With Fordham Set to Make Its Move, Atlantic 10 Makes a Move of Its Own

These are good times for the Atlantic 10 Conference.

Coming off a season in which the conference sent six teams to the NCAA tournament, the A-10 is as good as it's ever been. Just ask Fordham, which has been trying to establish a winning program since joining the conference prior to the 1995 season.

Things have been looking up for the Rams as of late. An influx of talent has restored hope at Rose Hill—hope that Fordham can finally turn things around and maybe even make a run in March when the conference tournament comes to town.

Since 2013, the A-10 tournament has taken place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. In 2015 and 2016, the event will return to Barclays. But after that the A-10 will leave New York City, only to return in a couple of years.

Last week, the conference announced that it will hold its tournament at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh in 2017 and then at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., in 2018. It's back to Barclays for the next three years after that.

In 2017 and 2018, Barclays will host the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, necessitating the move by the A-10, which had previously agreed to the ACC deal.

At first glance, this might not seem like a huge deal. The venues in both Pittsburgh and Washington are state-of-the-art, and the tournament will return to Brooklyn in 2019.

But if you're Fordham, you want this tournament in Brooklyn—this year, next year and every year after that.

The conference should want to play at Barclays in March as well. People might start identifying Barclays with the A-10, just like they identify Madison Square Garden with the Big East.

Fordham is the only Atlantic 10 school located in New York City. While the Rams don't have a huge following right now—fans or media—a winning season would change that. New York City is the media capital of the world. There are a ton of Fordham alumni working and living there or located in the nearby suburbs.

Barclays might not be Madison Square Garden, but it could become Fordham's home away from home. The Rams will play Manhattan there this year, and David Roach, the school's athletic director, told Bleacher Report in August that he'd like to schedule more games at Barclays.

Absent a new arena being built on campus, which doesn't seem likely in the near future, it appears that Barclays, which seats over 18,000, could be a place where Fordham plays more and more of its games.

Which brings us to the Atlantic 10 tournament. Other conference teams have played and will continue to play games there, but only Fordham can say it's located in the same city. If the Rams get some wins under their belt and make a run in the tournament, they will become a huge local story.

That's why it's something of a downer that the tournament will be moving for a couple of years, even though we knew it was coming.

It's just Fordham's luck, isn't it?

Not to get ahead of ourselves, but with new additions like Eric Paschall, Nemanja Zarkovic and Christian Sengfelder and improved play from Jon Severe and Ryan Rhoomes, among others, the Rams might finally be primed to make their move.

Assuming it takes them some time to become a consistent winner, maybe they will get a taste of postseason success this year and next. Then, in 2017, with Paschall and company in their junior years, Severe in his senior season and maybe some new additions to boot, you would think Fordham would be ready to challenge for a conference title. If it doesn't happen in the next few years, will it ever?

How great would it be if the Rams were to play for the A-10 championship just a couple boroughs down the line? For Fordham, I can't imagine anything better than winning in New York City.

Then again, maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves here. It's been a frustrating 19 years of basketball in the A-10. Fordham is still a good distance away from being included in any championship conversation.

But it's also true that a new era of basketball has been ushered in at Rose Hill—one that has people dreaming of big things.

What stage is bigger than New York City?

Charles Costello covers the Fordham Rams for Bleacher Report. A full archive of his articles can be found here. Follow him on Twitter @CFCostello