're probably not good enough to stay around the .500 mark in the new league, but you'd think the department will have other priorities unless bigger problems than lack of winning crop up.
How does the funding work? Is each program given a stipend for travel to scout players, to travel to games, kits, help with academic money to supplement athletic offers, pay coaches? And how does the University determine that? I know the basketball program brings in all the money, but how is is spread around the low revenue sports. I know butler has some descent, although not great facilities. Soccer does not have a designated pitch, but what they have is pretty nice. Obviously the school is going to be shelling out a lot more money for travel for all their teams this coming year so how does that play into it all?
I just noticed that North Texas and FIU are both leaving the Sunbelt for Conference USA. That makes for some huge travel in CUSA! Is anyone going TO the Sunbelt? It has to be the one of the weakest soccer conference in the NCAA without Denver, NT, and FIU now. WKU will nearly have a walk to the title and they spent the spring losing to OVC teams. Seems like for all the sports, these moves will weaken the Sunbelt a lot.
I think you bring up a great point. Generally when people talk about funding, they're talking about the number of scholarships you can give out (Butler was in the top end of the Horizon on that afaik), but if you have a limited budget for team travel/recruiting/etc. that scholarship money may not go as far. I have no idea where Butler fits in, but I'd think they'll be fairly low on the A10 totem poll in terms of program budget, despite being ok in terms of # of scholys.
The move was obvioulsy for the Basketball team. Although the butler bowl is a nice venue, and works well for when IU mens soccer, or when another big program comes to town, it is not ordinarily a great soccer venue. The facilities are mostly at the Fieldhouse, and again even though the history and atmosphere is great for basketball games, the locker rooms and ancilliary facilities for varsity athletes are not that good. You can only go so long talking about the education and the importance of it (while I agree 100% with that statement), the sell starts to get more dificult if teams are not succesful. I hope that the move will help attract some good talent for women's soccer, but as mentioned before they may struggle for a few years or more if something isn't done with the program.
