Soon to be the last Kentucky school in OVC, Morehead St. explains why it is staying put
When the Ohio Valley Conference was formed way back in 1948, it was almost entirely a Kentucky league.
Eastern Kentucky, Evansville, Louisville, Morehead State, Murray State and Western Kentucky were the original six OVC teams.
From that beginning rich in Bluegrass State schools, the OVC has slowly been shedding schools from the commonwealth.
U of L departed after only one season, 1948-49, to resume its previous status as an independent.
WKU left following the 1981-82 school year to join the Sun Belt.
Until this year, EKU, Morehead and Murray had given the OVC an enduring Kentucky footprint.
But Eastern left the OVC after the 2020-21 school year in favor of the ASUN. Murray State has announced it will join the Missouri Valley Conference for 2022-23.
Soon, Morehead State will be the commonwealth’s sole remaining school in what was once a Kentucky-centric conference.
If, like me, you have been wondering how Morehead State feels about that development, the answer seems to be “OK.”
“We are the last-remaining charter member of the OVC. And we take a big pride in the history of the league,” Morehead State Athletics Director Jaime Gordon said Thursday from Nashville, where he had traveled to attend what turned out to be a heartbreaking one-point men’s basketball loss for MSU to Belmont.
Even as EKU, Jacksonville State, Austin Peay (all to the ASUN) and Belmont and Murray State (both to the MVC) have either left the OVC or announced plans to leave, Gordon said Morehead State has not spoken to any other leagues about finding an exit ramp of its own.
“Our focus has really been on strengthening the future of the OVC,” Gordon said. “We’ve not had any conversations with other leagues.”
Why stay in a league from which so many members have been fleeing?
“We feel really good about where we are,” Gordon said. “(The OVC) will have nine institutions come fall and there is interest out there from other institutions who still want to join our league. We want to make sure we are making good, strong, strategic, responsible decisions (on adding members) that aren’t just responses to current trends or issues but that are long-term and sustainable for us. We still feel the OVC is the right place for us.”
In addition to Morehead State, the other remaining OVC schools are Eastern Illinois, Southeast Missouri State, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, Tennessee Martin, Tennessee State and Tennessee Tech.
To counter the departures, the OVC has announced it will add Little Rock and longtime NCAA Division II men’s basketball power Southern Indiana for 2022-23.
Adding schools in the relatively large markets, by OVC standards, of Little Rock, Ark., and Evansville, Ind., (where USI is located) seem like good pickups.
Scholarship football at Morehead?
The departures from the OVC of Austin Peay, EKU, Jacksonville State and Murray State leaves the Ohio Valley Conference with only five schools that play scholarship football.
That is one fewer than required by the NCAA to maintain an automatic bid to the FCS playoffs. For the 2022 and 2023 seasons, the OVC has entered into a scheduling alliance with the Southland Conference to maintain a path into the playoffs for its members.
Long-term, with the OVC needing at least one more school offering scholarship football, scuttlebutt has been that the league would like Morehead State to become that entity.
After playing football in the OVC from 1948 through 1995, MSU has been playing non-scholarship football in the Pioneer Football League since 1996.
Is Morehead State considering bringing back scholarship football?
“I think we always want to make sure that we, as a department and an institution, are constantly evaluating everything we do,” Gordon said. “What we have found right now is that being part of the OVC (for sports other than football) and the PFL (for football) really serves the best interests of our institution.”
On Saturday, the Morehead State men’s basketball team (19-7, 11-2 OVC) was scheduled to play host to No. 23 Murray State (23-2, 13-0 OVC) in a highly anticipated league showdown.
To be blunt, none of the schools that will be in the OVC in 2022-23 will yield the kind of “move the needle” games for Morehead State fans that Murray, Belmont and EKU have been providing.
To fill the rivalry void that has been created for Morehead State, Gordon said it is MSU’s hope that it can maintain some of its traditional rivalries as non-conference series.
“There’s a huge rivalry between UK and U of L even playing in different leagues,” Gordon noted. “We’ve had a strong (rivalry between) Morehead State and Marshall, and we obviously don’t compete in the same league. So we hope we can do that with Eastern Kentucky and, potentially, Murray State in some of our sports.”
Over time, Gordon said Morehead State expects a reconstituted OVC to produce new rivalries.
“It is no different than for Louisville, who had long histories (with Big East rivals) prior to them entering the ACC,” Gordon said. “Rivalries change. So, yes, we have long, traditional rivalries against schools like EKU and Murray State. We look forward to establishing new ones.”
This story was originally published February 12, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
