Your questions answered

I had the chance to sit down with CCSU Director of Athletics C.J. Jones today (did I mention there's big news coming?) and, after we were done talking about what we were talking about, I mentioned to him that there were some questions I'd been given by you the fans on my blog. He was more than gracious to take a couple of extra minutes to answer a few.

Here are some highlights in short form:

1) He was encouraged by the support by some local politicians in terms of trying to get a new arena built, but made it clear that, if such a building comes, it won't be anytime in the immediate future.

2) I had held off on reporting this before because I'd only heard it from people I don't know terribly well, but C.J. seemed just as optimistic about the possibility of the FCS playoffs being expanded (maybe up to 24 teams) as those other people did. Will the NEC get an automatic berth as part of a future play-in round? That's to be determined, but things are looking better than they once did.

2b) Jones sounds like he believes in the NEC's future as a football conference. If the league gets that automatic bid, it could become even more attractive to teams looking for a home. At the very least, it should stop teams currently in the league from shopping themselves around.
"Now that you potentially have (that chance), I would think from my perspective, that would mean teams looking at other opportunities for a chance to get into the playoff don't have to look at those opportunities," Jones said. "So let's build our conference and some of those teams that are out there and want to be part of that might be looking at our conference. So that might even make our conference stronger in terms of someone coming in."

Much of this is reliant on the NEC getting access to the playoffs. The expansion, however, isn't even official yet, never mind how the extra spots would be filled, so don't hold your breath yet.

3) Along the same lines, there should be more word about at least the potential of NEC expansion in other sports by November.

After talking to Jones, my prediction is an expanded NEC football conference within five years, maybe sooner. I wouldn't be shocked if the NEC gets included in the playoffs in the future, either.

Big thanks to C.J for taking time to answer those questions, and for all his help on the story you'll be reading in the next few days. The delay was because of a third party, everyone at Central is always cooperative with me. If you have more questions, fire them to me, and I'll try and pass them along.

More basketball info is my next pet project after this one I've been chasing. After that, I think we'll have covered everything you've asked me so far (except for football schedules, which I'll effort getting more on as well).