By Anthony Braviere

Staff writer

Eastern could possibly be joined by two more teams in the Ohio Valley Conference no later than the 2003-2004 seasons if two schools from Alabama decide to become part of the conference.

The two schools, Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., and Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Ala., were both invited to join the conference Friday.

OVC commissioner Dan Beebe did not want to comment on the schools specifically, but did say that there is a need for more football teams in the conference.

“There was a concern about the number of football teams in the conference,” Beebe said. “There are seven teams now, and with an addition of two more there would be nine, which is a good number.”

Samford, which is currently part of the Trans-America Athletic Conference, offers 17 Division I and I-AA sports with approximately 300 student athletes participating in those sports.

Jacksonville State University is part of the Southland Conference for football and the TAAC for the rest of its 15 sports. The Gamecocks also have 300 student athletes in those sports.

Jacksonville State Athletic Director Tom Seitz said that joining the OVC would be something that would be beneficial to everyone involved.

“Right now with our football team being in a different conference than the rest of our sports it’s difficult,” Seitz said. “If we decide to go that route it would be nice to get all of our teams under one belt.”

Samford Athletic Director Bob Roller also is in the position that Seitz is in, needing a home for Samford’s football team.

“Well we are Division I-AA independent right now and the rest of our 16 sports are in the TAAC,” Roller said. “So right now we’re in a position to where we are looking for a conference for our football team.”

Seitz also thought that being in the OVC would be a plus because many of the teams in the conference are familiar to Jacksonville State’s fans.

“Teams like Tennessee State, Tennessee Tech and Morehead State are all teams that our fans can all relate with because we’ve played those schools before.”

Eastern’s Director of Athletics Rich McDuffie said an advantage for having these two schools join the OVC would be the amount of media attention that both of them would generate for the conference.

“In terms of media coverage these two schools would be beneficial not only to Eastern, but the entire conference,” Eastern Athletic Director Richard McDuffie said. “Reason being that both schools are in Birmingham, which is a city not a town, so that will hopefully generate some media attention.”

With all of the advantages of having these two teams become affiliated with the OVC, one drawback would be the travel that Eastern will have to do to compete against the two Alabama schools.

“That is something that we will have to talk about here in house and look at what that travel will mean for us,” McDuffie said.”And yes it will increase our travel, but I think that both of these teams are very good comprehensive D- I and D-IAA schools.”

While travel was something that Beebe said was an issue with adding two schools in the southern part of the country, it was something he said the conference has dealt with before.

“The travel was something that we looked as a conference,” Beebe said. “But travel was a concern when Eastern came into the league.”

Both Samford University and Jacksonville State University have until April 30, 2000 to decide if they want to a part of the OVC.