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DIA To Add Teams

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DIA To Add Teams

Sac State among seven teams who didn't play DIA last year but will this coming season.

The DIA College meetings were held this weekend and the conferences decided to add several teams for the 2016-17 season.

Every conference was represented at the meetings in Colorado, and among the many issues discussed was the addition of college programs hoping to move up.

Among the additions:

Delaware - considered to be taking a hiatus from Rugby East during the program's suspension, will be readmitted to that conference for next season. This was not a surprise, but was confirmed at the meeting. They join Kutztown, Penn State, Army, Wheeling Jesuit, Iona, St. Bonaventure, West Virginia, and Buffalo.

Utah State will join the West DIA Conference, joining Utah, Colorado, Air Force, Colorado State, Wyoming, Nex Mexico.

Sacramento State will join the California Conference. That conference currently includes Saint Mary's, Santa Clara, Cal Poly, San Diego State, and UC Santa Barbara.

Arkansas will join the Red River Conference, which already includes LSU, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech, Baylor, Texas A&M, and TCU.

And in the most intriguing development, there will (could theoretically) be a new DIA conference, which will include Pac 12 teams. So this would be called the PAC D1A, and not be confused with PAC Rugby Conference, which is an independent conference.

The PAC D1A Conference will include would conseivably Arizona, USC, Washington, Oregon, and Oregon State. In addition, Washington, Oregon, and Oregon State will all play Washington State in a doubly-unofficial Pac-12 North schedule. Arizona and Oregon State are expected to join Cal, UCLA, Utah, and Arizona State in the independent PAC Rugby Conference.

So only Stanford and Colorado are not involved in some way.

The two PAC conferences would be tracked separately (although, the Arizona v Oregon State fixture would count in both), but it might also be fun for the likes of Goff Rugby Report to track all of those teams together. Arizona and Oregon State will have eight games against Pac-12 opponents.