to  

The Atlantic 10 is moving from Philadelphia to Newport News, Va.

There's an announcement coming Thursday.

It seems like an odd move. I want to say up front there's potentially a good reason that I'm not aware of, but...

I get that rent on office space in downtown Philadelphia probably isn't cheap, but wouldn't it make more sense to move somewhere more centralized. Philly does have some suburbs in Pennsyvania and Jersey.

The move could very likely create a turnover in the staff of the league as the league's employees will have to decide whether to uproot themselves and their families to a location almost 300 miles away. As someone who thinks highly of the people I know who work in the league, that would be a shame.

What does this mean to the league, I'm not really sure. I can't imagine it would affect things that much in terms of competition. I would guess that it would become more expensive for the league administrators to fly places. Although a quick scan of Expedia shows reasonable (under $300) flights to A-10 airports (Hartford, Saint Louis, Buffalo, Charlotte, Pittsburgh and Cincinatti) from Newport News International Airport on a random November weekend.

For fans, athletes and for that matter media, there's not a ton of reasons to be at the league office. So it won't change much.

But there's certainly something so be said for being among your league's fans, for living in a place that gets your league's games on normal cable TV. It seems like a certain amount of how your conference is being received gets lost when you aren't.

End of rant.

...542 miles to Newport News...