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Word On The Street: SELC Meeting

SELC conference logo

On Sunday, the SELC had their annual fall meeting to go over rules and new changes for the upcoming spring season.  I was lucky enough to follow along and get some info from Florida assistant coach Mike Biffel as it was happening.

Check out the tweets below:

Twitter coverage in all it’s glory, right?

I followed up with an email to him with questions I had about specific things that came up in the meeting.

The first one: Why wasn’t Tulane even allowed to present it’s case?

“Executive Board denied Tulane’s bid to present their case for SELC admission due to geographic limitations, as well as current membership in the Lonestar Alliance. I don’t think they felt it made sense for the league to expand north and west in the same year (due to addition of West Virginia), especially when the league has formed a steering committee to evaluate the potential future split into two conferences. Also there were expressed concerns about Tulane’s program stability compared to West Virginia. West Virginia was the safer addition given the reputation of their coach (name eluding me) who has been with the team for 4 years and is the chief administrator of their financial affairs.

Also, returning to the WVU vs. Tulane discussion, the addition of one program (WVU) brings the SELC to 20 teams (4 divisions of 5 teams). This of course was considered by the executive board prior to Auburn fiasco.”

Makes sense. The SELC is already gigantic enough without the addition of either Tulane or West Virginia. I suspect that if they wait until the conference splits, which is very likely in the near future, they’ll be accepted right away.

Then there was Auburn’s no-show and subsequent probation.

“Auburn was placed on full probation due to failure to attend today’s mandatory meeting for the second time in three years. Also rumors of no coach, no student leadership, dissension amongst players, and sitting out fall ball. Serious consideration was made for expulsion, but a team must currently be on probation for that to be an option, which wasn’t the case. Auburn has one week to schedule divisional opponents before further action can be considered.”

Pretty much self-explanatory. They’re shooting themselves in the foot!

Shorter’s no-show was far more surprising, especially since they had essentially been pre-approved to join the SELC over the summer.

“Shorter’s no show will absolutely affect future consideration because they had more or less been pre-approved by executive board nor did Shorter have the courtesy to inform the board of non attendance. Only speculation, but maybe they are reevaluating the MCLA as the launch point of their program. As a point of reference, High Point University just recently announced the addition of an NCAA D1 men’s lacrosse program. Four or five years ago they presented to the SELC a very impressive plan to join the league as a school-sponsored sport a la Davenport. They were immediately accepted but after one year of SELC play withdrew from the league (The Lax Edit: They were really bad, and still are). Again, I’m not familiar with Shorter College or their athletics program, so just speculating.”

And just to give you a preview of how the divisions worked out, both D1 and D2 were split into North and South divisions, which were then split into East and West regions.

For D1, you have Clemson, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt in the North East; East Carolina, NC State, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia in the North West; Florida, UCF, USF, FSU, and Miami in the South East; and Alabama, Auburn (for now), Ole Miss, Georgia and Georgia Tech.

For D2, you have Charlotte, Wofford, Furman, Coastal Carolina, and Citadel in the North East; Appalachian State, Davidson, Elon, Liberty, and Southern Virginia in the North West; College of Charleston, Georgia Southern, North Florida, Palm Beach Atlantic, and SCAD in the South East; and Emory, Georgia State, Kennesaw State, Reinhardt, and Tennessee Wesleyan in the South West.

Both D1 and D2 will have the same format that D1 did last year. The top 2 teams from each region make the SELC tournament.

Again, I’d like to thank Mike Biffel for his coverage of the SELC meeting and allowing me to publish his tweets!