The Citadel has 3500 students. We are beginning to stretch the idea of plausible candidates. If a school's name and FBS have never been mentioned together, chances are they will not want to spend or have the millions of dollars necessary to move to FBS, never mind build out their stadium to 30k seats and make other facilities upgrades.

The Citadel? Liberty?

WTH?

You'll see UTA start football before either of those happen.

The Citadel is small but have a heck of a fan base. Those Citadel grads stick together.

(04-21-2013 10:57 AM)FloridaJag Wrote:  

(04-21-2013 10:31 AM)panama Wrote:  

(04-21-2013 10:22 AM)FloridaJag Wrote:  

(04-21-2013 10:21 AM)panama Wrote:  Looking at your list by the way...you can eliminate most as future move ups

Which ones would you eliminate?

HBCU's arent moving up. Talk to any HBCU alumnus who is knowledgeable and you will realize they have nothing to gain by moving up. They already have built in rivalries. They have a defacto bowl system with the HBCU classic games. They gain nothing by moving up a subdivision at enormous financial cost and thereby losing the rivalries that bring them money now. So scratch that. Not going to happen.

The Citadel, Lamar and Richmond are simply too small to sustain FBS. They are what FCS was constructed for.

Liberty may make it some day but their problem will continue to be that no public school president will want it known that he voted yes for a conference invite for them

That leaves the Florida schools and Jacksonville State. I would add UNO to that list as they are exactly where Charlotte, GSU, USA and ODU were about 5 or 6 years back.

I agree with you about the HBCU's. Their ship has passed. The only two which could even think about it was FAMU and JSU and that ship sailed four years ago.

We agree on Liberty.

Based on your size analysis, ULM is in trouble.

I disagree with UNO. They were in the Sun Belt until two years ago and left because of money problems. I do not think they can turn it around that quickly.

Jacksonville State would be the sixth FBS school in Alabama and third in the SBC. Which is the same situation as Kennesaw State except KSU would be the fifth FBS school in Georgia.

Georgia's population is twice the size of Alabama.
Kennesaw State is twice the size Jacksonville State.
KSU is in Atlanta which helps the travel cost for the all the SBC schools.

Based on our combined analysis, the pecking order would be:

Kennesaw State
North Florida
Florida Gulf Coast

However. that is a completely eastern perspective. I would add Lamar to balance out the list in case we lose ULM.

I believe lamar is larger than rice, tcu, baylor, tulsa, tulane..maybe some others that are in fbs..enrollment size is not as great a factor as checkbook size..

(04-22-2013 03:59 PM)runamuck Wrote:  

(04-21-2013 10:57 AM)FloridaJag Wrote:  

(04-21-2013 10:31 AM)panama Wrote:  

(04-21-2013 10:22 AM)FloridaJag Wrote:  

(04-21-2013 10:21 AM)panama Wrote:  Looking at your list by the way...you can eliminate most as future move ups

Which ones would you eliminate?

HBCU's arent moving up. Talk to any HBCU alumnus who is knowledgeable and you will realize they have nothing to gain by moving up. They already have built in rivalries. They have a defacto bowl system with the HBCU classic games. They gain nothing by moving up a subdivision at enormous financial cost and thereby losing the rivalries that bring them money now. So scratch that. Not going to happen.

The Citadel, Lamar and Richmond are simply too small to sustain FBS. They are what FCS was constructed for.

Liberty may make it some day but their problem will continue to be that no public school president will want it known that he voted yes for a conference invite for them

That leaves the Florida schools and Jacksonville State. I would add UNO to that list as they are exactly where Charlotte, GSU, USA and ODU were about 5 or 6 years back.

I agree with you about the HBCU's. Their ship has passed. The only two which could even think about it was FAMU and JSU and that ship sailed four years ago.

We agree on Liberty.

Based on your size analysis, ULM is in trouble.

I disagree with UNO. They were in the Sun Belt until two years ago and left because of money problems. I do not think they can turn it around that quickly.

Jacksonville State would be the sixth FBS school in Alabama and third in the SBC. Which is the same situation as Kennesaw State except KSU would be the fifth FBS school in Georgia.

Georgia's population is twice the size of Alabama.
Kennesaw State is twice the size Jacksonville State.
KSU is in Atlanta which helps the travel cost for the all the SBC schools.

Based on our combined analysis, the pecking order would be:

Kennesaw State
North Florida
Florida Gulf Coast

However. that is a completely eastern perspective. I would add Lamar to balance out the list in case we lose ULM.

I believe lamar is larger than rice, tcu, baylor, tulsa, tulane..maybe some others that are in fbs..enrollment size is not as great a factor as checkbook size..

Arent those all private schools?

Exactly

What about Mercer? They start football this year and they are huge with several campuses. For those that do not know they are in Georgia. Bobby Lamb, former coach at Furman, is their head coach.

(04-24-2013 04:41 PM)GoApps70 Wrote:  What about Mercer? They start football this year and they are huge with several campuses. For those that do not know they are in Georgia. Bobby Lamb, former coach at Furman, is their head coach.

I'm against adding anymore startups. I think Central Arkansas deserves a look. I can't remember much about them other than them being an absolute terror in their division(s). As to no surprise, they were ranked fairly high in FCS this year. When they were transitioning from DII to D1AA they beat D1A WKU 28-7 in Bowling Green. That's a big accomplishment.

What presidents don't want, and what you shouldn't want, is for one school's athletics to dominate your conference with players who couldn't qualify academically to enroll at the other schools.

(04-24-2013 04:53 PM)TroyFootball05 Wrote:  

(04-24-2013 04:41 PM)GoApps70 Wrote:  What about Mercer? They start football this year and they are huge with several campuses. For those that do not know they are in Georgia. Bobby Lamb, former coach at Furman, is their head coach.

I'm against adding anymore startups. I think Central Arkansas deserves a look. I can't remember much about them other than them being an absolute terror in their division(s). As to no surprise, they were ranked fairly high in FCS this year. When they were transitioning from DII to D1AA they beat D1A WKU 28-7 in Bowling Green. That's a big accomplishment.

The bigger issue with Central Arkansas is that they have several infractions. Apparently, they have a history of playing fast and loose with the rules.

Other than that, I would force them to change the seizure inducing purple and gray turf.