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And one more factor...they don't have football. Their facilities were ok for an NAIA school.

Burly Bear

I see...

Anyone see this headling from OK City?
4/02/2007 - OCU nails 14 homers in 8-2, 13-8 sweep of OBU
No, that's not Ouachita Baptist.

OCU also doesn't have football... but they do have rowing!



UCO has a nice football stadium. Apparently their baseball field has been put on the back burner.

It could be real confusing with OCU playing UCO.

Clarification children.....UCO= UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA
OCU= OKLAHOMA CITY UNIVERSITY

Burly Bear

Just so everyone knows, I heard about the UCO move directly from someone in their athletic administration. They are adding rowing to help get to the 16 sports needed. They are strong in wrestling, but finding a wrestling conference may be hard so they may stay independent. The move is planned for the 2009 season. Golf (m and w) is their initial choice for fast tracking (although that might change) and they are building new athletic facilities. Their school enrollment is around 15,000+. 2013 will be their first year as a full D1 member if all goes as planned. Someone with Univ. of Tulsa ties also confirmed this with me.

Question now is HOW BIG DOES THE SOUTHLAND NEED TO BE OR WANT TO BE? I know they would like to join us in the Southland but so would Houston Baptist, TX Pan American, OK City, and I even heard Tarleton State.

Don't forget Centenary. They have applied for the SLC before and were even asked to apply by the SLC last go around. They'd like out of the Mid Con and to a more travel friendly conference...

Tarleton St applied in the year that UCA, A&M-CC, Centenary and UT-Pan American tried getting in. I think if they showed a commitment, there would be a spot for them when they were ready.

SLC is fine at 12 teams. Football-wise, I'm a big proponent of nine, which could come from an internal source, because that'd be four home and four away games yearly in SLC play.

The schools most likely to leave are Texas State - San Marcos, Lamar and UTSA. UTSA is a school that is in a major market and if they had all their ducks in a row, would have no issue moving up to C-USA. Lamar adding football will be interesting to see how that changes things on their front, if they get there and then of course, those folks in San Marcos have already announced a move to FBS once before and are still waiting their arrival there...

SLC needs to only bring in a non-FB school if they lose a non-FB school or a current non-FB adds football...

Would not surprise me to see Texas State try to move to FBS .... I would think they are Arkansas State's level or higher (no insult intended to ASU but TSU has had some fine ball teams in past)....and have aspirations beyond FBS... by the way, their star women trackster is a graduate of Jonesboro, Arkansas and was All-American in D1 Indoor Track at Fayetteville recently in the 800m dash.


UCO is in Edmond and has some similarities to UCA. Edmond and Conway are roughly similar in size and close to much larger state capitol city. Both live in shadow (athletically) of the best known state university. Both are strong in academics ( the wife of a friend of mine is an art professor at UCO and thinks highly of the academics ... used to be a prof at OU). I think UCA maybe used to play UCO back in 70s or maybe in a playoff game...they have great recruiting geography even with OU, OSU and the Texas schools working Oklahoma. They play in Lone Star Conference. Mascot is Bronchos...not Broncos. Stadium seats 10,000 and is home to Edmond area high schools also. Stadium pictures at

http://www.nmnathletics.com/PhotoAlbum. ... EM_ID=7300

Athletic website at:

http://www.bronchosports.com/HomePage.d ... =7300&KEY=


2007 UCO Football Schedule

Sept. 1 Abilene Christian@ Edmond 6 p.m.
Sept. 8 Emporia State Edmond 6 p.m.
Sept. 15 Angelo State@ San Angelo, Texas 6 p.m.
Sept. 22 Eastern New Mexico@ Edmond 6 p.m.
Sept. 29 Texas A&M-Commerce* Commerce, Texas TBA
Oct. 4 East Central* Ada, Okla. 7 p.m.
Oct. 20 Southeastern Oklahoma* Durant, Okla. 2 p.m.
Oct. 27 Southwestern Oklahoma* Edmond 6 p.m.
Nov. 3 West Texas A&M@ Canyon, Texas 2 p.m.
Nov. 10 Northeastern State* Edmond 2 p.m.

This would be a much better road trip (only about 4 hours to Edmond on I-40) for UCA fans than San Marcos (however, wives would love factory outlet malls there).

GoBears!!

so it would seem the landscape of the SLC will change at some point in the future obviously.

I'm kinda in line to agree with TT on who and how to add to the SLC. If the SLC just starts adding schools that may or may not have football, you might end up with a whacked out number or uneven for divisions. However, if you lose 1 non-playing football school, you can add 1 non-football schools. And vica versa, if you lose a football school, add a football school.

How soon does anyone think adding other schools will be? I know bizarro said UCO is wanting to come in '09 (great info. bizarro!) What about those other schools mentioned?

I don't think they will get into our conference in '09 but who knows. They may have to do what Corpus did and be independent for a while. Believe me, UCA getting into a conference right away was HUGE!!!!!!!!!!!!

yes it was, and I'm thankful for that...

I figured I still had a little free time left so I decided to checkout your website. I officially support two schools Tarleton and Texas State, but I like to keep up to date on all the schools we compete with.

On the subject of Tarleton joining the Southland, I have heard a couple reasons why it didn't occur the last time around. One is that are facilities are not up to D-1 standards. This came from messageboards, in particularly I think it was TexasTerror. Our stadium currently holds 7000 and our Basketball arena holds 3000. There are currently rumors that the are going remodel stadium and possibly expand arena.
The second reason comes from a member of our student government who was part of a student committee with that met with President McCabe and AD-Lonn Reisman about the potential move. He states that Tarleton backed out of transition because of several economic reasons, 1. we are in the process of constructing several new large-$$ buildings and 2. we have the second lowest Tuition and Fees for any state-funded University in Texas. Our administration likes to use this as an great, affordable education.


I have said for a long time that I think UCO would be a great expansion for the SLC. It is located just outside of Oklahoma City, they already have a good number of sports (including wrestling and Ice hockey), and a large student body to support the upgrade.
The only problem that I see is that they may have a hard time drawing fans. Oklahoma already has two GIANT BS teams (OU and OSU) and Tulsa to a lesser extent. Considering the state is not that large and most people support one of the larger schools, I think UCO might get lost in the middle of all of that.

good to see you finally come on over here chrisattsu! Hope you stick around here for a while!

UCO after looking over their facilities, at least football, and seeing some of their basketball facility, look like they are ready. I wouldnt mind trips to OKC, and it would obviously be another decent sized media outlet that the SLC is always looking to incorporate, at least that was what I thought part of the reason they wanted us for, becasue of the LR market.

I'm not going to lie to you chrisattsu, I dont know much about Tarleton, but then that is why you are here to catch us up, might as well ask someone in the know.

I also read over something that it looks a as if Texas St. is looking to move up to BS status in football sooner rather than later.

If that is the case, then bring on UCO!

There was a push back in 2000-2001 to make then-SWT a D-1A school by the 2004 season. Somewhere along the way things got botched and it did not happen. From what I have been told, there was a general apathy around the football program until the 2005 semi-final run. Since that time people are constantly asking why we don't go BS. They want to go to games against UT / A&M / Houston / TCU, not McNeese, SELA, and SFA.

To understand Texas State's desire to move you have to understand their students. Popular thought with students (general population and student government) is that we are the third most popular choice for students in the state of Texas ( total number of applications), We have the 7th largest student population in the state--28,000 students, and 'we are academically superior to most--if not all--of the other schools in our conference' (LARGE EGO).

Personally, I have a lot of problems with these type of people. We are popular because we were "#1 party school" and we are located between Austin and San Antonio on a river. Our 28,000 students and are large number of alumni, can't fill a 15,000 person stadium, and our academics are good, but not superior. Superiority may occur in individual programs, but not across the board.

I suspect that the students are going to push hard for this within the next couple of years. The talks of UTSA adding football is trying to push some into action. Others just want to us BS as a way to raise our profile around the state and country.


--Sorry I need to learn to keep my posts shorter!

No you don't. You provide good information!