(01-09-2018 10:41 PM)etsubuc Wrote:  You have to average 15,000 fans for 2 years to be eligible for FBS. We have a facility that holds half of that, and we are going to be hard pressed to fill that this season. I don't see any scenario where ETSU would have enough community support to average 15,000 per game even if we had a facility for it.

And 90% of our fans would not perceive a football schedule playing Georgia Southern, Troy, Coastal Carolina, etc. to be any more attractive than UTC, Citadel, and Western Carolina. And it would not help basketball at all. And the costs would increase to partially offset the bowl revenue increases.

We are not even close to having this conversation.

Isn’t that 15,000 tickets sold? Many of these lower level FBS games have nothing near 15,000 fans in seats, obviously. Of course everybody uses that counting procedure. The Power Five conferences are distancing themselves from the rest of FBS and relegating them to FBS-AA status de facto. I still can’t understand how App State fans, for example, are turned on to playing Sun Belt schools from far away places, academically beneath them, and actually never heard of by many of their fans. But, in our current culture of pretentiousness, guess it does make some sense.