Anyone ever hear of the Atlantic Soccer Conference? That will be the transition next season. I'm not sure I'm too excited about it. Read on:



http://fausports.cstv.com/sports/m-soccer/spec-rel/051006aaa.html

not too excited? It's actually a step back from the A-Sun if that's possible. Most of those colleges are D2. Atleast its men's soccer.

There goes the world cup berth!!!!!

I just went to the Atlantic Soccer conference web site. Thats where FIU was till they went CUSA. Looks like all the members are small northern colleges. They look like they're DII or D1-AA.

Unless there is a rule in A-Sun that all sports of a college must participate, I don't know why they didn't leave the soccer team there.


FAU will be the only D1 school, possibly. I will say in the defense of the conference, In NY state where most of these schools are, college soccer is popular, more so than football. In some high schools over there, soccer rivals football for the top fall varsity sport.

I agree Illi it didn't seem to be the smartest move. Hell why didn't they go to C-USA.

They are all Division I. There can't be a conference made up with teams from different classifications in terms of DI or DII. They all HAVE to be Division I, regardless of whether they play football or not or their classiifcation. Actually, I believe one of the teams in that conference was ranked in the top 25 last season (either Hartwick or Adelphi). FIU did play in this conference for around 5-6 years while in the Belt.

this is off of the ASC web site:

? The Atlantic Soccer Conference (ASC) began play in 2000 as nine (9) colleges and universities offering NCAA division I men's soccer while holding various divisional classifications within the NCAA membership.

FIU went on to Division I NCAA Regionals the last 4 years in a row we played in the ASC in Soccer. It provided an automatic berth for the winner of the conference. It wouldn't make any sense to have a DII school winning the conference and playing in the NCAA DI Soccer Championship, besides all those games against non D-I wouldn't count as D-I wins for the teams playing those games, thus not much gained.


I suppose they mean IA, or IAA, or IAAA in football "terminology", since it does say it is a "Division I men's soccer conference". In all other sports other than football it is only Division I, D-II, or D-III or NAIA if you are not under the NCAA umbrella.

I don't think we can just pick and chose which conference we want to play for, it's can be very difficult to align yourself with a conference like C-USA even if it's soccer only. We needed a conference for our soccer team and this is where we are at the moment, a latteral move to a better conference can still play it's self out later. Being affliliatted with a conference is far better then being an independent, at least the conference winners get an automatic berth to the NCAA tourny.

how about the women? sun belt?

hoot4fau said

how about the women? sun belt?

FAU is going all sports Sunbelt. Unfortunatley, there is no men's soccer. A few of the Sunbelt members have mens soccer though, one of which is FIU. Their soccer team is in CUSA.