Certainly not NAIA...but I assume as a small conference without an auto-bid unless they can find another conference that will provide this membership of convenience that the AEC did. Before the AEC association they were in a conference with South Atlantic roots. The article in the Bangor paper notes that the AEC found another school to join as a field hockey member, thus keeping their auto-bid without the cross-country travel problems.

Here is an article from the Bangor Daily News about the change in the AEC membership and divisional alignment. The article reports it will happen at the end of the 2018 season (i.e., now) rather than at the end of the 2019 season.

https://bangordailynews.com/2018/07/17/sports/umaine-sports/america-east-field-hockey-adds-member-to-end-east-west-format/

The Stockton Record:
https://www.recordnet.com/sports/20181203/pacific-cuts-field-hockey-program
(Says no other cuts anticipated.)

Channel 40:
https://fox40.com/2018/12/03/players-vow-to-fight-back-after-uop-cuts-womens-field-hockey-team/

Would dropping field hockey require UOP to make cuts in some men's program? Does it leave them with Title IX problems?

From the UOP news release:

Field hockey competes in the America East Conference, with most teams on the East Coast. It is one of four in California — the others being UC Davis, Cal Berkeley and Stanford — to make up the West Division of the America East Conference. America East notified the four California associate member institutions in field hockey this fall that this opportunity will be eliminated following the 2019-20 season. This change will put the burden on individual schools to schedule games, and for these four programs, it will eliminate automatic bids to NCAA national tournaments after winning conference tournaments.

https://www.pacifictigers.com/sports/w-fieldh/2018-19/releases/20181203nplaxi

So now there are three field hockey schools west of the Missouri River, and a year from now they will lose their already tenuous conference affiliation. Particularly tough for Davis as I think UOP was about the only conference team they defeated in the last few years, and this year they didn't even to that.

D*mn! They beat us on "Average time of possession."

I found this thread at d2football.com . <a href="http://www.d2messageboard.com/showthread.php?t=93151" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.d2messageboard.com/showthread.php?t=93151</a> (The level of conversation on this site has gone down the drain.) I lost interest after about 2 1/2 pages. A question about the future of the GNAC takes a sidetrack to insult hurling commentary on the prospects of the University of British Columbia joining the Pac 12.

The loose idea seems to be that the remaining teams will continue in the GNAC, such as it is, and hope to come up with scheduling arrangements with the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference or the Lone Star Conference. That would require a travel budget for some teams that may already be watching the pennies.

OK, the link does not seem to be working, which is probably not a loss, and yes, it could be operator error.

Go to www.d2football.com . Click on "Message Board"on the left margin, scroll down to "Super Region 4" and "GNAC" about 3/4 of the way down the page, click on that and then to the thread titled "GNAC Future." It is a red envelope as it is pretty active, and should be near the top. Or skip it - you might have something you'd rather do like root canal work or visiting the in-laws.

Your guess is as good as mine, probably better. The conference as a whole has several other schools and sponsors several other sports, but football is suffering. http://www.gnacsports.com/home/default/

I think it's laughable that FBS/D1A won't play a more inclusive playoff system. Four teams? They get four weeks between their last regular season game and the first playoff game, typically played in a fair weather city in the southern half of the country. This year the winners get nine days to prepare for the final game. We get arguments about how preparing for a multi-round playoff is unfair to these student athletes and that coaches and administrators are opposed to a more extensive playoff. Ha! If all the other divisions, and the NAIA teams, can play more games when fewer of the players will ever have a realistic chance of playing professionally, then the players in the FBS division can take a little time off from their bio-science labs and debate team practices.....but I digress.

Heck, bring back the Astrodome....

Saw a fog bound game between USC and Oregon State in Corvallis in 2004. Okay, really didn't see it. So foggy that from the south end zone there were periods of the game that we simply could not see the action on the field. One play in particular stands out, or so I'm told...Leinhart threw a TD to Dominique Byrd that could only have been a timing pattern. I don't think Lienhart could have seen Byrd when he threw the ball and Byrd could not have seen the ball in flight. From our seats we only knew something had happened by hearing the crowd from the opposite end of the field.

Cedar Falls newspaper article:

https://wcfcourier.com/sports/college/uni/uni-football-panthers-played-to-the-finish-with-heart-toughness/article_9e415bdd-35d9-5c3c-9fe9-a24b132c0677.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

"Am I seeing that right? All Eight Seeds advance to final 8?"

Duquesne's first round victory at Towson is the only win by a road team thus far. In the second round all of the seeds/home teams won.

And before it was the Grad it was ???
(Jekyll & Hyde's)

Also recall many meals at Nation's Giant Hamburgers, particularly when the dorm food wasn't going to do it. Back when I was there, and men were men and...well, hamburgers were $.65 and cheeseburgers were $.85.

I have had a baseball cap with the "lemon logo" for years. It's "adjustable" rather than fitted and has the higher crown. I am not sure where I bought it, it has been that long.

Also have the flannel cap, navy with the tan/gold lemon logo, that I must have bought at the book store during the campus centennial.

Ranking the remaining FCS teams:
https://herosports.com/fcs/football-favorites-win-national-title-ndsu-bzbz

I was at Davis when it was L&M or Jake's out near El Macero....and the old-timers in that era used to talk about having to go to Frenchy's on the south edge of Woodland.

"...opposing coaches are often more complementary pregame...."

Lou Holtz could be getting ready for a game against the Northwest Dakota Southern School for the Blind at Lesser Grand Falls and talk it up like they were playing the New England Patriots.

I just wonder if McClure would take the cut in pay and position to return to Sac at this point in his career. It would be like UCD thinking Chris Peterson would leave Washington to return to Davis. I'm not sure we would ever have been able to hire Hawkins if his career had not hit a couple of bumps in Boulder and Montreal...Throw in that I, admittedly with some bias, think that UCD has to be generally more attractive than Sac. Larger campus, more visilbility, more support across the board, etc.

Nice to read about the Aggies twice....