Doug Elgin wants Wichita State to remain a powerful influence in Missouri Valley Conference

Missouri Valley Conference commissioner Doug Elgin spent last weekend in Wichita and received another up-close look at Wichita State’s ambition.

That ambition provides the MVC a strong source of pride and money, thanks to WSU’s success in basketball and other sports. That ambition also drove university president John Bardo to announce a comprehensive review of athletics last week, including a look at conference affiliation.

On Friday afternoon, Elgin met with Bardo to discuss plans for the university, academically and athletically. That evening, Elgin watched the Shockers women’s basketball team play No. 16 Tennessee at Koch Arena. On Saturday, he watched WSU’s men’s team defeat No. 25 Utah in front of 15,004 fans at Intrust Bank Arena.

Those games say a lot about where WSU stands and where it wants to go. Elgin wants the MVC to be a part of that future. Last week, Bardo declared every aspect of athletics is up for discussion. When it comes to conference affiliation, he wants to know if a conference featuring schools with similar missions to WSU is an option. He also wants to know if football, disbanded in 1986, or others sports, are part of that picture.

“I learned a lot about his vision for the campus,” Elgin said. “He assured me the announcement wasn’t stating an intention to leave the Missouri Valley, but one in which they’re going look at a lot of factors and make decisions that are in Wichita State’s best interests.”

There are no hard feelings in this potential split, at least yet. Bardo sees WSU as an urban institution with a growing and important research mission that doesn’t fit with the other nine MVC schools, four of which are private. He considers schools such as Cincinnati, Memphis and Houston — all members of the American Athletic Conference — as more similar to WSU.

“(Bardo’s) doing whatever he can to try to make university better, whether through it's through athletics or any other department,” Shockers fan Jon Peck said before Saturday’s basketball game. “People love football, and that's where most of the money is made in athletics on the college level. It might take years to build up, to get enough good athletes here, but if you could bring it back and have it right there along with the level of basketball that Gregg Marshall has brought here, we'd be a Big 12 type of program.”

Elgin understands that schools need to evaluate situations, and hopes WSU will see the benefit of continuing a relationship that began in 1945. Before joining the MVC, the school largely played against small-college competition and was a member of the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference from 1907-1927 and the Central Intercollegiate Conference from 1927-1940.

As an MVC member, WSU went to the 1965 and 2013 Final Fours, won the 1989 College World Series and played in the NCAA women’s basketball and volleyball tournaments regularly.

“We want them to stay,” Elgin said. “They’re critical to our membership. You see WSU come into an arena and there’s an aura about their program.”

Elgin said Bardo isn’t using WSU’s status as leverage to change the MVC. They casually discussed expansion to 12 teams, an issue explored in the past. Elgin said his feeling on the issue is that, unless two schools emerge that can significantly push the MVC forward, his preference is to keep the 18-game round robin that a 10-team conference creates.

While the MVC’s status in men’s basketball slipped with Creighton’s departure in 2013, last season represented a rally. Both WSU and Northern Iowa were ranked in the top 11 of the Associated Press poll when they met with the MVC title at stake in the regular-season finale. Both won games in the NCAA Tournament, Illinois State played in the NIT and Evansville and Loyola won minor postseason tournaments.

Coaching changes and slower-than-expected rebuilds at schools such as Bradley, Missouri State and Southern Illinois are dragging down MVC men’s basketball this season. Half of the teams own a losing record entering this weekend, but Elgin is optimistic about improvement. He sees the MVC’s ESPN3 initiative, which puts many MVC games on the Internet-based platform, as a significant asset for the future and efforts to strengthen schedules are paying off. He said he expects all MVC schools to pay athletes full cost-of-attendance stipends in an effort to keep pace with higher-profile conferences in basketball.

“We had two top-15 teams last year,” Elgin said. “I’d love to get back to a situation where we know we’re going to get multiple bids and we could get three or four. That takes time. We’ve got some schools that are rebuilding.”

In other sports, the MVC is showing strength. Last spring, three MVC baseball teams played in the NCAA Tournament and Missouri State and Dallas Baptist hosted regionals. This fall, the MVC put three at-large teams into the NCAA volleyball tournament.

Bardo, during his interview last week, said that if research reveals that WSU is best off in the MVC, he wants to help lead the conference to bigger things. Elgin says the Shockers perform that role already after winning the MVC All-Sports Trophy nine times in the past 12 years.

“They’re pushing everybody to be better,” he said.

WSU fans are, in general, eager to investigate a conference upgrade and cautious about the prospects of adding football and its financial burden.

“All the reasons, all the excuses for not bringing it back, the cost, keeping that many people interested, building it from the ground up … all those reasons are still there,” Brett Campbell said before Saturday’s basketball game. “It would be wonderful to have a football team again, and a lot of schools in the Valley have teams, if they were to stay there. It would be great to have a team, mainly because basketball is so good right now and it's been carrying the entire university to another level and it's been wonderful. But honestly I'll be very surprised if they bring it back.”

Contributing: Tony Adame

This story was originally published December 16, 2015 at 3:48 PM with the headline "Doug Elgin wants Wichita State to remain a powerful influence in Missouri Valley Conference."