The article below is an interview with Commissioner Benson in an Alabama news article. Benson still desires expansion to bring the league to 12 teams and thus, a conference championship game. At the bottom of the article, Benson says that the conference wants an eastern team to be a travel partner for Appalachian State.

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2014 ... er_default

Glad they are looking out for us even before we officially join. Not that I expected anything different.

I might be reading too much into this but it sounds like Liberty wants in and SB wants JMU.

I think the most likely eastern candidates are JMU, Liberty, EKU and Jacksonville State. JMU would prefer the CUSA or MAC due to geography, etc. I do agree though that JMU would be the Sun Belt's first choice. Missouri State is the most likely western candidate. EKU may be the most likely eastern team (assuming JMU declines) but I don't think that EKU is ready yet.

One significant factor of travel partners is to allow a distant team to play 2 conference road games in close proximity within 3 days. For instance, look for western teams to play Georgia State and Georgia Southern in basketball on a Thursday/ Saturday weekend next season to control travel costs.

I just don't get the idea of travel partners because I don't see the concept of being able to schedule a road trip around two teams in a few sports who lie a hundred or two miles apart significant in the whole scheme of things economically or of much benefit to lost class time. I do like the idea that fans would have an easier time attending games at the respective venues than outlying programs, however that is not that frequent it would seem. e.g. I don't consider Liberty or JMU and Boone being all that close in proximity or in the whole scheme of things.
Maybe every mile or two and every hour of class time lost are significant some way in the long run.

JCline0429 wrote:I just don't get the idea of travel partners because I don't see the concept of being able to schedule a road trip around two teams in a few sports who lie a hundred or two miles apart significant in the whole scheme of things economically or of much benefit to lost class time. I do like the idea that fans would have an easier time attending games at the respective venues than outlying programs, however that is not that frequent it would seem. e.g. I don't consider Liberty or JMU and Boone being all that close in proximity or in the whole scheme of things.
Maybe every mile or two and every hour of class time lost are significant some way in the long run.

The Sun Belt typically plays its basketball conference games on Thursdays and Saturdays. Liberty and JMU are still bus trips on Friday to or from Boone. Thus, a western team plays 2 distant road conference games while only costing one roundtrip team airfare cost. The concept would be the same for many other sports. On the academic side, student athletes are still on campus for classes on Mondays through Wednesdays.

The PAC 12 has been doing it for years. The Arizona schools travel as a pair and make 1 trip to San Francisco and play Cal and. Stanford.