(07-16-2017 11:40 AM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(07-16-2017 11:26 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  Basically I see UALR's decision as like USA's.

Here's my view

1) USA has a free place to play, UALR would have a free/almost free place to play
2) Both are in largish metros with no local competition, but with competition for sports loyalty
3) Both have a place to play and an autobid to FBS
4) Both are/were greenfields
5) Neither has a lot of students (USA 16k, UALR 11k)
6) Neither has a history in FCS
7) Both schools, being relatively new (or very small historically) do not have a large number of alumni

USA managed to make the jump, but it was/is a LOT harder than we thought. Athletic donations are not coming in at the level required to wean our students off of large student fees to support the program. Attendance is 'meh' (17k or so a game - real attendance) and has been stagnant. Our students are not attending the games in numbers as high as we hoped. The local community has been helpful, but instead of having a large group of mildly interested fans in the local community, we have a smaller group of dedicated fans, and getting the wider community to support us has been difficult. Ten years into the program, and we're still trying to get settled as a FBS. I'm glad we did it, but it hasn't been easy.

UALR has a third fewer students. That probably means HIGHER student fees per capita to finance football. Fewer students to draw to the game. They have fewer 4 year alumni too. I think the Razorbacks might cast a longer shadow on Little Rock than the 4 hour away SEC schools do on Mobile.

Unless they can figure out how to make it work without a truly massive student fee or diversion from the academic fund, I think they're going to have a very hard time with it.

The third largest university in Arkansas is not even in D1. They are in D2, and still growing student population. There seems to be a lot of growth with the state public schools in Arkansas except maybe for UCA, UAPB and Little Rock. It depends how will they could recruit in the area. Little Rock took our Women's basketball coach, Joe Foley, but we seemed to still get the better players then Little Rock. Little Rock needs to reshape their image some more, and get a little more serious on their sports.

It's interesting that ULM is able to keep football going on a student population under 9k. Coastal is moving up with just 10k students. The Sun Belt certainly is going to have the smallest FBS institutions, and those institutions are going to have budget challenges. I don't know how these schools make it by on a shoestring, but they seemingly do. If those two schools can manage it (obviously ULM has been in FBS awhile), maybe UALR can, but it certainly seems to me that they'd be competing to stay out of the cellar and pinching pennies.