School will not be required to have a football team if they want to join the Ohio Valley Conference.

OVC presidents voted unanimously last Wednesday in Nashville, Tenn., to amend the OVC Constitution to no longer require new members to sponsor football to be considered for membership.

“That’s been a long time coming,” said OVC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher. “We’ve been having that conversation in the four and a half years I’ve been a part of the league. It was a very spirited discussion, and I’m pleased with the direction it went.”

Currently, the OVC has 11 schools, nine of which sponsor football in the league. Morehead State plays football in the Pioneer League, which includes schools Butler and Valparaiso. Samford, which sponsors football, is leaving at the end of the academic year to join the Southern Conference.

“Certainly, if you have it now, you can’t just drop it,” Steinbrecher said. “I think the feeling was there may be opportunities out there to expand or there may be institutions out there that perhaps could bring value to the conference, but maybe they don’t have football. So let’s not stop ourselves from at least looking at those schools.”

According to The Birmingham News, Belmont, East Tennessee State, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville and Lipscomb are the schools atop the list.

“I don’t have an invitation in my pocket,” Steinbrecher said. “Are there (schools) that I’m interested in? Sure there are. I get back to (how) it doesn’t really change for me where I’ve been since I’ve been on this job. We’ll be very deliberate.”

In July 2006, the OVC looked at adding Tennessee-Chattanooga. UT-Chattanooga competes in the Southern Conference.

Chattanooga’s director of media relations Jeff Romero said in January 2007 the OVC staff pursued UT-Chattanooga and not the other way around.

This was before Austin Peay returned to scholarship football.

Eastern’s football team will play Austin Peay and seven other conference games in addition to four non-conference games in the 2008 season.

If UT-Chattanooga did join the OVC, it could complicate schedules because they would be the 11th school. Conferences always seek an even number of schools for scheduling purposes.

“If we did expand, we really don’t have room for additional folks in our football schedule,” Steinbrecher said. “We’re going to play an eight-game conference schedule, whether we have 11 teams, 12 teams, 10 teams – that’s what we’re going to play.”

In terms of basketball, the conference is set to play an 18-game schedule, which allows it to play more non-conference games.

“I was glad to see the vote and the way it turned out,” said Peay athletic director and head men’s basketball coach Dave Loos. “I don’t know what the thinking is in terms of expansion is. If we are going to expand I would, personally, think it would make sense to expand by two. I’m fine with 10. I could certainly live with 12, also, if we would go to divisions.”

Eastern head men’s basketball coach Mike Miller feels the same way.

“The only thing from a basketball perspective is how we keep our league games down,” Miller said. “I think the less conference games that we play, I think you will see non-conference records will improve. It’s different that you can just build a schedule early and balance that out a little bit better than we’ve been able to.”

Because a member school no longer has to sponsor football, the decision also increased the minimum number of other men’s sports being sponsored from four to five.

Eastern sponsors eight men’s team sports in the league. Eastern men’s soccer competes in the Missouri Valley Conference, and men’s swimming competes in the Summit League.

Other notes from the meeting:

The presidents also unanimously approved a new Basketball Enhancement Matching Fund to help OVC men’s and women’s basketball programs.

The fund enables member institutions to receive up to $6,500 for both its men’s and women’s basketball programs if the monies are matched. The one-time fund request can be made in either the 2008-09 or 2009-10 school year.

That would provide up to a total of $13,000 to be used for items like recruiting, home-game guarantees or special projects.

“If you’re going to generate (money), it’s going to be basketball,” said Eastern associate athletic director John Smith.

Smith said the biggest priorities for Eastern are the facilities.

“Someone’s going to have to say one day, ‘We’re going to need an arena,'” Smith said. “Until the financing gets here, or someone comes with a huge gift, I don’t see that happening in the future.”

Sports Editor Scott Richey contributed to this story.

Kevin Murphy can be reached at 581-7944 or at kjmurphy@eiu.edu.