Does Presentation College closing affect the Frontier Conference?

Presentation College in Aberdeen, South Dakota is a private Roman Catholic college that was founded in 1951. It was announced this week that they will not enroll students for the 2023-24 academic year and will cease education operations after the Spring and Summer sessions, due to financial and enrollment challenges.

With the school closing, I just feel for the faculty and the students. I feel awful for the non-professor staff, every campus I have ever been on has ‘those’ people, the people you see every day that are the absolute lifeblood of the campus. Then I think of the Alumni, I can’t imagine ‘my’ school closing.

Best of luck to everyone associated moving forward.

I bring up the closing of Presentation College only because we might feel ripples here in the Frontier Conference.

Athletically the Saints spent most of their years as an NCAA D-III program. From 2002-2012 they were a member of the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference, they then spent one year as an NCAA D-III independent.
In 2013 the school joined the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and joined the newly established North Star Athletic Association as a founding member.

That is the reason I want to look at this a little bit. The North Star currently sits with 8 full-time member schools, (7 football-playing schools) With Presentation College closing, that will leave the North Star with 6 football-playing schools, which is the lowest number you can have and still get an automatic playoff bid.

The North Star is in a spot that we are familiar with here in the Frontier, grow or die. If you look at the North Star footprint, they are already covering a very large chunk of the map. Can they expand further? Or does adding more travel make it impossible for schools to afford?

Do the North Star the Frontier try to work something out together? Or is there a possibility of the Frontier being the aggressor and going back after Dickinson State as a full-time member?

Conference realignment at all levels has been crazy the last several years, and it doesn’t look like that is changing anytime soon.