Friday morning the ASUN conference announced the arrival of three new teams, Eastern Kentucky, Central Arkansas, and Jacksonville State, as well as the addition of NCAA FCS football to the sports offered by the conference.
All three teams will join the conference in the 2021-2022 school year and will bring the total enrollment to 12 teams in the ASUN.
“When a conference embarks on a mission to strengthen itself through expansion, it has to present a case for why a membership with one conference would be more beneficial to the institution than membership in its current conference,” ASUN Commissioner Ted Gumbart said in a release from the conference.
“The ASUN spent two years examining and defining its advantages and then presenting interested candidates with the option to join. Every institution will select the best option for conference affiliation from the available options. Each institution owes it to the student body, the athletic department and the university community as a whole to do what is best for the university. The ASUN works extremely hard to build options. To know that these three institutions have evaluated their options, and knowing each had multiple choices for conference affiliation and that they chose the ASUN is a great achievement. The ASUN Presidents’ Council set this process in place years ago when the Council members challenged the conference to be a great destination, and that would attract new member interest. The plan has worked and we are thankful for the visionary leadership of our Council to prioritize the student-athlete experience and the institutional value of being a member of the ASUN.”
Jacksonville State is located in Jacksonville, Alabama, Eastern Kentucky is located in Richmond, Kentucky, and Central Arkansas is located in Conway, AR, further cementing the southern footprint of the conference, who lost its only northern school last year when NJIT left.
How the ASUN will schedule games with the addition of these teams remains to be seen, since the pre-COVID ASUN home-and-home schedules would be extended by 6 games when EKY, UCA, and JVST are added.
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Image courtesy of the ASUN Conference.