I talked about this on the topic of USC and UCLA leaving the PAC-12 but wanted to expand on the idea a bit more w/o taking more of that thread's space.

I think we can all agree the current conference allignments are not an ideal fit for everyone. Some schools' teams have to do an excessive amount of travelling (Sac State baseball for instance) while others may have less travel but simply be a bad fit competition-wise (UCD baseball).

A big reason for this is the flawed conference-specific requirement of how many sports you have to have to be a member. The truth is that having most of your teams in one conference may make for easier scheduling but it doesn't even assure you of reduced ravel and costs. It's kind of a one-size-fits all idea

And what if, in order to meet your main conference's participation minimum (x number of sports) you , as a university had to field non-competitive programs that just cost you more money and don't have much community support ? You're just bleeding money so you don't have to bleed money on travel expenses. It doesn't make sense.

I think a potential solution would lie in more of a traditional junior-high school class schedule-type operation. Those of you who attended traditional junior high schools can probably relate to this. You might have a homeroom where you spend 2-3 periods with the same teacher but 1 period and teacher for every other subject. And if you wanted to participate in something after sixth (or 7th) period that was on your own time. Not all the kids from your homeroom would necessarily be in all your other classes, and you might have classes with kids from other homerooms

So the idea is that every school would basically have a "homeroom" conference where certain core sports would be required for membership, specifically the sports in which the male and female counterparts use the same facilities for home events (for scheduling purposes). This would mean your homeroom would consist of some subset of soccer, track, swimming, tennis, basketball, and volleyball (men's volleyball optional). Water polo just doesn't have enough participating schools to make this feasible. A conference could sponsor additional sports, but the homeroom teams would not be required to field teams in them and could not be denied conference entry due to not having them.. For example the Big West could have baseball but UCD could choose not to participate or field a team in a different conference. For these optional sports the homeroom conference could allow affiliate members who make good competitive and geographic sense for them, however it could not deny homeroom membership to any school not fielding an optional team. For example, if the Big West were to divide into two divisions for baseball Sac State or UOP would make sense as a baseball only member

Outside of homeroom sports the # of programs a school would have would be completely up to them, with the requirement that they need to be Title IX compliant. This means they could eliminate excess programs they would have kept going to stay in their conferences before.

Now there are certain sport-specific conferences that would remain, like the WWPA. I also think that if the NCAA were to make some ruling that baseball participation cannot be required by any conferemce for "full" membership you would see some more schools drop their programs, which is bad for fans but good for overall quality. Let's face it-baseball facilities are very expensive to build and maintain, and these programs have lots of student-athletes. Some existing facilities are rather minimal or very outdated and in desperate need of renovations schools need massive donations and a lack of red tape to fund. If the universities who aren't that invested in running the best baseball programs they could were to drop theirs there would be a deeper available talent base, which would help the remaining have-nots improve. I do believe UCD is invested in baseball to the extent that it can be at this time, which means it's not against improvements to Dobbins Stadium-they just don't have what they need to get it done. I mean, they could've offered the minimum salary after Vaughn quit and hired whomever was willing to take it, but they hired Tommy Nicholson and his assistants who also had pro connections. They could have eliminated the program entirely to distance themselves from the hazing. And the ballpark in its current state is far from shabby- significanyly etter than Sac State's when you don't consider lights or new video scoreboards that show everything clearly-except the score

In other words eliminating baseball programs that are just sort of there across the country would allow a better selection of student-athletes for UCD. And if UCD were able to eliminate some sports it could really do a good job with the baseball program.