Thursday, October 4, 2007 11:10 PM CDT
Big change not necessarily the case in LIC muddle
By RICK DAWSON Staff Writer
rdawson@jg-tc.com
How much room does the Little Illini Conference have to grow? Maybe not as much as Wednesday’s meeting of league administrators might give us reason to believe. Or perhaps even more.
Expansion would make the best sense in odd numbers, as few as one and as many as five.
For at least a few more weeks we can continue to speculate. The next meeting of LIC principals isn’t slated to take place until next week and the league’s athletics directors won’t gather until Oct. 17. In any event, Paris, Newton, Robinson, Olney and Mount Carmel have listened and the waiting period, according to Mount Carmel AD Doug Spear, could be in the 30- to 40-day range.
“We went there as an informal meeting to see what the Little Illini was going to do,” Spear said. “We haven’t applied to the Little Illini or anything. Since we’re the only Illinois school that plays in an Indiana conference we would listen to any conference in Illinois just to see what would happen.”
Mount Carmel is currently a member of the Big 8, an Indiana conference that took the school under its wing after the North Egypt folded and it was turned down for entry by the Apollo. The school has a football enrollment of 649, which makes it significantly larger than the LIC’s largest current member, Marshall, with 478.
That means that the existence of a mega conference consisting of a dozen or more schools would be the Golden Aces’ best bet for entry. Spear is hardly expecting to be embraced by every conference. But the nightmare of finding enough games has trailed Mount Carmel ever since it left the NEC. During the fourth week, it sent feelers to four states – Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio – searching for possible candidates before Rantoul obliged.
Making matters worse, Indiana’s playing schedule begins a week earlier than Illinois’s.
“Just to be realistic, we have no reason to think that the Little Illini’s small schools, say, would want to have Mount Carmel,” Spear said. “We’re very happy being in the Big 8. They’ve taken good care of us.
“Basically, we have a hard time scheduling football games. We don’t have a hard time scheduling anything but football. You create a monster. Generally we’re pretty decent in football and we have a hard time getting teams to play us.”
Mount Carmel’s quandary is one shared by a number of others. Moving the maximum of five schools into the LIC and splitting into two groups of seven would still leave three football games to be scheduled on either side. And crossing that divide within the conference probably won’t be an option.
So perhaps it would be reasonable to assume that the Apollo will be losing one school. As the smallest, Robinson has to be taken into consideration first. As a natural rival of two of the smallest LIC members, Palestine-Hutsonville and Oblong, in other sports, the Maroons would leave the Apollo and salvage a major overhaul in both conferences.
But that’s a prediction that doesn’t come with the benefit of knowing how school boards will hash this out. Their sentiments are fuzzy at best.
“We’ve been instructed by our principal not to make comments,” Red Hill coach Bill Evans said.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is how many schools have jumped into the fire. Almost all, except Mount Carmel, would find themselves linked to a familiar rival. Marshall, for instance, used to play Paris regularly in football prior to realignment.
“Quite frankly I’m so busy with the other stuff that I’m not really partaking too much in the buzz,” Marshall football coach and AD Troy Johnson said. “Actually, there’s a lot of directions that people could go. I think there are a number of teams that would be interested in coming into the LIC. I don’t know how the principals are going to vote. The easy way is to plug one team in.
“Which rumor do you want to listen to? I think there may be another person in the conference that may be interested in bringing in more than one and have a big-school, small-school division. I know there’s been that discussion. But that’s all hearsay.
“You’re doing an injustice if you’re not looking at all possibilities. I think it’s important that everyone sits down with everyone else and makes decisions that are best for everybody, including the small schools.”
So what to make of Wednesday’s meeting? Predictions aside, not necessarily more than meets the eye.
Rick Dawson may be reached at rdawson@jg-tc.com or 238-6855.
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