(05-22-2020 12:59 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  Its not that moving down to FCS is bad as much as the current financial setup doesn't provide a rationalization for it.

The rationalization would be saving about $10 million in additional required subsidies that G5 have over FCS.

But, that doesn't mean much to admins and boosters who like FBS football because they aren't paying the subsidy, students and the "academic side" are. It's a cost-free ego-stroke for them.

If you made admins take pay cuts each year in proportion to the size of the subsidies needed to run FBS football, you'd see a big change in their attitude towards the "affordability" of it real quick. Like Roadrunner quick. Suddenly all talk about "front porch" and "intangible marketing value" and the like would get the heeve-ho out the window.

I mean, believe it or not, when EMU was cutting sports last year but not Sacred Cow football, the university president said one reason was that reputationally they want to compare themselves with Western Michigan and Central Michigan ...... not Grand Valley State. But GVS not only has a far lower athletic subsidy, its US News ranking is actually higher than WMU or CMU .... or Eastern Michigan!

It's that kind of craziness that FBS football drives.