OVC ... further movement?

The Ohio Valley Conference looked to be standing pat after losing Samford to the Southern Conference, effective this fall. Samford's departure left the OVC at 10 teams, which seemed to be a good number after the screwy basketball schedule an 11-team league produced.
Enter Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, an athletic program making the move up from the Division II ranks. SIU-E puts the OVC back at 11 teams, effective for the 2009-10 school year, fueling speculation the league is back in the market for a 12th school, which would allow it to form two six-team divisions in some sports.

So who is the 12th team? It's anybody's guess.

At the moment, an unattached Division I school in this part of the country doesn't seem to exist, and the NCAA has implemented a four-year moratorium on such moves.

That renders moot the speculation on Northern Kentucky, which was SIU-E's rival in the Great Lakes Valley Conference and had some basketball success in Division II — the school's women's team just won the national championship, beating a South Dakota team on its way to Division I.

Northern Kentucky conducted a feasibility schedule three years ago to make a Division I, school officials said, and opted to remain in Division II.

Talk abounds that North Alabama is exploring a similar move, but the NCAA moratorium negates that possibility.

So who could it be? Central Arkansas recently aligned with the Southland. Kennesaw State in Georgia is in the Atlantic Sun.

Lipscomb and Belmont, both based in Nashville, would be perfect geographic fits, but they seem comfortable in the Atlantic Sun and, as private schools, would be fish-out-of-water in the OVC.

One other possibility is East Tennessee State, which left the OVC for the Southern in the late 1970s but might be open for a change, especially after it dropped football a few years ago.