That doesn't sound much like they will be in the OVC/Southland a year or two from now.
Nope.
One option, of course, is to go FBS in football. If they did, they could be a potential MAC or Sunbelt member, as their basketball is quite competitive.
Murray would need to add a visitor side to the football stadium. Never had one.
https://athleticademix.se/custom/uploads/2020/06/murray-2... It is rather in the middle of nowhere. They would have to get WKU to make a move with them to a league like the MAC to get valuable Nashville media market attention. Like a package deal. Longshot at best.
Yes, Murray, where I lived for three years, does make Athens look urban and cosmopolitan. You are discounting the Paducah-Cape Girard-Harsbg market? I'm kind of joking there. You make a good point about a package deal with WKU as a long-shot possibility.
We took my daughter to look at Murray around 14 years ago and the town was about to get it's first casual dining chain restaurant. I think it was an Applebee's they were building but it may have been a Chili's or whatever. But it was regarded as a big friggin deal at the time.
I was in Paducah not that long ago. They have a "college" type area near downtown with no college. That was interesting. (LowerTown?)
I think the other big new draw to the area was the legal pot store on the other side of the river near the casino.
Yes, when we lived in Murray, Paducah was the "big city" where we went to fine dining and shopping. It's kind of considered the capital city of the Purchase. All of Kentucky west of the Tennessee River (now Lake Kentucky) was not originally part of Kentucky but was added in 1811 by something called the "Jackson Purchase," wherein the federal government "purchased" the land from the Chikasaw Indians. Resdents now just call it "The Purchase," and Paducah is the capital. It is sometimes referred jokingly as the capital of the State of Purchase.
Whatever you call it, this area is very different from the rest of the state in many ways. During the late rebellion, it was far and away the most Confederate leaning part of the state. Overall, Kentucky, officially neutral during the war, had more men volunteer for Union servcie than for Confederate service, but not in The Purchase, where Confederate enlistments far outnumbered Union enlistments. Had to get in the obligatory Civil War reference! ;-)
Unfortunately, these attitudes still linger in some parts of The Purchase. My youngest daughter's father-in-law, an African American, worked for Bell South and used to travel all over the state from his home in Louisvile. He said the only place in Kentucky he ever felt unconfortable because of racial prejudice was in The Purchase, specifically on a business trip he made to the small town of Benton, just north of Murray.
The city of Murray, being a college town, had a somewhat different atmosphere than other parts of The area. By Purchase standards, it was cosmopolitan and progressive (not using that word in the current political context, but generically).
A bit of Trivia about Murray:
1. It has the best Dairy Queen in nation, as a sign in front of the establishment proudly proclaims:
https://tinyurl.com/j8yr6xh8 2. Other than the university, the town's major business is car fix-up shops -- body shops, engine repair, etc. Used car deals from Kentucky and neighboring states would send their junkers to Murray to be made to look "like new" and then returned to the dealer to sell. When I lived there some national magazine, I think it was Popular Mechanics, had a feature story about the car fix-up business in Murray. There's one line in that story that remember, perhaps slightly paraphrased, "The next best thing to a new car is one that's been fixed in Murray, Ky."