Remember those annoying Venn diagrams from elementary school? It’s a graphic consisting of overlapping circles, and it’s supposed to represent to subsets that share a trait or traits. The trouble was, there always seemed to be too many traits to fit in the small overlap space, and it always seemed easier to make three lists (Group A, Group B, Group A&B) than actually draw some huge circle that wound up looking more like a parallelogram by the time it was over.
OK, enough about a blogger’s inability to craft circles in the third grade. The reason the Venn diagram was brought up is that yet another domino fell in the lacrosse world yesterday —- and there was one aspect that was particularly confusing.
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The five remaining members of the Great Western Lacrosse League were absorbed into the ECAC, with Air Force, Bellarmine, Denver, Ohio State and Quinnipiac joining Fairfield, Hobart and Loyola starting in 2010.
So what’s the problem.
Well, a month ago, the Northeast Conference announced it would add lacrosse in 2011. And here’s their nifty logo heralding the six-team league.
Then yesterday, this came down the chute from the ECAC.
The old Venn diagram would put Quinnipiac square in the shared area. But as it turns out, the ECAC is a very temporary stop for the Bobcats according to their website:
The Bobcats are scheduled to play in the GWLL’s final season of 2008-09 before moving to the ECAC in 2009-10. Following its one campaign in the ECAC, Quinnipiac will then permanently move to the newly established Northeast Conference Men’s Lacrosse League in 2010-11, as announced on May 16.
So everybody does love Quinnipiac. Sort of.
A school that can’t be thrilled with this latest shift is Detroit, which is starting a Division I program next spring. The Titans were a perfect fit for the soon-to-be-defunct GWLL, and now might have the unpleasant task of playing as an independent from a relatively remote location.
But that appears to be it in terms of major movement. The impact by 2011 appears to be the addition of the Big East and the NEC and the end of the GWLL. That would bring the number of automatic NCAA tournament berths to eight, while dropping the at-large total to eight.
