(10-21-2013 10:56 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Schools simply don't willingly downgrade to a lower division in this day and age because the money you'd save in expenses is relatively small while the drop in revenue is relatively large. To the extent that a football program like Grambling's is in the trouble, it would drop football altogether over moving down to Division II. The money from a conference's NCAA Tournament basketball bid is more than enough to justify fighting to stay at the Division I level.

Grambling would drop basketball or baseball first, before they ever considered dropping football.

I think realignment will eventually visit the SWAC and MEAC. Both leagues have growing have and have-not divides.

Florida A&M would be in the Sun Belt right now if it had not been for the school having serious financial issues at the time they wanted to move to FBS back around 2003-04. The commissioner visited and once they got to looking realized what was happening and backed off.

More than one administrator in the Sun Belt has told me that if Jackson State ever gets the itch and puts together a good plan that they would have little trouble gaining approval (of course that was before the eastern expansion). Southern has been bandied around as well but the politics there would be an issue in the UL System. I think Alabama State has toyed with the idea but with Troy and South Alabama in their odds wouldn't be any better than Southern being the third Louisiana school in the Sun Belt.

The SWAC commissioner floated the idea of adding Centenary, New Orleans, and Birmingham Southern before each reclassified (temporary in UNO's case) but the membership didn't bite.

I think it is inevitable that some SWAC and MEAC will eventually join leagues not dominated by HBCU's and eventually some non-HBCU's join those leagues.

(10-21-2013 08:41 PM)jdgaucho Wrote:  

(10-21-2013 10:56 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Schools simply don't willingly downgrade to a lower division in this day and age because the money you'd save in expenses is relatively small while the drop in revenue is relatively large. To the extent that a football program like Grambling's is in the trouble, it would drop football altogether over moving down to Division II. The money from a conference's NCAA Tournament basketball bid is more than enough to justify fighting to stay at the Division I level.

Grambling would drop basketball or baseball first, before they ever considered dropping football.

There's not a choice in basketball - they need to maintain that sport to be an overall Division I school.

Regardless, I constantly see suggestions about schools downgrading on their own (whether from FBS to FCS or Division I to Division II), but the overarching point is that absolutely no college administrator is interested whatsoever in doing that. The movement is *always* in the opposite direction - schools want to get to the top level and certainly aren't willingly going to move down. Now, whether a school gets *forced* down against its will is another matter, but the NCAA generally provides more rope than not these days to allow athletic departments to get themselves in order.