DePauw couldn't pass up chance to join NCAC

While DePauw was winning its fifth consecutive Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference President's Trophy this year, university administrators were contemplating a change in competitive scenery.Word of DePauw's potential conference change hit the Internet a few days before North Coast Athletic Conference officials would have liked, and Wednesday's 10 a.m. announcement merely confirmed what many students and athletes knew to be true.

When asked Tuesday afternoon about the yet-to-be-announced decision, NCAC Executive Director Keri Alexander Luchowski said, "It's been really interesting trying to keep a secret."--

DePauw and the conference metaphorically shook hands just last week when President Brian Casey responded with a resounding "yes" to the NCAC's only extended invitation.

"Obviously we were preparing with hopes that DePauw would say yes, but we really wanted to make sure we could pull everything together and everybody was on board before it got out,"Luchowski said. "It was interesting. But it's fun. It's an exciting time for us."

The idea of DePauw changing conferences was not simply a reaction to the NCAC's invite. In fact, Casey has been examining the university's conference for a while.

"He and I have been talking about conference affiliation for two years, since he's come to campus," said DePauw Athletic Director Page Cotton.

"When this opportunity was presented, we kind of looked at the plusses and the minuses, and it really seemed like the right thing to do. If we both had our druthers, we would have probably preferred that the North Coast presented us with this option in December of '09, but that isn't the way it worked."

Cotton said that when weighing different conference options, administrators had three things in mind.

"One is that we wanted to be competing with like institutions. Secondly, we didn't feel we could be independent, that is, not affiliated with a conference. And the third thing is we had to be wanted by a conference."

And with the NCAC's recent loss of Earlham from the conference, adding DePauw made perfect sense.

"DePauw really was - I don't want to say a no-brainer because it sounds like a cliché - but it is," Luchowski said. "It came down to a really easy decision for us to offer membership. DePauw as an institution has a lot of the same philosophies towards athletics that the North Coast does. It's a good fit."

Now, DePauw has about 14 months to prepare for the switch, as the conference change will not start until the fall of 2011. At that time every DePauw sport, except football, will become a member of the NCAC. Because the football schedule is already set for 2011, the team will join the NCAC in 2012.


Claiming ownership to the Monon Bell rivalry could benefit the NCAC dramatically, but Luchowski said it had little to do with the decision to invite DePauw. Monon will still be the last regular-season game between DePauw and Wabash College.
"If both schools did not have the same philosophy on academics and athletics as a small piece of a larger academic mission, I don't think we would have either of the schools in our conference," she said. "The fact that there is this rivalry, that just makes it a little more exciting."
So what does the NCAC offer that the SCAC didn't?

For starters, there are major differences in geography. The NCAC comprises ten schools all within three states - two in Indiana, seven in Ohio, and one in Pennsylvania. DePauw racks up high mileage traveling to SCAC schools as far west as Colorado and as far south as Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

Wabash is clearly the most recognizable name on the NCAC's conference roll call, but other teams such as Ohio Wesleyan and Denison have been frequent DePauw non-conference opponents.


Proponents of the SCAC argue that the widespread conference attracts prospective students from more states, but Casey said the administration had found that to be untrue.

"According to our admissions office, we haven't seen that the presence of our sports competitions in Texas and Alabama have driven admission from that area," Casey said.

The closer conference will benefit more than just the student athletes, Casey said.

"The conference has a smaller geographical footprint," he said. "More parents and more fans can go to more games."

Those road trips aren't cheap, either.

"To say that we made the move strictly on cost is not really totally accurate," Cotton said. Because we wouldn't have moved to a conference to save money if it wasn't a conference that provides us with the things that we think are important to our student athletes - which is to play with like-minded institutions, and I think that we're going to find very quickly that some great rivalries are going to spring up pretty quickly."

--Christine DiGangi contributed to this story.

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