#Missouri valley football conference. upgrade

'I like where we're going,' Moats said 'I think Belmont's a great addition and I think they give us a great opportunity to get multiple teams in (the NCAA Tournament).' Moats doesn't anticipate it staying that way as the league and expansion group continue to look at options. There has yet to be a move that has impacted the Missouri Valley Football Conference. Missouri State President Clif Smart served as the chair of the Valley's expansion group. The school will join the MVC in 2022 as it moves over from the Ohio Valley Conference. Locations of current Missouri Valley Football Conference member institutions.With the conference realignment shift that has rocked college athletics in recent months, the domino effect led to the MVC adding Belmont. The conferences will share the 'Missouri Valley' name but will remain separate administratively.

This change aligns the conference with the Missouri Valley Conference, a conference in which five of the nine Missouri Valley Football schools participate. On June 6, 2008, the Gateway Football Conference changed its name to the Missouri Valley Football Conference, effective immediately. On March 7, 2007, the conference announced that both schools would join the conference beginning with the 2008 season. However, Great West Football Conference members North Dakota State and South Dakota State were asked to submit information about themselves and to attend the conference presidents' meeting. ĭue to Western Kentucky's move, the Gateway was left with 7 members for the 2007 season. The Hilltoppers left the GFC after the 2006 season, went through the two-year 'reclassification' period mandated by the NCAA for schools moving from the FCS to the FBS, and became a football member of its all-sports conference, the Sun Belt Conference, in 2009.

#Missouri valley football conference. upgrade

On November 2, 2006, Western Kentucky's Board of Regents approved a proposal by the school's president to upgrade the football program to the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS formerly Division I-A). The Gateway changed its name to the Missouri Valley Football Conference in 2008.

Southwest Missouri State changed its name to Missouri State in 2005. After Eastern Illinois joined the Ohio Valley Conference for football in 1995, Youngstown State joined in 1997 and was followed by Western Kentucky in 2001. In 1992, when the Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference merged with the MVC, the football conference kept the Gateway charter, with a minor name change to Gateway Football Conference. The football programs joined with the Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference, which at the time was a women's athletic conference that roughly paralleled the MVC. At that time, the I-AA members from the MVC (Illinois State, Indiana State, and Southern Illinois) joined Eastern Illinois, Northern Iowa, Southwest Missouri State, and Western Illinois to form the Association of Mid-Continent Universities, later the Mid-Continent Conference and now The Summit League, for sports other than football. The conference was formed from the remnant football schools of the old Missouri Valley when it stopped sponsoring its hybrid I-A/I-AA football league in 1985. The Missouri Valley Football Conference has a convoluted history.