A little further down the food chain of college athletics, there is plenty of conference realignment happenings that I’ve ignored. With Temple re-joining the Big East, but this time as a full member, the A-10 had a need. They called Butler up from the Horizon League and VCU from the CAA.

Meanwhile C-USA is seeing UCF, SMU, Houston and Memphis coming to the Big East so they need anyone new blood. They pulled Charlotte and their soon-to-be-minted-in-2013 football program from the A-10, and are trying to get Old Dominion from the CAA. ODU, though, is taking a page from Mizzou and may not decide until the end of June.

That leaves an opening in the Horizon and maybe two spots in the CAA.  So, who is under consideration for membership in both conferences? How about Robert Morris?

The Horizon would seem like more of a natural fit with geography. It has Cleveland State, Youngstown St., Detroit and Wright St. within 5 hour bus trips. The problem is that RMU plays football, and the Horizon has no home for football. That’s where the CAA comes into play.

But there is still a problem.

The league is a good basketball league (although not nearly as good without VCU and ODU) with a roster of academic institutions with which the Robert Morris hierarchy would dearly like to be associated. RMU basketball has made the NCAA, NIT and CIT tournaments in recent seasons and the football team was in the NCAA playoffs two seasons ago.

Seems like a perfect fit. But the issue is money, and Robert Morris would need to spend some more should the Colonials want to move into the Colonial. According to the website Basketball State, Robert Morris spent $1.164 million on its basketball program in 2011. That would rank ninth of the 10 remaining schools in the Horizon and last of the 11 remaining schools in the Colonial. Of course, that also ranks 10th of the 12 schools in the NEC.

RMU president Gregory Dell’Omo is an ardent supporter of athletics as a major piece of the academic experience. There’s a new football stadium and some far-off plans for a new convocation center, which would house the basketball teams.

But he would need to authorize an increase in athletic spending by at least $7 million per year to be competitive with the Colonial schools (according to Basketball State).

Not sure where they could get another $7 million for athletics. Their enrollment —  undergrad and grad — is only around 5000. So there is no way to bleed it from the students with activity fees.  It seems that it would be a little too soon for RMU to make that big a leap. Yet, if the opportunity presents itself, maybe they figure they may never get a better chance to move up this far this fast.