Southwest Baptist will be allowed to opt out of playing football in the MIAA starting in the 2008 season.
The MIAA CEO Council voted for the decision at the NCAA Division II Presidents and Chancellors Summit in San Diego on June 22. SBU announced on Tuesday it would exercise that option.
The announcement makes room in football for new member Nebraska-Omaha to compete in the 2008 season while also keeping SBU as a conference participant in every other sport.
“The presidents honed in on something that Southwest Baptist needed for them,” Emporia State athletic director Kent Weiser said. “In the big picture, SBU has been a great member of the conference for a long time. The presidents decided to not let football run the show.”
The measure was initially turned down when proposed to the MIAA’s Institutional Representatives.
The CEO Council, which has the power to ratify or not ratify, decided to go against the representatives’ vote and allow SBU to compete independently in football.
Weiser, who voted against the proposal on the first ballot, said he wasn’t ever dead-set in his opinion.
“At first, I thought if you’re in the conference, you need to play all the sports. You can’t just pick and choose,” Weiser said. “But I went back and forth on it.”
Beginning in the 2008 season, SBU will not be on the MIAA football schedule and will not be eligible for the championship or any conference awards.
UNO will take SBU’s place in the schedule that season to allow the MIAA to continue its offering of a nine-game MIAA slate.
SBU joined the MIAA in the 1987-88 season.
The Bearcats have always struggled to compete in the sport, posting just three seasons with more than four conference wins. Two of those years came in SBU’s first five seasons in the MIAA.
Though some have worried that a bad precedent would be set by allowing MIAA schools to pick the sports they compete in, Weiser said he didn’t foresee it becoming a problem.
“I’m not really concerned,” Weiser said. “We just have to realize and come to grips with the fact that football is becoming a completely different sport than any other competitively.”