(06-23-2021 06:31 AM)OscarWildeCat Wrote: FCS is the most disjointed division in college football. There’s little or no uniformity. Some conferences offer scholarships, others don’t. Some participate in the playoffs, others don’t. Some regularly play OOC games against FCS peers, others rarely venture outside of their own conference.
Not only do this disconnectedness make make rankings a challenge, it it diminishes the overall quality of playoffs, which regularly match non scholarship and scholarship opponents in the first round and leaves out what arguably might be better teams from non participating conferences.
If there is one thing I’ve noticed about this board it’s that there is no shortage of experts with answers for needed reforms in college athletics. So, ok, football experts, what should be done to strengthen FCS?
My one thought is to incentivize schools from conferences that don’t participate in the playoffs to at least regularly schedule OOC games against FCS schools from participating conferences. I’m looking at you Ivy and SWAC.
In football only, allow non scholarship programs who are D1 in name only to move down to a lower division.
Enforce or eliminate existing minimum attendance requirements at the FBS level, or allow the formation of a new FBS conference in the North/West that allows schools like the Dakotas and Montanas to compete against peer athletic departments while playing in a conference that fits their geographic footprint. Money-wise, these schools organically generate more revenue than most Mac teams and many mwc teams (ticket sales/donations), and this is why a conference like the mvfc had 5 at large births to the 16 team playoff this spring. The swath of fbs schools in the south vs the lack of northern FBS opportunities in the north doesn't make sense, and it is the cause for much of the disparity at the fcs level.
The NCAA generates enough money overall that they could and should better support the FCS playoff system. At minimum, stop requiring schools to pay for home games, and instead select home games based on merit.
HBCU schools make more money by not participating because they have their annual celebration bowl game that pulls in around a million in revenue per year. The NCAA needs to have some type of financial reward to help incentivize playoff participation. They do not work at all to promote and advertise the FCS playoffs, and they do not work with ESPN to do so either. If the NCAA required ESPN to increase promotion and air more FCS playoff games nationally, the increased exposure would make participation from the HBSU's and IVY's more likely.
If the IVY and HBCU leagues participated and if there was any advertising push whatsoever for the playoffs, I think it's reasonable to think ratings could be decent and revenue could greatly increase, since those schools have such rabid followings or name recognition. As it stands, there is so little advertising that most casual viewers don't have any idea when FCS playoffs are taking place. Yet of course there are March madness commercials and intermission segments about fbs, during fcs playoff games.