Saal sees similarities between Murray and Wichita

MURRAY — While there is a big difference in population of the respective communities, former Murray State Director of Athletics Kevin Saal said he sees strong similarities between the Murray community and the location of his new job, Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas.

Saal accepted the Wichita State position several days ago. His top assistant, Matt Kelly, assumed the Murray State A.D.position on Tuesday.

“It’s a very supportive community,” Saal said of Wichita, whose population is between 500,000 and 600,000, compared to the 20,000-or-so in Murray. “They do have some professional sports influence, whether it’s AA baseball (the Wichita Wind Surge is an affiliate of Major League Baseball’s Minnesota Twins) or minor league hockey (the Wichita Thunder is a farm team of Edmonton), they’ve got some things there. There’s a lot of soccer there too.

“But just like blue and gold here, there’s lots of black and gold running around out there, and, like here, those people see opportunities to support their teams.”

There is one rather large difference. Wichita State has been playing at a much higher level of competition for a few years. In 2017, the Shockers program left the same Missouri Valley Conference that Murray State will officially enter on Friday for the American Athletic Conference, a league that includes some of the most recognized names in college athletics.

These include Houston, former Metro Conference members Memphis and Cincinnati and Southern Methodist University. Houston and SMU are cast-offs from the former Southwest Conference. Fledgling Central Florida is also a member, but the conference is preparing to lose UCF, UC and Houston to the larger Big 12 Conference, one of the so-called Power 5 conferences around which most major-college activity orbits these days. Replacements include Alabama-Birmingham, North Carolina-Charlotte and another former SWC member, Rice.

“You’re not right wrong or indifferent, but the expectations are different,” Saal said of Wichita State’s membership. The Shockers went to the American after its men’s basketball team, which, as is the case in Murray, receives the bulk of the attention from the university’s fanbase, made a surprising run to the NCAA Tournament Final Four out of The Valley.

“However, clearly, there are some chances to grow in different areas and we look forward to that,” he added.

However, for being located in such a large population area, Wichita State is not much larger than Murray State. Figures for fall 2021 at Wichita States showed that its enrollment was a little more than 16,000. Murray State has hovered around 10,000 for several years.

One thing Murray State has that Wichita State is missing is football. However, that is not to say that this is an unfamiliar thing to the Shockers. They played football, in fact, until the mid-1980s in The Valley before dropping it. In recent years, though, there has been talk that the school may try to restart that program, although Saal did not address that subject in an interview last week.

“Their enrollment has increased 8% over the last year and they have a commitment to innovation throughout the campus and that includes the investments they have made in athletics,” he said, finding irony that he is going to a campus that is still a few years into a conference change at a time his now-former campus is making what appears to be a significant leap from the Ohio Valley Conference to The Valley, seen by many observers as a top-10 league in the country.

“So they, too, just went through a conference realignment process. That piece resonated with (Wichita State officials during his interview) in terms of transitioning to the Missouri Valley Conference and the Missouri Valley Football Conference here,” he said. “So there a lot of pieces to it … lot of positives … and there was a mutual interest as those conversations progressed.”