Me last December on UNCC’s athletic future:

The pool of Division I basketball-only schools is shrinking rapidly. As a result, Charlotte is already playing in a conference, the Atlantic 10, that is utterly alien to UNCC. … Perhaps Charlotte’s A-10 match will work out and money will not be an issue. But if not, UNCC may face doubling-down to create a Division 1-A football program or sliding back down to the Southern Conference and fielding a 1-AA football team.

Sports columnist extraordinaire Tom Sorensen today:

Charlotte should drop out of the Atlantic 10 Conference and join the Southern Conference.

“I can tell you that that’s not going to happen,” says Charlotte athletics director Judy Rose. … Getting on a bus would help. Schools in the A-10 are scattered from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, from Richmond to Rhode Island and from St. Bonaventure, which I believe is in upstate N.Y., to St. Louis. That’s a lot of flying for a lot of Charlotte teams.

The 49ers might not have many players who can drive to the basket, but they can drive to the nine Southern Conference schools in the Carolinas and fly to Georgia Southern and Chattanooga.

Judy Rose and, more importantly, Phil Dubois need to get with the program. The drive to turn UNCC into Charlotte University, with a big Uptown presence and its own light right line, is wrong-headed on several levels, but none more so than on the question of football. UNCC alumni want a defined UNCC campus with on-campus events, not the least of which is football.

The A-10 is a dead-end for UNCC.