The sun also sets

Alright. First, let’s get one thing straight.
East Tennessee State needs the Ohio Valley Conference way more than the OVC needs the Buccaneers.
By my count, the OVC has 10 schools that are recognizable by name alone to most good sports fans across the country. (Sorry Southeast Missouri State – you’ve still got to work on that Q rating.)
The Atlantic Sun? Um … four. Five? OK, six at best.
But once you go past that, you’re definitely pushing it – University of South Carolina Upstate just doesn’t roll off the tongue like Tennessee Tech or Murray State, now does it?
So, technically, OVC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher’s sudden little trip to Johnson City next week should be a nice early-morning wake-up call to an ETSU athletic administration that has been ignoring a variety of major issues while harmlessly swatting away at smaller ones the past four years.
And credit is given where credit is due: ETSU President Paul Stanton said he’ll listen.
“We don’t know what we think right now,” Stanton said in his office Monday morning. “We’d listen if it was Conference USA or whomever coming in. The [Southeastern Conference]. We’d sit and listen. I’d be a fool not to sit and listen.”
But, like dad said, listening and doing are two completely different things.
Moreover, even if Stanton falls hard for the OVC – and even if he’s able to convince everyone below him on the ladder that the Bucs should return to the league they left for the Southern Conference way back in 1978 – making a full-circle trip back to the OVC would not in any way equal an instant return to glory or even semi-regular national recognition for ETSU athletics.
First, there’s the football issue.
No matter how you swing, splice or dice it, it’s hard to keep your athletic program’s name in the increasingly muddied picture of national collegiate sports when you’re not even playing one of the most popular sports in the United States of America.
Five months out of the year, ETSU athletics barely exist to anyone outside the Johnson City area anymore.
Is that solely because the school dropped football?
Absolutely not.
Does not having football abet a steadily worsening situation?
Yes. Absolutely.
Administration officials will own up to this, while various Buc coaches will silently nod their heads and say a lot more off the record.
Even more importantly, though, Steinbrecher was adamant that the OVC was not looking at ETSU and thinking “football” at the same time.
In fact, there’s only one real reason that Steinbrecher is even talking to ETSU next week: The OVC recently dropped its football requirement and ETSU no longer plays the game.
Point: Steinbrecher and the OVC view ETSU as a simple fill-in piece for their incomplete jigsaw puzzle.
And what’s this mean for anyone who ever wants to see ETSU play football again?
Well, if in four years the Bucs are playing conference games against Tennessee State and Austin Peay instead of North Florida, ETSU won’t be any closer to bringing back football and honoring the 83 years of hard work, memories and tradition it left in the dust when it dropped the sport in 2003.
Moreover, it probably means that the words “Buc” and “football” will actually be farther apart than ever before.
Then there’s the issue of ETSU being a “dead campus.”
Athletic Director Dave Mullins openly admits that the Bucs long have struggled to create and build on something that most Division I universities take for granted: school pride.
The Bucs currently struggle to get 1,500 warm bodies to attend men’s basketball games right now, and they handed out free tickets for Friday night’s game against Mercer to anyone who’s ever seen or heard of the color blue … read into that what you will.
Would ETSU joining the OVC help fix this?
Possibly.
“One of the biggest things we have going for us is our longstanding rivalries,” Steinbrecher said. “We have fierce rivalries between competitive schools that interest fans.”
Yet, all in all, big picture, the OVC is simply not the answer Buc fans are longing for.
And any thoughts/hopes/dreams of ETSU rejoining the OVC are, quite frankly, sad.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I completely understand where they’re coming from. People don’t want to watch a place they once loved slowly become covered in rust. But ETSU joining the OVC would be like applying a bandage to a free-flowing arterial rupture.
And Stanton knows it.
“Would it be a step forward, a step back, or a step sideways?” Stanton rhetorically asked on Monday.
Hey, kids: If you have to ask about something that seems questionable, you probably shouldn’t do it.
ETSU doesn’t need to move sideways. ETSU needs to move forward. Now.
Is the OVC a nice thought?
Yes.
The once-proud Bucs playing in the A-Sun is annoying to some, frustrating to others and embarrassing to many.
But ETSU and its fans would be much better served if the school’s athletic administration fixed a few flat tires before they decided to pack everything up, gas up the van, and haul everything off to another conference once again.
(And shouldn’t this be about the time that some mysterious, big-name donor steps in and says something totally ... mysterious, like “Hey, Paul. If you do this and this and make this happen, I’ll give you this ...”?)
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