VALDOSTA —
The Gulf South Conference is inching closer to growing in size, and adding another university to its list of members.
Lee University, located in Cleveland, Tenn., became the latest higher-education institution to begin the transition of becoming an NCAA Division II member and a member of the GSC.
The university’s application for membership was approved Friday by the NCAA Membership Committee, starting a three-year transition process into the Division II ranks.
Lee University’s transition is the same transition that Shorter University and Union University are currently in the process of completing. Both of those institutions are in the second year of the three-year transition and will play complete Division II varsity schedules this season.
The schools are not eligible for postseason play until they become full-time active members and won’t officially be introduced into the GSC until they are recognized as official Division II institutions.
Lee will stay an active member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) this season and will begin playing Division II varsity schedules starting in the 2013-14 athletic seasons, after being elevated to Year Candidacy 2 by the membership committee.
Like Shorter and Union, Lee is expected to gain membership into the Gulf South Conference upon official approval as a Division II institution following the 2014-15 athletic year.
“Nate Salant, Commissioner of the GSC, called Friday night to congratulate us,” said Lee University President Robert Conn in a release. “He and his staff have been very helpful through this process. He already is thinking of Lee as if we were already full members of the conference, and I am convinced more than ever that the Gulf South is going to be the best possible Division II conference in the country for us. Some people call it ‘the SEC of Division II,’ and I can see why it has such a great reputation.”
The Gulf South Conference extended an invitation of membership to Lee University because of the school’s plans to develop a football program. Currently, five GSC member schools play football. The conference lost seven football playing schools following the 2010 season. The seven schools, located in Arkansas, joined the newly-created Great American Conference.
The addition of Shorter University to the conference schedule this season brings the total of conference football games to five, which forces teams to schedule five non-conference games. The difficulty to fill non-conference games has led the GSC to begin looking for viable membership candidates that have or are in the process of developing football programs, like Lee and Union.
The GSC will also be adding Florida Tech to its list of football playing members starting in 2013 — the first year of the FIT football program. The university, located in Melbourne, Fla., will compete in the GSC as a football-only member.
The University of West Florida, a current member of the Gulf South Conference, is in the process of developing a football program too. The university hopes to begin play by 2015, according to a release by the university and the GSC earlier this year.
While the development of football programs will help bring the total of football playing schools up within the conference, 10 by 2015 (counting the establishments of programs at West Florida, Lee and Union, and barring no major setbacks), North Alabama, a current member of the GSC, has begun the transition to become a Division I institution.
Although UNA’s athletic Web site lists the 2012-13 as its final year of membership in the GSC — according to the Division I transition timeline — the university failed to withdraw from the GSC by the May 1 deadline, thus leading to the indication that the school will remain a member in the conference past the upcoming athletic year.
In order to begin the Division I transition process, a school must have proper funding and an invitation to join a Division I conference, neither of which it seems North Alabama has at this time.
Local Sports
Lee University cleared to begin Division II transition process
Gulf South eyeing football playing schools
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