Thankfully, the moratorium on membership expansion for the MEAC has been lifted, clearing the way for North Carolina Central University and Savannah State University to join the conference as full members.
And while the news certainly excites alumni and fans everywhere, questions remaining about why the moratorium was implemented just under two years ago.
In the MEAC’s official release, Commissioner Dennis Thomas announced that the halt to conference expansion was implemented to “provide the conference a planned approach,” which is funny, because conference officials never fully divulged that they didn’t have a plan in place to begin with.
And now that the MEAC does have a “plan,” would it hurt to let fans, supporters and corporate sponsors know exactly what the two-year timeout was all about? It would seem that the schools most impacted by the waiting game, NCCU and Savannah State, deserve some insight into how these new plans may affect their membership.
Perhaps there were studies done to sketch out potential divisions in the MEAC. Maybe research was conducted to gather the financial impact of adding two teams. Those are all great endeavors, and the people deserve to know about them. Kudos to the MEAC in its efforts to expand its reach within black college sports and NCAA competition as a whole, but inquiring minds deserve to know what the hold up was all about.
