The Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) has announced the addition of men’s swimming and diving to the conference, bringing the sport back as they last sponsored it during the 2002-2003 season.
“The Valley is excited and welcomes the opportunity to provide this experience for our student-athletes,” said MVC Commissioner Jeff Jackson. “We look forward to a great championship event and the continued growth and enhancement of our Conference.”
The conference already sponsors women’s swimming and diving and has done so since 1983. The MVC used to sponsor men’s swimming and diving, first adding the sport 100 years ago in 1924 and last sponsoring it in 2003.
The MVC currently sponsors a total of 15 sports, with six on the men’s side and nine on the women’s side. The addition of men’s swimming and diving brings it to 16 sports with seven on the men’s side.
The conference is home to 12 teams, although only five of them are home to a men’s swimming and diving program. Evansville, University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), Missouri State, Southern Illinois, and Valparaiso will be joined by Ball State and Miami-OH from the Mid-American Conference.
All seven programs made up the Mid-American Conference (MAC) for men’s swimming and diving in recent years. Ball State and Miami-OH are members of the MAC and had the other five join as associate members but now the roles will be reversed.
The Miami-OH men have won the last four straight MAC titles as in 2024 they finished with 729 points total and 2nd place Missouri State had 679.5 points.
Well, the MV Football Conference is something of a separate conference just for football. All the schools, however, are FCS programs so 63 full scholarships as opposed to 85 plus the teams are smaller usually with FCS teams with FBS programs averaging around 127 athletes versus 115 for FCS programs. This puts less strain on the schools as far as balancing expenses between men’s and women’s sports. It seems that Men’s Swimming and Diving has a better chance of surviving in the MVC than it would in the MAC since all those schools have FBS football programs (for some reason). It also might attract other schools to become affiliate members of the MVC like those in the CCSA and other… Read more »
Are there any other schools that have Men’s and women’s team in different conferences?
RIP EMU Mens 🙁
It’s no question that the MAC had become a much deeper conference in recent years due to the significant rise of teams like SIU, Miami, and Ball State. So that leaves me to wonder now… what happens to the all the MVC conference records now that this switch is happening?
Will the MVC default back to the records set as of 2003? Or will they honor records from member schools set over the last 21 years? Not something anybody would really care about, but if they go back to 2003 then I’d expect almost every record to be reset this coming season.
RIP #MACtion :,(
Sad to see the end of MACtion on the men’s side after all these years. Special shoutout to those in charge at Eastern Michigan, Buffalo, Ohio, Toledo, Bowling Green, Northern Illinois, Western Michigan, Central Michigan, and Kent State, all of whom once had successful programs compete at the MAC Championships!
Does this mean UMass is now in the MVC for the ‘25-‘26 season?
The logical assumption would be that all the MAC programs would be affiliates together, but that’s not always the case. See the MAC men’s soccer league as an example, where BGSU, NIU, and WMU all went to the Valley together but Akron went to the Big East. I could see UMass doing the same, as that would make more geographic sense for them.
Wow, UMass to the Big East for Swim would be pretty cool and spice things up a little bit.
Maybe this will motivate other MVC schools to add/bring back Men’s Swimming. Northern Iowa, Illinois State, and Indiana State have all had men’s teams in the past.
Won’t happen. All have football and use women’s swimming to help balance Title Ix requirements.
Those title IX requirements mostly center on scholarship costs and some of these schools (SIU, Evansville, Ball State, Valpo) have limited to no scholarships for men’s swimming. The bigger issue is the added costs from additional staffing and operating budgets. Even a men’s team with no scholarships still needs food, gear, hotels, etc.. Some also would have a hard time making it work with their facilities.
It’s also balancing numbers, wouldn’t be hard to just pay the swim coach a little more and maybe bring in another assistant. The issue is they would need to offset the new male athletes with female athletes, either by making other teams larger or adding a new women sport. The scholarship isn’t the issue with title 9, there are a ton of men’s programs without scholarships or with very few
This isn’t really true when it comes to TIX compliance but you’re completely right with the issue of cost and staffing will always be an issue for non-revenue generating sports
They would probably have to add one or two more women’s sports to stay compliant with Title IX. I would think it’s unlikely they’re willing to do that.