Friday, Oct. 23, 2009

Going north pays off for Big South

Stony Brook's addition goes beyond league's automatic playoff bid in 2010

The Big South and Stony Brook may have married for convenience, but they have slowly fallen in love over the past two and a half years.

It wasn't a surprise when the league announced expansion plans for football in March 2007, but few were expecting the Big South to look so far outside of, well ... the South. Geography has been a challenge, but both sides seem happy with their arrangement, which has yet to produce its ultimate reward.

"The No. 1 impact is what we have yet to experience, which is the automatic bid [into the FCS playoffs] that we are getting next year," Big South Commissioner Kyle Kallander said.

"When we look at expansion, whether it's associates or otherwise, we want people to come in that will make us better. Clearly they are doing that and will continue to. They're only going to get better."

Needing to add an associate, football-playing member - Stony Brook's other sports continue to compete in the America East - to reach the six necessary for an automatic bid, the Big South decided that the Long Island, N.Y.-based Seawolves, who host Coastal Carolina for the first time today, were the most logical and available option. The Seawolves will play in the Big South through at least 2011.

In 2008, it was announced the FCS playoffs were expanding from 16 to 20 teams in 2010. The Big South and Northeast Conferences champions were added as automatic qualifiers into the field.

"That was the means to the end," Stony Brook Athletic Director Jim Fiore said. "It was a marriage of convenience, but we're able to add something to a conference that is very good in football and allowed us to be competitive right away. We also gave them the opportunity to qualify for an automatic bid."

There have also been fringe benefits of the relationship for both sides.

The exposure of the Big South's existing members was heightened by Stony Brook's placement - one hour outside of one of the world's media epicenters, New York City. Fiore said the league's schools are relatively unknown in the greater metropolitan area.

"It's probably similar to how people in the South think about Stony Brook," he said. "What is Stony Brook? Who is Stony Brook? We get a lot of that up here as well.

"I think certainly in the New York market we've opened up a lot of opportunities for the Big South, and been able to educate a lot of people on these institutions."

And the marriage has also helped spread Stony Brook's name throughout the Southeast.

With few Division I football players hailing from Long Island, the Seawolves are forced to recruit nationally. Stony Brook has 18 players on its roster from California and seven from Florida, but none from Virginia, the Carolinas or Georgia. Fiore expects Stony Brook to be able to recruit with more success in the South over the next few years.

The other big benefit of adding the Seawolves, who are 3-4 overall and 2-0 in the Big South, is the overall strength of their program, Coastal coach David Bennett said.

"I've got a lot of respect for [Stony Brook coach Chuck] Priore," he said. "They play the game with toughness, intensity and passion. They run the ball and throw the ball with balance. It's just good ol' hard-nosed football.

"I think they can beat anybody on any given Saturday."