By TOMMY REZAC
St. Joseph Post
The MIAA is joining four other NCAA Division II conferences to sponsor legislation that would modify the current football schedule format.
MIAA football teams, since 2014, have played 11 conference games in 11 weeks. No bye week and no non-conference games.
The MIAA is now sponsoring NCAA legislation that would allow DII schools to play 11 games over a 12-week period. Essentially, teams could play a "week zero" game, meaning they'd be able to play a week earlier than the designated start date.
MIAA commissioner Mike Racy says this will create flexibility for Division II schools to schedule non-conference games, and also have a bye week during their season.
"Not increasing the number of games, but adding a week to play those games makes all the sense in being able to create scheduling flexibility," Racy said. "The opportunity to find more non-conference opponents with an open date."
Racy says player safety is the biggest benefit to this proposed change.
"The healthy and safety issue," he said. "Providing a week off for our student-athletes at some point during the season I think makes sense from a safety and recovery standpoint."
Missouri Western head football coach Tyler Fenwick says this would give teams an exciting opportunity to schedule a non-conference game each season.
"It gives you an opportunity to get outside the MIAA and play someone different," Fenwick said. "It might strengthen or it might hurt your strength of schedule, depending how good that team is."
This legislation will be voted on in January at the 2024 NCAA Convention in Phoenix during a Division II membership vote.
Not only could the football schedules be changing, but the footprint of the MIAA could be expanding in the years ahead.
Lincoln University is leaving the MIAA after this academic year, leaving the conference with 11 total football teams for now.
Missouri Western, Northwest Missouri State and eight other MIAA schools will play Lincoln in football this fall, but it will count as a non-conference game. Lincoln is joining the Great Lakes Valley Conference next year.
With Lincoln leaving, each football team in the MIAA will now have 10 conference games and one non-conference game, if they choose to schedule one, on their schedule going forward.
Arkansas-Fort Smith is joining the MIAA in 2024, but they don't field a football team. Racy says the long-term plan is to add more football schools to the league.
"I don't know if we get to 16 or 18, but we want to grow," he said. "I think our top priority is to add a football school to take us from 11 (football schools) after Lincoln leaves to get us back to 12."
Racy says expanding the conference to 14 or even 16 teams would allow the MIAA to form divisional-based sports schedules with a north and south division.
He mentioned Interstate 70 in Missouri could be a practical, albeit hypothetical, dividing line to decide which schools are in what division.
"If and when we expand, I think the answer for the MIAA is going to be divisions," he said. "A north and south division. I think a north-south alignment, maybe even along the I-70 corridor, provides the MIAA in football and other sports a great divisional alignment that makes a lot of sense."
"In football, what it does is it will preserve the opportunity for our schools to go out with that divisional scheduling arrangement to go out and schedule non-conference games."
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