Robert L. Carothers is completing an 18-year term as president at the University of Rhode Island. Carothers has been involved in the athletic program as much as any university president in recent years.

This story is the sixth of six on Carothers’ impact on the URI athletic program.

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Remember the old Yankee Conference of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and later Boston University and others, that existed in all sports until 1978 and in football until 1997?

Robert L. Carothers, the retiring president of the University of Rhode Island, forecasts a 21st-century Yankee Conference as a way for administrators to grapple with the cost of sending teams to ever-distant locales, the result of expansion in the last decade.

“I’d like to bring back the old Yankee Conference plus a couple of SUNY schools,” Carothers said during an interview in his office in May.

But Thorr Bjorn, the director of athletics, does not see URI joining an all-sports league built on the old Yankee Conference geographic footprint, because most of the former members are second- or third-tier basketball programs. And basketball is the major revenue stream in Division I except for members of the BCS football cartel.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island are usually competitive in A-10 basketball, but Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Boston University are hockey schools; Vermont and BU no longer play football; Connecticut is in the Big East, and SUNY schools like Albany and Stony Brook are still establishing their Division I credentials.

Bjorn will help David Dooley, Carothers’ successor, shape the future of athletics in Kingston. Dooley comes from Montana State, where the football team, 7-5 last year, plays in a 15,000-seat stadium renovated a decade ago for $12 million; where average attendance at six home football games last fall was 13,405; where the men’s basketball team finished 14-17 and the women’s 15-15; where MSU’s Kelly Gillum was the 2009 Big Sky Conference women’s golfer of the year, and where 13 varsity teams call themselves the Bobcats.

 What is Dooley’s vision? During his campus visit, he said he wants URI athletes to graduate with a diploma in their left hand and a championship ring on their right hand.

And Bjorn’s vision? That URI will strengthen its support of its 18 varsity sports for men and women, that most of those teams will be competitive in the Atlantic 10 Conference, and that travel costs for football will shrink.

Bjorn’s vision will disappoint supporters of URI hockey who have advocated for a varsity program for years while URI men and women played a club schedule and the men won a national championship. And it will disappoint critics who have longed to eliminate football and support hockey or even academic programs.

Bjorn does not plan to drop football or add varsity ice hockey or lacrosse to the URI lineup any time soon..

“As revenues increase, it makes sense to re-invest in our 18 existing programs,” he said, noting that URI cut four sports (men’s tennis and swimming and women’s gymnastics and field hockey) in 2008, and did not add women’s lacrosse as planned, all for budgetary reasons. He added that URI spends less on football operations than any CAA team.

Neither the A-10 nor the CAA as currently configured is ideal for URI because of transportation costs. Former A-10 commissioner Linda Bruno oversaw the addition of Charlotte, Richmond Fordham, Dayton, La Salle and St. Louis, which stretched the A-10’s footprint from New England to North Carolina and from the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest. Inexpensive bus trips became expensive flights.

“For the Olympic sports, the A-10 is expensive. You have to traipse a team out to St. Louis, down to Charlotte. There’s a lot of bucks in that,” Carothers said.

But the A-10 is a solid mid-major conference in basketball thanks to the presence of Xavier, Dayton, UMass, Temple, Saint Joseph’s and, occasionally, Rhode Island. That said, URI receives only the minimum allotment of $40,000 from the A-10’s share of NCAA tournament money because the basketball team has not earned a bid in so long. URI’s operating budget for athletics is about $7.5 million.

The Colonial Athletic Association is another league with a long footprint. As an all-sports conference it stretches from Boston (Northeastern) through Long Island (Hofstra), Philadelphia (Drexel), the Mid-Atlantic (Delaware, Towson) and down to the Deep South (five schools in Virginia, plus North Carolina-Wilmington and Georgia State in Atlanta). Its football-only schools include Richmond, UMass and URI of the A-10, Villanova of the Big East and Maine and New Hampshire of America East, which makes for expensive road trips. Or, have you ever tried to get a football team from Williamsburg, Va., to Orono, Maine, or vice versa?

Georgia State will start playing CAA football in 2012. Old Dominion is developing a program as well, so the best Football Championship Subdivision (the old I-AA) conference in the nation will be even larger and more Southern in five years.

 “The Colonial keeps expanding . . . and is probably going to add Charlotte,” Carothers said, “and more and more it gets out of our marketing footprint. We’re not recruiting in those states, and it doesn’t do us any good to go there. But on the other hand, what we could do in the New York area . . . The president at Hofstra wants to get out of the Colonial altogether. He’d like to come in the A-10, but there’s not much enthusiasm right now in the A-10 for that, but I would support that.”

Bjorn mentioned that talk of major conference re-alignment subsided after the Big East voted to maintain the status quo for five years. He does not anticipate any movement in the Atlantic 10 in the immediate future. He is concerned about CAA football, however. The addition of Georgia State and, ultimately, Old Dominion, will give the league 14 members, eight based from Philadelphia south.

Would the northeast schools break away and form a new football league? “We have to start making a lot of decisions based on finances,’ Bjorn said. “As of right now, we have no immediate plans to change.”

 Bjorn will continue to preach the importance of fundraising, sponsorships and ticket sales as means to self-sufficiency, a necessity as state support is only 11 percent of the university budget now, down from 26 percent when Carothers arrived in 1991. Annual giving to URI athletics is up 3 percent this year, Bjorn noted with pride.

The needs are obvious: a new East Grandstand, press box and lights at Meade Stadium; bleachers for baseball and softball; a soccer press box; new tennis courts; a multipurpose turf field; an outdoor track.. All it takes is vision and money.

“I’m really excited,” Bjorn said. “I know I’m supposed to say that, but as we look to the future . . . I’m really confident we’ll get better.”

mszostak@projo.com