McMurry to Join SCAC

McMurry and the SCAC have announced that McMurry will be joining the conference in 2024-25. McMurry is currently a member of the ASC. This will put the SCAC at 10 full members while dropping the ASC to 8 full members. It continues a disturbing trend in the ASC of losing member schools. In 2018, they had 12 full-time members. UT-Tyler then announced they were leaving to go to the DII. Last year, they lost Louisiana College who had only joined a few years earlier to the NAIA. Prior to this year, Belhaven decided to move to a Region VI conference for logistical reasons.

For those unfamiliar with McMurry, they played in the ASC until 2011 when they decided to make the move to DII. They decided to reverse course just three years later and come back to DIII. They sponsor 20 sports and were an affiliate member of the SCAC in men’s and women’s swimming and diving. For those that don’t know how that works, full member schools will play in their conference for all sports sponsored by that conference. If they have sports that are not part of that conference, they will move to another as an affiliated member. This happens a lot in football as the ASC sponsors the sport but the SCAC does not. In fact, I assume McMurry will become an affiliated member in the ASC in football now. (This sparked a thought, which I’ll continue at the end of this article.)

The SCAC was down to 6 members back in 2012 as half of the schools bolted for a better fit to the east. To get to six, they added Centenary from the ASC. The following year they added Texas Lutheran and Schreiner (from the ASC) and then St Thomas (formally an NAIA schools) a few years later. McMurry will make the fourth ASC school absorbed by the SCAC in the last decade. (As a side note, you really have to credit the SCAC leadership for turning things around. I wasn’t writing back in 2012 but that had to be a dark period for the conference.)

Looking at volleyball, this is a positive for the SCAC. I believe the conference will stick with their pod approach where one school hosts a number of schools. This allows more matches to be played in a shorter amount of time, which frees up other weekends for out-of-conference play. The ASC has struggled the past two years with their home and home scheduling as most of their schools have stuck with just one tournament and then conference play. A side effect of the change is that the ASC will have an easier time of scheduling and it probably opens a third weekend for those schools that want to make use of it. That means more opportunity for the ASC and SCAC to cross play.

For the ASC, I’m unsure how this will play out. First, we have to hope that this is it and the conference can maintain their 8 schools. As I said above, this should help scheduling but it also means we need to see programs that don’t typically travel start doing more of that in the future.

As for McMurry, they are a quality institution with a good sports department. It will make the SCAC tougher but my hope is that we’ll see more traveling from the McMurry volleyball program. It’s a little strange that they share their city with Hardin-Simmons and would leave them but I’m sure a home and home non-conference series will be retained.

Back to football. Centenary announced they are bringing football back to their institution. With McMurry in the fold, this would give the SCAC 6 football programs; Centenary, McMurry, Trinity, Southwestern, Austin College and TLU. I believe Schreiner is also bringing back football in a couple of years. So, upon further review (ha ha…get it), this is probably all about football and getting that sport back into the SCAC. Even at the DIII level, it’s all about football.

Update: Hearing that football was definitely a piece of this decision. Also heard that the assumption is that the conference would stay with pod scheduling in volleyball.