Embedded the announcement press conference below.


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Hey everyone.

As St. Bona fan, a basketball-first fan (and basically anti-BCS guy in general), it's awesome to have you guys joining the league!

Really looking forward to the new-look A-10 going forward (although next year could be pretty rough for my squad with our five seniors this year, but I'll take it if we can match what you guys did in 2018).

Just want to post 90-95% agreement with Toledo and all the folks who wrote how much they appreciate the MVC, (most of) the people and fans around the league, the FANTASIC CONFERENCE TOURNAMENT, having great road trips around the Midwest to see our team(s) play, and the really good opportunity we had joining the league.

The one minor point on which I'd disagree is how terrible a bet we were as a replacement to join the MVC. As everyone has mentioned, we were a foothold for the league in the Chicago market, where so many MVC alums live and work. We helped a bit with media, and then when we became good we helped a lot with media. We had a smallish but brand new and right-sized facility for our team in the age of streaming video coverage of every game. We had history-- the '63 National Championship, the '85 Sweet 16, a #1 overall NBA Draft pick, etc. We had probably the best academic profile of any school that has been a member of the MVC in the past 40 years. We were financially healthy and on the upswing in enrollment during a downturn in college enrollment nationwide. We had a commitment to spend and invest in athletics, yes, but we had a history of success, we're in a great market for assistant coaches to work, we have some great athletes in our back yard, and an upgrade in conference affiliation would help us capitalize on those attributes. In short, we were fundamentally and strategically sound in every single measure except recent success in men's basketball.

But going back to where Toledo and I completely agree, the MVC is a great conference. I had hoped there would be a way that the MVC could poach members from the A-10 to vault over them. That would have solved the problem, creating a "little brother" Big East with a range of public and private schools that would rival or best the A-10. But there was no way, apparently, the rest of the MVC teams would upgrade their budgets enough to ensure that they'd be competitive at the national level with P5+BE conference consolidation.

We were told several times by reporters and the league that there's no current offer or interest from the Big East in Dayton or Saint Louis. I hope that holds. If so, we've made the right decision, and a decision that's tough but one we have to make. No disrespect for the MVC, but we've been through that situation before, and inaction mired us in 20 years of futility and decline as a program.

One last comment... one of the things that really worked for us when we went to the MVC was being gracious. As a fanbase, we were exceedingly gracious to just about everyone and we defended ourselves well, but never attacked. I think that works. It's also funny how most of the people and schools who loved to trash us as a program and a fanbase now either envy us or grudgingly admire the place where we are as a program.

After listening to the MVC podcast about Loyola's departure, is the increase travel to some difficult destinations (i.e. still good drives from any nearby airport) like URI, UMass, St. Bonaventure, a major hindrance on the student-athletes in terms of time management? Traditionally athletic conferences were more geographically based so time issues on the students themselves was not major. I wonder....

We're talking college athletics here who cares about students

Using your URI example, mapquest says it’s just under 30 minutes from the airport in Providence to their campus. That’s a quicker trip than Rogers Park to O’Hare on some days. And, honestly, it’s about the same time that it takes to get from the airport in Southern Illinois to SIU’s arena. We’ve supposedly been chartering flights to a handful of conference games for a few years now, so I’m not sure if the new travel will be as difficult a transition as it might first appear.

I think Valentine is the big winner in all of this. He takes a step up in his career without leaving the job. If he continues the success he'd be more marketable to big name schools more quickly.

Contingent on continuing to win.

I would think that in the world today, traveling is easier while being a student. With a lot of classes being online and being able to zoom, it should at least lower the stress of keeping up with classes when compared to the past. A non-stop flight to Rhode Island is only 2hrs long, so it's really not that big of a deal time management wise.

In terms of travel, I think it’s also worth noting that the addition of Belmont, and the potential additions of UT-Arlington and UMKC, were likely going to have us traveling by plane a lot more even if we stayed in the MVC.