Is Menlo staying, going, or gone?

So Menlo’s situation and current status continues to confuse Wildcat11. We’ve discussed on the Advantage before on what we think might happen with the NWC’s football only member in terms of their relationship with the conference and division III. For years, Menlo was an NCAA Division III independent before the NWC agreed to take them on as a football only member to the conference in 2005.

We all know the conference only wanted Menlo to bring up the total number of conference members to 7 and after a 2-year probation period the NWC gained an auto-bid for the NCAA playoffs. It wasn’t just the NWC using Menlo but the relationship was also beneficial for the Oaks as the NWC gave Menlo a conference to call home, and 6 teams that would be on the schedule year-in and year-out.

The relationship has been working out well for both sides but when Pacific announced that they would be bringing back football in 2010 speculation started to float around that Menlo might have started to look for somewhere else to call home. Obviously, with Pacific back in the fold that brings the NWC football membership to 7 and without Menlo the NWC would have an Auto-Bid. If an original member of a conference brings back a sport there is no 2-year wait period that only applies when a conference brings in a new outside member (i.e. Menlo)

I’ve heard various unconfirmed reasons what the NWC/Menlo relationship wasn’t meant to be with the biggest sticking point being the NWC Presidents not being too big on Menlo’s admission standards but the Presidents allowed Menlo in because of the auto-bid but with Pacific back and Fox coming back in 2013, could it be that makes Menlo expendable?

So instead of just waiting for the NWC to lower a potential boom I’ve been hearing various rumors about what Menlo might be going to do; from going back to a NCAA III independent to even make a jump to NCAA Division II. However, the one thing I didn’t think would happen appears to be the way the Oaks are headed.

Over this weekend NAIA Independent, Southern Oregon University, released their 2010 schedule an a press release. In the presser the Raiders are saying they are playing 5 other NAIA schools and that included Menlo.

“Southern Oregon, an NAIA Independent program, has struggled to field home games and NAIA games over the recent years and will play a large number of both of those in 2010, including all four home games when school is in session.

Southern Oregon will play NAIA programs Eastern Oregon, Simon Fraser, Menlo, Azusa Pacific and Northwestern Oklahoma.”

Now that was jaw dropping when I read that but SOU did list Simon Fraser on that list and the Canadian school just gained entry into NCAA Division II and not the NAIA. So if anything the press release just confused the heck out of Wildcat11.

Being the nosey fan that WC11 is I dropped the folks at SOU an email saying that last I heard Menlo was in the NWC and Division III. This was the reply that came back to me from SOU:

“info we have is that they are back to NAIA, but still have to play NWC schedule this year. Who knows with West Coast football anymore.”

Couldn’t have agreed more with that last part. So either SOU is just flat out wrong, partially wrong (Menlo could be headed towards the NAIA in 2011?), or they were nice enough to break Menlo’s division change news for the upcoming season for them.

But a move to the NAIA? I’m just stumped on why Menlo might go to the NAIA for football. Now, you have to remember that Menlo is duel-affiliated with the NAIA and NCAA with their athletic programs. Menlo has a long standing NAIA conference they are in but none of those members have football and in fact there is only one other NAIA football program in California (Azusa Pacific).

The only thing that I can speculate on is Menlo is betting or has been getting word that there is a possibility of other California NAIA schools looking into reviving their football program in hopes of creating a NAIA west coast conference. That sounds pretty farfetched but why else go to a division that’s even other a further islands than Division III?

At this point everything has just been he said/she said but that SOU press release throws a gas tank onto this camp fire and I’ll be curious is this forces Menlo’s hand to make an announcement on what their future plans for football will be.