Another team that has looked out of place in the now-Dakotas-based Summit League has found a new, more geographically sensible home.
Purdue Fort Wayne will reportedly move from the Summit League to the Horizon League starting in 2020-21.
The Mastadons are expected to compete for one more academic year in the Summit League, whose geographic footprint has shifted from the eastern part of the Midwest — with headquarters based out of Chicago from 1984-2018 — to the I-29 corridor in the last 12 years since both North Dakota State and South Dakota State joined the league, which moved its offices to Sioux Falls last August.
PFW Athletics tweeted about a “major athletics announcment” set for 10 a.m. tomorrow. Trusted Stadium.com college basketball reported Jeff Goodman then tweeted that announcement would be a move to the Horizon League.
Fort Wayne will join former Summit League neighbors Oakland of Michigan and Indiana Purdue Indianapolis (IUPUI) in the Horizon League. The Golden Grizzlies left in 2013, while the Jaguars left in 2017.
Eight of the current 10 teams in the Horizon league are former members of the Summit League.
The Mastadons’ longest road trip in the Horizon League (344 miles to Green Bay) is still closer to Fort Wayne than their current shortest trip in the Summit League (367 miles to Western Illinois).
The move will also give the Horizon League — with teams in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio — 11 member schools for most of its sports, including basketball, the sport of primary interest.
The Summit League will add back Missouri-Kansas City following this upcoming season after the Kangaroos will have spent seven years in the Western Athletics Conference (after leaving the Summit League in 2013).
The swap of PFW and UMKC will keep Summit League membership for basketball at nine in 2020-21, but history has taught to never assume the number of teams, and which teams, will be the Summit League beyond the next couple years on the — wait for it — horizon.
In the 35-year history of the Summit League, 31 schools have been full-time members. SDSU and NDSU, who both joined in 2007, have been in the league longer than every other current member except Fort Wayne — who joined the same year — and Oral Roberts, who joined in 1997, left for the Southland Conference in 2012, and came back in 2014.
Four teams have left the Summit in the 12 years since the Bison and Jackrabbits arrived and five new teams joined or re-joined.
When PFW is gone, Western Illinois and Denver will be the only two schools not located along or near the Interstate 29 corridor, which for the Summit League stretches from NDSU (Fargo) to Oral Roberts (Tulsa).
In December, Sioux Falls-based Augustana announced its intention to move from Div. II to Div. I athletics, but the school needs to be invited to join a Div. I conference first. Adding Augustana would give the league 10 teams (in most sports) if the current members other than Fort Wayne stay.
With the Summit League total of member baseball teams down to only five following IPFW’s last season in the league in 2019-20, the conference would be ineligible for an automatic NCAA Tournament berth, which requires six league teams.
Augustana fields a baseball team which has reached the Div. II College World Series the last two seasons and won the national title in 2018… not that the Summit would be picky about the quality of a team. It just needs a team.
In other words, PFW’s departure may have expedited the Summit League’s inevitable invitation to Augustana, whose location, ties to Sanford Health (a major booster and partner with the university and the primary sponsor of the Summit League men’s and women’s basketball tournaments), and history as a former North Central Conference rival of five of the league’s current members (SDSU, USD, NDSU, UND, Omaha) will be a natural fit for the league.
While the Summit League remains mum on a possible Augustana membership, and while the university adheres to remarking publicly only its intention to put its ducks in a row to attain an invitation from a Div. I conference, we all know where this is headed.
It now appears only a matter of when.
