If you're wondering why there's no confirmation on what teams are in what DIA conference, it's because there are still some decisions to be made.

July 31 is the deadline for all decisions regarding adding teams to conferences, and even adding conferences. So far we know that BYU did not get the five out of seven votes needed to join the West DIA (now named the Rocky Mountain), while Utah Valley did get enough votes to become a provisional member. 

 

DIA Teams Meet, Make Changes

 

Here's what we know about some of the other conferences:

 

Rugby East

Delaware, Iona, and West Virginia have all left. Penn St, Army, St Bonaventure, Kutztown, Buffalo, and Wheeling Jesuit return. Notre Dame College is joining the conference.

No official word yet on any other new teams. Word is that AIC will play an independent schedule that will be very close to a Rugby East league schedule, with the hopes of joining full-on in the fall of 2019. NEC and Navy have been discussed as potential additions, but we've seen nothing official.

 

Mid-South

Arkansas State and Clemson played slightly altered Mid-South schedules last spring, and should play full-on schedules along with Life, Davenport, and Lindenwood. We might well see a home-and-away for all five.

 

Big Ten

Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan St, Minnesota, Ohio State, Purdue, and Wisconsin all return. The big issue with the Big Ten is that the top four teams are very strong, and the bottom four teams are struggling to get to that level. In the middle, at the moment, is Michigan, which should be inching upward. But a straight-on everyone plays everyone schedule leads to some dispiriting blowouts, so efforts are underway to fix that.

 

Red River

Arkansas, Baylor, Oklahoma, Houston, LSU, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Christian, and Texas Tech are in the Red River, which starts the 15s season in November. There are no changes in the Red River. North Texas and Texas State did petition to join, and didn't get the votes. However, both teams are going to play shadow D1A schedules and there's a decent chance you could see them play D1A next season.

 

Rocky Mountain (used to be the West)

Air Force, Colorado, Colorado St, New Mexico, Utah, Utah St, and Wyoming are in and voted Utah Valley in as an associate member, playing a shadow schedule. BYU will be in an independent schedule after not getting voted into the Rocky Mountain.

 

California

Cal Poly, Santa Clara, San Diego St, UC Santa Barbara, and Saint Mary’s come back while UC Davis moves up from DIAA to join, as well. There has been talk that Grand Canyon might be joining, but the travel between these Californian teams that are right on the coast (as almost all of them are) to Phoenix, Ariz. is pretty rough on most teams. Kind of stuc in a dead zone, GCU will be an independent.

 

PAC

Arizona, Arizona St., Cal, UCLA, and USC are back. Utah remains a PAC program, although they are also a Rocky Mountain team. Stanford is slated to join the conference this season.

 

 

Liberty

This is the big one, is the sense that the entire conference has petitioned to be DIA. And so the entire group of teams will be looked at, and since it's not a team or teams joining an existing conference, it will likely be the Competitions Committee of D1A that decides, by the end of this month, whether Liberty is the 8th DIA conference.

 the Liberty teams are, right now: Iona, Stony Brook, Rutgers, Delaware, Fordham, Binghamton, Syracuse, Albany, Cortland, Brockport, Colgate, Sienna, UMASS, Rhode Island, Northeastern, UCONN, Tufts, and Fairfield