Quote Originally Posted by citdog View Post
YOU and chatty are the outliers in the SoCon now. Don't look for another large public to come in EVER unless somebody leaves and probably not even THEN. You can take shots at vmi all you like but they have FAR more history in this league than western carolina EVER will.
And regarding the history of the SoCon, originally it included lots of big, public universities including the likes of many "big boy" schools - Alabama, Auburn, Georgia Tech, Clemson, UNC, South Carolina, etc. The conference basically started with what is now the core of the ACC and SEC. Over the years it certainly has started going in a different direction, but of all the member schools currently in the league Western is tied with UTC for the 3rd longest tenured school behind Citadel and VMI (who as we all know were out of the league for over a decade before rejoining in 2014). Western and UTC have now been a member of the SoCon for 41 straight years, so I would argue our vote should count as much as anybody's.

And yes - ETSU just joined back and I believe they are the largest football-playing school in the conference (nearly 15,000 students). UNCG is also in the conference for basketball, and I think they are approaching 20k students.