Author Topic: Which teams should leave FBS?  (Read 5763 times)

Offline go guins

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Which teams should leave FBS?
« on: January 31, 2019, 10:22:24 AM »
It's cold as "heck" and not much going on in sports so time to read some SBNATION news.  Guy makes a lot of good points:


There are lots of reasons a smart school might consider dropping out of FBS, college football’s top division, and moving to FCS.
The financials of the sport are changing. Coaching salaries are skyrocketing at an ahistorical rate. In a few years, the average head coach salary in the AAC, a non-power conference, could be north of $2 million. Programs are feeling pressure to increase assistant salary pools, with top coordinators easily clearing $1 million a year.

That’s just coaching salaries. There’s also pressure to invest in expensive facility projects and pay analysts, recruiting staffers, and other full-timers. Travel costs aren’t getting cheaper either.

Other future obligations are unclear. The NCAA, its conferences, and its schools might have to defend a class-action lawsuit over concussions. A court case could force schools to spend more on athletes — or even eventually pay players.

That might not be so bad if revenues were rising as quickly as expenses. Attendance has declined all over. With the decline of cable TV, the rise of media fees should slow, especially outside the Power 5 conferences. Many state governments have slowed their support for higher education, leading schools to charge students heavy fees to subsidize athletics.

Many teams aren’t going to win anything significant. They’re often the same ones in financial peril.

To free themselves from that wasteful cycle, an FBS team could consider dropping to FCS. There are a few structural differences between the two levels, the biggest being the different scholarship limits. FBS lets you have 85 full-ride scholarships, while FCS is limited to 63 (and in some leagues, even less than that).

The cost savings over scholarships is suspect (the schools are cutting checks to themselves, after all), but the costs for virtually everything else, from facilities to coaching salaries to support staff, are substantially less. The revenues are smaller too, but for some G5 programs without lucrative TV deals, the future savings may outweigh the costs.

Dropping down could help a team win more and spend less. Attendance could reveal some candidates.
The NCAA technically requires that FBS teams average 15,000 in paid attendance per game over a rolling two-year period. Schools typically pad their official attendance numbers, but in real life, many schools actually have fewer than 15,000 butts in their seats every game.

In 2017, 34 FBS schools had fewer than 15,000 people actually scan tickets into their average home game. Some schools don’t have to comply with records requests for data like that, so the number could be even higher.

But we know these teams didn’t scan 15,000 fans into their games: ULM, Coastal Carolina, Buffalo, Eastern Michigan, Ball State, UMass, Kent State, San Jose State, Miami (Ohio), Central Michigan, Charlotte, UL Lafayette, Akron, Northern Illinois, UTEP, Arkansas State, New Mexico State, Ohio, Western Michigan, Middle Tennessee, Texas State, Nevada, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, UNLV, Old Dominion, Toledo, UTSA, Southern Miss, Marshall, Louisiana Tech, Wyoming, Connecticut, and Western Kentucky.

If we’re just using attendance as a benchmark, the entire MAC could drop to FCS. But that isn’t fair, as the MAC’s TV-focused strategy (with games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights) has to depress turnout. If MAC teams played all their games on Saturdays, then Toledo, NIU, and WMU would sell more tickets.

But the MAC’s situation has gotten worse. The state of Ohio no longer produces FBS-caliber recruits like it did in the 1960s. The Rust Belt is losing population relative to the Sun Belt and West, sapping potential support for smaller schools. Building fanbases in the shadows of Big Ten programs might only get harder.

One idea: three of the 12-team MAC’s lowest-revenue programs — Kent State, Ball State, and Eastern Michigan — keep their MAC membership in other sports, but play football in the Missouri Valley. To get back to 10 football schools, the MAC could try to woo FCS power North Dakota State.
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Offline ytownchief22

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Re: Which teams should leave FBS?
« Reply #1 on: January 31, 2019, 11:31:55 AM »
Pipe dreams.

Offline IAA Fan

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Re: Which teams should leave FBS?
« Reply #2 on: January 31, 2019, 01:08:31 PM »
You made me read all of this just to find out it was an NDSU fan in the last line.?   LOL Why would the MAC want a team from the plains? The article also ignores the Sun Belt and half of the mountain west, which are equally bad. Add about 1/3 of CUSA if you really want to solve the problem.

Offline guinpen

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Re: Which teams should leave FBS?
« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2019, 08:04:27 PM »
Not so sure the mac would be interested in adding a team that would win the league most years.
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Offline Kandrase

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Re: Which teams should leave FBS?
« Reply #4 on: January 31, 2019, 09:28:41 PM »
Not so sure the mac would be interested in adding a team that would win the league most years.

Lol that’s what I was thinking, NDSU would win the MAC today let alone with 20 some more scholarships

Offline Penquin68

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Re: Which teams should leave FBS?
« Reply #5 on: January 31, 2019, 09:44:56 PM »
Very rare that a 1A team drops down to FCS.  Just not done very often.  Kent, Akron, and others never make the attendance numbers, but they still stay FBS.  I always thought we would be in a league with them, but not any more.  We can't afford FBS and they have too much ego to drop down to our level.

fbs.  The MAC plays many weekday games to get the TV money and stay solvent.  I wish it were different, but it is not.  Since the 70"s I thought we would get in a league with them, but I have given up.  Just not there.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2019, 07:12:38 AM by IAA Fan »

Offline Double ET

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Re: Which teams should leave FBS?
« Reply #6 on: January 31, 2019, 11:09:40 PM »
Very rare that a 1A team drops down to FCS.  Just not done very often.  Kent, Akron, and others never make the attendance numbers, but they still stay FBS.  I always thought we would be in a league with them, but not any more.  We can't afford FBS and they have too much ego to drop down to our level.

fbs.  The MAC plays many weekday games to get the TV money and stay solvent.  I wish it were different, but it is not.  Since the 70"s I thought we would get in a league with them, but I have given up.  Just not there.


Akron is in severe budget problem. Their president got fired and they just eliminated over 40 academic programs to save $. They lost $$ in their football program and yet, still decided to stay in FBS to loss more $$, go figure! They must enjoy the name recognition that comes with FBS.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2019, 07:14:02 AM by IAA Fan »

Offline go guins

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Re: Which teams should leave FBS?
« Reply #7 on: February 01, 2019, 09:50:01 AM »
Very rare that a 1A team drops down to FCS.  Just not done very often.  Kent, Akron, and others never make the attendance numbers, but they still stay FBS.  I always thought we would be in a league with them, but not any more.  We can't afford FBS and they have too much ego to drop down to our level.

fbs.  The MAC plays many weekday games to get the TV money and stay solvent.  I wish it were different, but it is not.  Since the 70"s I thought we would get in a league with them, but I have given up.  Just not there.


Akron is in severe budget problem. Their president got fired and they just eliminated over 40 academic programs to save $. They lost $$ in their football program and yet, still decided to stay in FBS to loss more $$, go figure! They must enjoy the name recognition that comes with FBS.
For now, yes, ego rules at Akron, Kent, and Buffalo among a ton of others, but at some point the budge becomes overpowering and practically may win out.  I actually see more schools simply dropping football than dropping back a level, tells you how strong ego can be. Would be great to have a mid-continent 1AA conference centered around Akron Buffalo, Kent and YSU, but, at 69 I probably won't live long enough!  At least with JT we have a leader smart enough not to follow those other guys down the rabbit hole!
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Offline guinpen

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Re: Which teams should leave FBS?
« Reply #8 on: February 01, 2019, 06:13:25 PM »
Very rare that a 1A team drops down to FCS.  Just not done very often.  Kent, Akron, and others never make the attendance numbers, but they still stay FBS.  I always thought we would be in a league with them, but not any more.  We can't afford FBS and they have too much ego to drop down to our level.

fbs.  The MAC plays many weekday games to get the TV money and stay solvent.  I wish it were different, but it is not.  Since the 70"s I thought we would get in a league with them, but I have given up.  Just not there.


Akron is in severe budget problem. Their president got fired and they just eliminated over 40 academic programs to save $. They lost $$ in their football program and yet, still decided to stay in FBS to loss more $$, go figure! They must enjoy the name recognition that comes with FBS.
For now, yes, ego rules at Akron, Kent, and Buffalo among a ton of others, but at some point the budge becomes overpowering and practically may win out.  I actually see more schools simply dropping football than dropping back a level, tells you how strong ego can be. Would be great to have a mid-continent 1AA conference centered around Akron Buffalo, Kent and YSU, but, at 69 I probably won't live long enough!  At least with JT we have a leader smart enough not to follow those other guys down the rabbit hole!

Not that I think it would happen but it may be easier for them if 2-4 schools would do it at the same time.
“Life is hard, it’s harder if you're stupid” - John Wayne