SoCon commissioner sees a bright future
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Southern Conference commissioner John Iamarino stood in front of players, coaches and reporters and spoke about the state of the conference at the league’s football media day on Wednesday.
His message? Everything’s just fine.
After a down year in 2014, the Football Championship Subdivision league started to get back to the standard it had set prior to the defections of powers Appalachian State and Georgia Southern to the Football Bowl Subdivision, along with Elon leaving for the Colonial Athletic Association.
“I think the league is back on the rise,” new Citadel head coach Brent Thompson said. “We weren’t down for very long. We’re talking about recovering after two of the top teams leave, and they (Georgia Southern) go win the conference (Sun Belt) they go to. They do a great job of representing the Southern Conference at the next level.
“I won’t be surprised if we get three in the playoffs very soon.”
The SoCon almost had that last season. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and The Citadel shared the conference title and each won a playoff game. Western Carolina had as strong of a case for making the postseason as any team left out, with seven wins and losses only to the SoCon co-champions, as well as Southeastern Conference programs Tennessee and Texas A&M.
In addition, The Citadel defeated SEC program South Carolina and Furman beat FBS member Central Florida.
Iamarino said this isn’t the first time the league has had to re-invent itself after a big loss.
“Marshall was a member, a national contender,” he said. “They left (after the 1996 season) and we added Wofford. People said, ‘How are you going to replace Marshall?’ Well, Wofford got better … I think it’s a natural process. We’ve got two very young programs in Mercer and ETSU, and it’s gonna take some time, but now we’ve settled in with our membership and we’re poised to get back to where we were.
“Frankly, we’re looking for a lead dog. Chattanooga has shown signs. It’s great to see the rebirth of Citadel, and Samford, Furman, Wofford and Western are looking to fill that void, too, so I do feel optimistic.”
There was talk in the offseason about the FCS adjusting the regionalization process of the playoffs. It’s intended to limit the amount of travel for teams, which in turn positively affects the overall bottom line, but it also potentially causes rematches of games played in the regular season.
UTC had to play Jacksonville State, a team it opened the season with, while The Citadel had to face Charleston Southern. A number of commissioners around the country voiced displeasure in the process.
“The commissioners and members of the FCS would certainly like to see teams seeded high playing someone lower in the playoffs and for them to not worry about regionalization so much,” Iamarino said, “but the bottom line is the bottom line, and the NCAA, as they look at all championships, their argument is that we need to do this with all of our championships — other than men’s basketball, which carries the freight for everyone else.”
While there could be changes made soon, it doesn’t seem they will be drastic ones. Iamarino said that complaints made to the NCAA regarding last season’s “over-regionalization” may have opened the eyes of the 10-member committee that makes final decisions. There has been talk of more money being made available for an additional flight to prevent rematches of regular-season games.
“It may not be the perfect system that we’d like to see with a true seed, one through 24, but I think we can get away from the strict regionalization that hamstrings us into playing teams we’ve already played,” Iamarino said.