Two SLIAC teams dropped football this offseason, and now the rumblings are growing that the SLIAC and UMAC are getting back into their alliance.

The leagues split up a couple of years ago as each tried to pursue an automatic bid independently. The SLIAC got close and was on track to get a tourney bid as early as 2010 before Blackburn and Principia dropped the sport this offseason. Huntingdon and LaGrange, which joined the league as football-only affiliates, brought the SLIAC’s total to eight, but with just six playing the sport next season, the league won’t qualify.

The UMAC has just five football-playing members, and not many opportunities to add to that total unless other schools in the league add the sport. St. Scholastica brought the total to five.

A renewal of the UMAC-SLIAC alliance would bring the total to nine teams and restart the two-year waiting period clock, with, potentially, 2009 and 2010 as waiting years and 2011 as an automatic bid. Of course, that would likely leave Huntingdon and LaGrange back out in the cold, as two teams in the Southeast with nine teams scattered from St. Louis to Duluth, Minn.

One school reportedly jumped the gun and released news on its Web site, though that release has since been pulled. The SLIAC declined comment, while UMAC commissioner Corey Borchardt would not take questions but gave the following statement to D3sports.com: “We currently only have five institutions that offer football. Certainly any time that we can look to expand the number of institutions that offer football, we would want to do that. We want to see that number increase and hope to do so for the AQ and for scheduling purposes.”

Hopefully Huntingdon and LaGrange are calling all of the SCAC schools left in the lurch by Colorado College, because if they end up with eight conference games plus a Dome Day, then that’s nine games and I doubt many will choose to play a 10th game and honor their commitment to Huntingdon and LaGrange.