(04-26-2018 06:09 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 04:44 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 04:10 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 03:13 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  The UC system does not absorb all the residential students you'd see at other states.

California, like many other states, has two public university systems. The California State University system has about 420,000 undergraduates this school year. The UC system has almost 220,000. So there are about 640,000 undergraduate students at public "four year" universities in California.

Counting "only" the UC schools makes no sense; it would be like counting only the University of Colorado campuses in Colorado and ignoring all of the other public universities in that state that confer bachelor's degrees.

Wedge it does makes sense when you are talking FBS Football.

It doesn't make sense to suggest that the state should have most of its public-university students in dorms just to meet some pointless goal of having 20 "big time" football programs in the state.

You might as well go all DavidSt on us and demand to know why (to use the Colorado example again) Colorado Mesa University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State, and Adams State University don't have FBS football teams. That's not, and shouldn't be, the goal of the public university systems, in California or any other state.

The state educates over 600,000 undergraduates, and it's flat-out incorrect to suggest that the proportion of "seats" in public colleges in California is "too low".

Nor is it correct to call UC schools "residential" when such a large percentage of UC students don't live in university housing. At Berkeley, 26 percent are in university housing. It's 25 percent at UC Davis. 39 percent at UC San Diego might be one of the highest. I doubt that the percentages are much higher at large public universities in other states.

Residential housing in many places is not a great value for students. Now at SJSU, Cal, and Stanford paying housing to the school may be great deal.

(04-26-2018 12:50 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 10:17 AM)billybobby777 Wrote:  I agree with bullet.

Why the hell are so many eastern schools moving up to fbs?????
Liberty, Coastal Carolina, Charlotte, Old Dominion, Georgia St, Georgia Southern, App St,
You guys are killing me!! ECU used to have this area to ourselves!!!!!!

(04-26-2018 10:10 AM)bullet Wrote:  The question is why so many southern schools have moved up in defiance of fiscal reality.

Each school has its reasons, but I know Georgia Southern moved up partly to follow our peer schools like App State, Troy, Middle Tenn, Marshall, etc. and also partly because we had accomplished enough in the FCS and knew we could sustain FBS membership.

Let's face it, a public school of 30k with a similar sized football stadium didn't belong in a conference with Elon and Wofford. That's why we moved up.

In ODU's case it was a twofold reason:

1. Conference instability. VCU and George Mason were widely rumored to be heading to the A-10, and in particular when it looked like VCU's move was a done deal, that set ODU down the path of getting into a conference before the CAA imploded. This article gives a pretty good breakdown of everything.
2. There was talk that the NCAA might institute a move-up moratorium, which would leave ODU in a weakened CAA (there was no way ODU would have moved to another FCS conference like the Southern unless there was literally no other choice; even a compromised CAA would be considered a better choice). So FBS it was, even though smart money says that while FBS was a stretch goal when they started the program, nobody was planning a move that quickly. Take the opportunity when it comes up, not when you schedule it.

(04-26-2018 06:09 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 04:44 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 04:10 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 03:13 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  The UC system does not absorb all the residential students you'd see at other states.

California, like many other states, has two public university systems. The California State University system has about 420,000 undergraduates this school year. The UC system has almost 220,000. So there are about 640,000 undergraduate students at public "four year" universities in California.

Counting "only" the UC schools makes no sense; it would be like counting only the University of Colorado campuses in Colorado and ignoring all of the other public universities in that state that confer bachelor's degrees.

Wedge it does makes sense when you are talking FBS Football.

It doesn't make sense to suggest that the state should have most of its public-university students in dorms just to meet some pointless goal of having 20 "big time" football programs in the state.

You might as well go all DavidSt on us and demand to know why (to use the Colorado example again) Colorado Mesa University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State, and Adams State University don't have FBS football teams. That's not, and shouldn't be, the goal of the public university systems, in California or any other state.

The state educates over 600,000 undergraduates, and it's flat-out incorrect to suggest that the proportion of "seats" in public colleges in California is "too low".

Nor is it correct to call UC schools "residential" when such a large percentage of UC students don't live in university housing. At Berkeley, 26 percent are in university housing. It's 25 percent at UC Davis. 39 percent at UC San Diego might be one of the highest. I doubt that the percentages are much higher at large public universities in other states.

Wedge,

you have a poor understanding of what residential means. It means students not commuting from home. Almost the CSU's have a very high commuting -- that is living at home -- population, including re-entrants. The UC's do not. Yes only 25% of students live on campus, mostly Freshmen and Internationals, but well over 90% live within 2 miles, heck most within 1 mile of campus and walk there or bike there daily. Santa Barbara and Davis have excellent bike paths setup for that to student villages of "non-campus" housing. But those are residential students, living away from mom and dad and without spouses.

You confuse the CSU situation with that. Look at Fullerton or San Jose State, or Cal State East Bay, and more than 50% of the students drive in from more than 5 miles out. It's a very different feel. Also half the upper division students are Community College transfers who never spent a day living on campus.

No, I do not think the charter should be changed to create more football schools. I don't think for second that would be the result. But I would like to take the pressure off the UCs for impacted programs somewhat and offer an residential option that does not have Ivy League admission standards, but more like Washington State, Oregon State, Arizona or Utah Standards. Only SDSU approaches that. But we should have 5 or 6 campuses with that sort of offering. Obviously Fresno State and San Jose State have the built up endowments and available land to do that. Perhaps Chico or one other somewhere. And of course the Cal Poly's could take some infrastructure investment to supplement their higher admission positions. That is pretty much what I am saying, designate a few campuses to be residential, with modest research (nothing approaching AAU, but solid R2) opportunities and admissions inline with the "State" schools of the Pac-12, and push for graduation rates in 4 years of 50% instead of the CSU system 25%. These are still well below the UC standards, but would elevate the selected CSU schools to their regional counterparts in neighboring States.

But this is off topic. The topic is why California and the West does not have more football programs.

My primary answer was the demographics combined with the limiting charters of the CSU system (it is far too late and the costs of land far too high to add any CSU football program). The Demographics of residential students is skewed heaving toward populations that do not play or support football. If there were not subtle anti-Asian measures (it is significantly harder to get into UC with the same marks and scores as an Asian than even as White) the skew would be even worse. My son could have chosen White, Asian or other. I told him on advice from counselors to say "other" and fill in multiracial. Many Chinese and other Asians on the bubble often put "decline to state" until admitted (they are much more willing to state their ethnicity once admitted, hence only 3-4% post admission decline to state compared to 20% on applications --- we all know the game and play the game). It is what it is. So yes UC's have almost 200K undergrads, but easily over 100K of those belong to groups with very low football and sports support. This is a much better explanation of why support is so weak in a region with more people than any state except Texas.

So my answer was all about WHY we do not support college football, not advocating adding any new programs (that ship sailed at least 20 years ago in California and the Pacific Coast). DO NOT CONFLATE.

(04-27-2018 02:00 AM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Wedge,

you have a poor understanding of what residential means. It means students not commuting from home. Almost the CSU's have a very high commuting -- that is living at home -- population, including re-entrants. The UC's do not. Yes only 25% of students live on campus, mostly Freshmen and Internationals, but well over 90% live within 2 miles, heck most within 1 mile of campus and walk there or bike there daily. Santa Barbara and Davis have excellent bike paths setup for that to student villages of "non-campus" housing. But those are residential students, living away from mom and dad and without spouses.

You confuse the CSU situation with that. Look at Fullerton or San Jose State, or Cal State East Bay, and more than 50% of the students drive in from more than 5 miles out. It's a very different feel. Also half the upper division students are Community College transfers who never spent a day living on campus.

You're cherry-picking the campuses with the most commuters. Anyone who has ever been to San Luis Obispo or Chico or Arcata, for example, knows that there isn't any place large numbers of students could feasibly be long-distance commuting in from. And you conceded that San Diego State isn't a "commuter" campus like, say, Cal State East Bay (Hayward). The percentage of Cal State students living with parents is much lower than you imply.

In other words, the Cal State system already has many campuses that are at least as "residential" (much more accurately, "not many students living with parents") as UC campuses. And whether it's a UC campus or a Cal State campus, building more dormitories or university-owned apartments is a much poorer use of resources than hiring professors and instructors and building classrooms and research facilities.

(04-26-2018 04:51 PM)Bronco14 Wrote:  This is a great answer. But why couldn't the Big Sky as a whole move up to FBS?

As the rules are written, you have to be an FBS conference to make the invite. As a peculiarity of the language, it's conceivable that the invite power also extends to the WAC, but that hasn't been tested (despite NoDak frequently telling us that the possible WAC loophole{+} is set to be put to use any day now).

And before you ask, "what about Liberty", they were on the path to suing over whether that NCAA rule is legal, and rather than having it be tested in court against a litigant with deep pockets, the NCAA gave them a waiver.

-------------
footnote: {+: Now, the intent of the WAC loophole may have been to give them an opening if they could get back to minimum the 8 members during the two year window a conference has after dropping below a membership minimum, and it's never been cleaned up because it's thought to be a dead letter rule, in which case an effort to make use of it might result in the loophole being closed, rather than resulting in all of the fun scenarios that NoDak is always spinning from it.}

(04-26-2018 11:07 PM)Cyniclone Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 12:50 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 10:17 AM)billybobby777 Wrote:  I agree with bullet.

Why the hell are so many eastern schools moving up to fbs?????
Liberty, Coastal Carolina, Charlotte, Old Dominion, Georgia St, Georgia Southern, App St,
You guys are killing me!! ECU used to have this area to ourselves!!!!!!

(04-26-2018 10:10 AM)bullet Wrote:  The question is why so many southern schools have moved up in defiance of fiscal reality.

Each school has its reasons, but I know Georgia Southern moved up partly to follow our peer schools like App State, Troy, Middle Tenn, Marshall, etc. and also partly because we had accomplished enough in the FCS and knew we could sustain FBS membership.

Let's face it, a public school of 30k with a similar sized football stadium didn't belong in a conference with Elon and Wofford. That's why we moved up.

In ODU's case it was a twofold reason:

1. Conference instability. VCU and George Mason were widely rumored to be heading to the A-10, and in particular when it looked like VCU's move was a done deal, that set ODU down the path of getting into a conference before the CAA imploded. This article gives a pretty good breakdown of everything.
2. There was talk that the NCAA might institute a move-up moratorium, which would leave ODU in a weakened CAA (there was no way ODU would have moved to another FCS conference like the Southern unless there was literally no other choice; even a compromised CAA would be considered a better choice). So FBS it was, even though smart money says that while FBS was a stretch goal when they started the program, nobody was planning a move that quickly. Take the opportunity when it comes up, not when you schedule it.

Exactly. Take the opportunity when it comes. We weren't exactly financially ready right when we made the jump, but we are doing just fine now. We also probably would have preferred a CUSA invite over the Sun Belt back then, but now we are extremely happy with where we've ended up. JMU's downfall will always be that they turned down a chance to join the FBS because they didn't prefer the conference that was extending the invite. Georgia Southern was talking of moving up way back in the 90's, but our administration at the time wasn't 100% for it. We didn't know that it would be another 25 years before the opportunity presented itself again.

The bottom line is there is NO money in California to add FBS Football. There is only room for two FBS teams in the Bay area and the LA Metro. SDSU has a large market to draw from and the only show in town. The same can be said for Fresno. Within 5 years San Jose will either drop down or eliminate football. With the new economics of FBS Football California can only support 6 teams. Institutional support for athletics is only going to decrease as state budgets are tightening. With the exception of SDSU and Fresno the other state schools receive over 50% of their athletic budgets from the university which isn't sustainable. JMHO

I'm actually in agreement about Stugray regarding creating a middle tier of schools in California that offer more residential options and are designed to admit Californians that are 18 and straight out of high school that intend to stay for 4 years. These schools would be empowered to award masters and doctorate degrees but not the level of research and admissions standards off the UCs.

Ideally they'd be dispersed across the state and one of the LA area Cal St's should be among the ones chosen due to geogragrahic proximity to a large body of potential students.

(04-26-2018 06:09 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 04:44 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 04:10 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 03:13 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  The UC system does not absorb all the residential students you'd see at other states.

California, like many other states, has two public university systems. The California State University system has about 420,000 undergraduates this school year. The UC system has almost 220,000. So there are about 640,000 undergraduate students at public "four year" universities in California.

Counting "only" the UC schools makes no sense; it would be like counting only the University of Colorado campuses in Colorado and ignoring all of the other public universities in that state that confer bachelor's degrees.

Wedge it does makes sense when you are talking FBS Football.

It doesn't make sense to suggest that the state should have most of its public-university students in dorms just to meet some pointless goal of having 20 "big time" football programs in the state.

You might as well go all DavidSt on us and demand to know why (to use the Colorado example again) Colorado Mesa University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State, and Adams State University don't have FBS football teams. That's not, and shouldn't be, the goal of the public university systems, in California or any other state.

The state educates over 600,000 undergraduates, and it's flat-out incorrect to suggest that the proportion of "seats" in public colleges in California is "too low".

Nor is it correct to call UC schools "residential" when such a large percentage of UC students don't live in university housing. At Berkeley, 26 percent are in university housing. It's 25 percent at UC Davis. 39 percent at UC San Diego might be one of the highest. I doubt that the percentages are much higher at large public universities in other states.

I am not saying all the schools in the RMAC going to D1, I am talking about cluster of population growth in each state that are very large could support D1 and FBS football. I talk about Grand Junction which is a population boom of over 100,000 + inside the GJ's metro area. That is big enough or bigger than several schools i\already in FBS. It is something to look at for the future would schools like Washington State deserves to be a P5 school since they can't keep up with a population boom like Boise or Grand Junction. Both Mesa and CSU-Pueblo could be the next Boise State in the future.

(04-27-2018 03:04 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 06:09 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 04:44 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 04:10 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 03:13 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  The UC system does not absorb all the residential students you'd see at other states.

California, like many other states, has two public university systems. The California State University system has about 420,000 undergraduates this school year. The UC system has almost 220,000. So there are about 640,000 undergraduate students at public "four year" universities in California.

Counting "only" the UC schools makes no sense; it would be like counting only the University of Colorado campuses in Colorado and ignoring all of the other public universities in that state that confer bachelor's degrees.

Wedge it does makes sense when you are talking FBS Football.

It doesn't make sense to suggest that the state should have most of its public-university students in dorms just to meet some pointless goal of having 20 "big time" football programs in the state.

You might as well go all DavidSt on us and demand to know why (to use the Colorado example again) Colorado Mesa University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State, and Adams State University don't have FBS football teams. That's not, and shouldn't be, the goal of the public university systems, in California or any other state.

The state educates over 600,000 undergraduates, and it's flat-out incorrect to suggest that the proportion of "seats" in public colleges in California is "too low".

Nor is it correct to call UC schools "residential" when such a large percentage of UC students don't live in university housing. At Berkeley, 26 percent are in university housing. It's 25 percent at UC Davis. 39 percent at UC San Diego might be one of the highest. I doubt that the percentages are much higher at large public universities in other states.

I am not saying all the schools in the RMAC going to D1, I am talking about cluster of population growth in each state that are very large could support D1 and FBS football. I talk about Grand Junction which is a population boom of over 100,000 + inside the GJ's metro area. That is big enough or bigger than several schools i\already in FBS. It is something to look at for the future would schools like Washington State deserves to be a P5 school since they can't keep up with a population boom like Boise or Grand Junction. Both Mesa and CSU-Pueblo could be the next Boise State in the future.

Just forget it.

(04-27-2018 09:44 AM)1IvyDog Wrote:  The bottom line is there is NO money in California to add FBS Football. There is only room for two FBS teams in the Bay area and the LA Metro. SDSU has a large market to draw from and the only show in town. The same can be said for Fresno. Within 5 years San Jose will either drop down or eliminate football. With the new economics of FBS Football California can only support 6 teams. Institutional support for athletics is only going to decrease as state budgets are tightening. With the exception of SDSU and Fresno the other state schools receive over 50% of their athletic budgets from the university which isn't sustainable. JMHO

And yet there are people on here who want to add more football out west. Yes, San Jose st and New Mexico st are much more likely to drop football than a new FBS team in the West.

No more football out west. Here’s the only safe schools:

The Solids who will never go away:
(PAC 12)
Boise St: only FBS in Idaho. Have their own decent sized stadium & a bowl game. National following. ESPN loves them.
Air Force: 45k OCS service academy with history. National following.
BYU: National following. Great attendance, huge OCS.
Wyoming: only FBS in Wyoming. Have their own OCS.
New Mexico: Flagship of New Mexico, have a 40k OCS and a bowl game
Fresno St: No NFL in a nice sized college FB culture city. 40k OCS
Colorado St: Big State school with resources & a beautiful new OCS & SEC opponents coming to town to play them.
Probably OK
San Diego St: only show in an NFL-less big city. Stadium issues maybe still though they have good attendance and resources.
Nevada: State school with recourses and OCS.
UNLV: only possible issue is the NFL destroying them. Otherwise very solid with a 40k stadium that they own and a bowl game.
Utah St: OCS with decent support and a century of playing D-1/FBS
Hawaii: their stadium and political support have seemed a bit shaky but a state Flagship and only game in town in a destination city with a bowl game.
UTEP: being in CUSA and not with their historic MWC, Mountains Time Zone rivals is rough. But a nice big stadium and bowl.

Probably not ok:
New Mexico St: nice little OCS, but no conference and small budget.
San Jose St: no fans in a state that’s brutal for college football. Budget issues.

Wedge,

I am not cherry picking. San Diego State, Cal Poly and Chico are the three non commuter CSU schools. SDSU transformed itself from a commuter to a non-commuter, although it still has a component, and a JuCo segment. Chico has a sizeable JuCo transfer component. SDSU is the model I'd like to see used for Fresno State, San Jose State and one or two more schools, but with admission standards upped to close to Cal Poly. I have been very clear and consistent on this point.

But when you talk of Sac State, Cal State Northridge, Long Beach, SJSU, SFSU, Cal State LA, Cal State Fullerton, CSUSB, Sonoma State, Cal State East Bay and whatever, they are all commuters. Even Fresno State and CSUB are commuters. There are not a bunch on non commuters.

But yes I picked Chico because it already is a non commuter. It is more a case of upping the investment in the programs and the admissions. Fresno State and San Jose State have the resources and land to become residential. There might be one in the LA Basin, but you would know better than I.

But your argument that there are multiple near UC Standard residential schools in the CSU system is BS. I am calling you on that.

(04-27-2018 05:20 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  No more football out west. Here’s the only safe schools:

The Solids who will never go away:
(PAC 12)
Boise St: only FBS in Idaho. Have their own decent sized stadium & a bowl game. National following. ESPN loves them.
Air Force: 45k OCS service academy with history. National following.
BYU: National following. Great attendance, huge OCS.
Wyoming: only FBS in Wyoming. Have their own OCS.
New Mexico: Flagship of New Mexico, have a 40k OCS and a bowl game
Fresno St: No NFL in a nice sized college FB culture city. 40k OCS
Colorado St: Big State school with resources & a beautiful new OCS & SEC opponents coming to town to play them.
Probably OK
San Diego St: only show in an NFL-less big city. Stadium issues maybe still though they have good attendance and resources.
Nevada: State school with recourses and OCS.
UNLV: only possible issue is the NFL destroying them. Otherwise very solid with a 40k stadium that they own and a bowl game.
Utah St: OCS with decent support and a century of playing D-1/FBS
Hawaii: their stadium and political support have seemed a bit shaky but a state Flagship and only game in town in a destination city with a bowl game.
UTEP: being in CUSA and not with their historic MWC, Mountains Time Zone rivals is rough. But a nice big stadium and bowl.

Probably not ok:
New Mexico St: nice little OCS, but no conference and small budget.
San Jose St: no fans in a state that’s brutal for college football. Budget issues.

I highlighted my two questionables in Bold. In the first one, you are correct that Hawai'i is a destination, but they have one huge Whole Card: the 13th game rule. It even dwarfs the huge Local support it has had over the years. They are not going anywhere.

The Second one is New Mexico State. They are in a unique spot because I honesty believe they could roll as a Independent for the sole reason of lack of teams in the west and they(and other Schools) have a season to fill. Will they ever get USC to Las Cruses? It would take a miracle, but it could happen....

(04-26-2018 05:05 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  In California it seems like the answer is that the Cal St's can't afford it and the UCs think football is beneath them.

More like the CSU's chose not to afford it and had poor leadership with no vision. In the early 90's when those SoCal CSU's were dropping FB like the panzies they are, Sac State students (much smaller enrollment back then) chose to increase fees to keep FB. There is no reason Long Beach and Fullerton couldn't support a IAA program at the time, and there is no reason why they wouldn't be able to support one (FCS) now. Especially Fullerton, they had/have a stadium that is capable.

Can't speak for the UCs, but Santa Barbara dropped their FB and CP (CSU) who is just a stone's throw up the road kept theirs. Go figure.

Oh and good info on the commuting stuff Stu. I can't speak for other schools, but with Sac State's increasing enrollment (we're over 30k now) there have been more on-campus housing going up (and being planned) and the surrounding area is seeing an up tick in high density residential development targeting students. There was always a ton of high density housing within a 2 mile radius of campus when I attended over a decade ago.

(04-27-2018 08:04 PM)lance99 Wrote:  

(04-27-2018 05:20 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  No more football out west. Here’s the only safe schools:

The Solids who will never go away:
(PAC 12)
Boise St: only FBS in Idaho. Have their own decent sized stadium & a bowl game. National following. ESPN loves them.
Air Force: 45k OCS service academy with history. National following.
BYU: National following. Great attendance, huge OCS.
Wyoming: only FBS in Wyoming. Have their own OCS.
New Mexico: Flagship of New Mexico, have a 40k OCS and a bowl game
Fresno St: No NFL in a nice sized college FB culture city. 40k OCS
Colorado St: Big State school with resources & a beautiful new OCS & SEC opponents coming to town to play them.
Probably OK
San Diego St: only show in an NFL-less big city. Stadium issues maybe still though they have good attendance and resources.
Nevada: State school with recourses and OCS.
UNLV: only possible issue is the NFL destroying them. Otherwise very solid with a 40k stadium that they own and a bowl game.
Utah St: OCS with decent support and a century of playing D-1/FBS
Hawaii: their stadium and political support have seemed a bit shaky but a state Flagship and only game in town in a destination city with a bowl game.
UTEP: being in CUSA and not with their historic MWC, Mountains Time Zone rivals is rough. But a nice big stadium and bowl.

Probably not ok:
New Mexico St: nice little OCS, but no conference and small budget.
San Jose St: no fans in a state that’s brutal for college football. Budget issues.

I highlighted my two questionables in Bold. In the first one, you are correct that Hawai'i is a destination, but they have one huge Whole Card: the 13th game rule. It even dwarfs the huge Local support it has had over the years. They are not going anywhere.

The Second one is New Mexico State. They are in a unique spot because I honesty believe they could roll as a Independent for the sole reason of lack of teams in the west and they(and other Schools) have a season to fill. Will they ever get USC to Las Cruses? It would take a miracle, but it could happen....

I want to highlight New Mexico State. West Texas A&M could be safe as a D1 FBS school as well. West Texas A&M hosted Eastern New Mexico and they had over 22,000 attendance. That is more than the capacity allow. Imagine New Mexico State and West Texas A&M play each other every year? Both fans travel well within driving distance. Might help boast New Mexico State and UTEP's attendance up on average each year.

(04-26-2018 02:35 AM)GiveEmTheAxe Wrote:  I think part of the problem is that as the 4 CA schools in the Pac-12 became harder and harder to get into for students from California, the students that still seek a residential experience but aren't getting into Berkeley or UCLA are now instead going to UCSD, UCI, UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara. So the "commuter" schools, like Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Northridge, weren't able to benefit from the overflow of residential students that couldn't find homes in Pac-12 schools. And while UCI, UCSD, UCSB, and UCD have all grown tremendously (they are all AAU,) they don't have a history of big-time sports to leverage into football ambitions today. Institutionally, they look like the midwestern schools that make up the B1G, but they don't have the history to capture anyone's imagination, nor the flagship name to carry a state.

The CA schools that lost their football programs last, the "commuter" schools, aren't the ones that could have benefited from the redistribution of residential students, anyway. They were always doomed.

Even UCD and UCSB are highly exclusive as is Cal Poly.

UCSD. 36%. Very hard
UCSB. 36%. Very hard
UCI. 41%. Hard
UCD. 42%. Hard

The problem the UC’s have is the complete hate between the UC system and the Cal State system. The MWC is controlled by the Cal State System and the UC’s have a snowballs chance in hell of joining that conference.

(04-27-2018 10:58 PM)SDHornet Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 05:05 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  In California it seems like the answer is that the Cal St's can't afford it and the UCs think football is beneath them.

More like the CSU's chose not to afford it and had poor leadership with no vision. In the early 90's when those SoCal CSU's were dropping FB like the panzies they are, Sac State students (much smaller enrollment back then) chose to increase fees to keep FB. There is no reason Long Beach and Fullerton couldn't support a IAA program at the time, and there is no reason why they wouldn't be able to support one (FCS) now. Especially Fullerton, they had/have a stadium that is capable.

Can't speak for the UCs, but Santa Barbara dropped their FB and CP (CSU) who is just a stone's throw up the road kept theirs. Go figure.

Oh and good info on the commuting stuff Stu. I can't speak for other schools, but with Sac State's increasing enrollment (we're over 30k now) there have been more on-campus housing going up (and being planned) and the surrounding area is seeing an up tick in high density residential development targeting students. There was always a ton of high density housing within a 2 mile radius of campus when I attended over a decade ago.

Baloney, do some research on the CalNow Consent decree.

https://www.calstate.edu/sas/documents/C...Decree.pdf

Unlike most other schools the Cal State system was sued by the National Organization of Women. Led by militant lesbian coaches such as Margie Wright at Fresno State, they forced the Cal States to sign a draconian Consent decree. Most schools follow prong 1 of Title IX and provide increased opportunity to women. The Cal States agreed to follow a strict interpretation of Prong 3 where student athletes had to be the same proportion as students. Since most schools had 60% women that meant 60% of their athletes had to be women.

What that meant is most Cal State Schools could no longer afford football. 100 D1 football athletes meant you had to support 150 female athletes. It simply was not affordable to support that many female athletes at the D1 level. It got so bad that when Margie Wright chose to cut 3 scholarship softball players the baseball coach had to cut 3 walk-on baseball players. Fresno survived by starting a huge equestrian team where many women participated without a full scholarship. Equestrian wasn’t an option for Long Beach State or Cal State Fullerton.

With most of the Cal States giving up football schools like Pacific followed suit. The death of mid-major football in CA can be directly tied to the Cal Now consent decree.

(04-26-2018 02:49 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 02:38 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 02:20 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(04-25-2018 08:32 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  In looking at the the schools that have moved up to FBS since 1978 the vast majority are southern schools. You have a handful of northeastern ones like UConn, UMass, Buffalo, and Akron. Out West the only move ups have been Nevada, Boise St, and a now FCS Idaho.

So what's keeping Western schools from taking the plunge? You'd think that UC Davis, Sacramento St, and Cal Poly might have given it a try or that the Montanas could have been lured up. Heck, when the WAC stretched out with Texas St and UTSA you'd of thought Lamar, Sam Houston St, or SF Austin might have given it a go.

Is it a product of the WAC dropping the ball and failing to recruit from the FCS ranks from 2005-2010? Had they gotten some of the Montana and/or California schools to bite back then maybe it wouldn't be a dead football league now.

Today the biggest impediment is the lack of a conference home and unless a whole group came up en masse right before the conclusion of the current playoff deal it's a no go. The MWC wouldn't want any of those call ups except maybe UC Davis due to academics.

Lamar, SF Austin, and the Big Sky schools do not fit the profile of FBS schools.

Let's compare them to the FBS conference with the lowest profile size & academics. Four Sun Belt schools have decent FBS profiles (Texas State, Georgia State, UT-Arlington, and UL-Lafayette), so we'll exclude them.

Average Enrollment
Lowest 8 Sun Belt Schools: 16,084
Big Sky: 17,839
3 Texas schools: 16,000

Average Endowment:
Lowest 8 Sun Belt Schools: 132 million
Big Sky: 110 million
3 Texas schools: 92 million

Why does Montana continue to draw interest? It has 9,300 undergrads - about half the size of the smallest MAC school.

You could make a case that Sam Houston St, North Dakota, Northern Arizona, or Weber State would be better fits than some Sun Belt schools & Eastern Michigan. But is that really where you want to set the bar?

It always cracks me up when someone trots out the bottom of the barrel FBS team as proof School A could compete in FBS, or should be FBS.

If that is all you are aspiring to be, the bottom of FBS, why bother?

NAU has 27K undergrads, $180 M endowment, High Research Ranking, but doesn't have the fan base. Need to hit all of those.

Arizona's largest population centers do not have a team to count. Yuma have Arizona Western which could be a logical place to begin with.
Grand Junction Colorado have a 100,000 metro population could support a D1 team which is far away from the Denver area.
Amarillo, Abilene and San Angelo do not have any FBS teams to count in Texas. Abilene Christian, Angelo State and West Texas A&M could support those areas like Midwestern State and UTPB could also support D1 programs.
Central Oklahoma and NE Oklahoma State (Tulsa area) could support D1 public schools. Oklahoma serves southern OKC while Central supports northern OKC.
Central Washington could support a growing population area in their part of the state of Washington and Eastern Washington could support the Spokane area.

I used to live in Grand Junction, there is neither the money and more important no inclination to move up to anything larger than D2.


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(04-26-2018 04:41 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  

(04-26-2018 02:40 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  Most of the college football teams in the LA area in California is at D3. Occidental had to cancel their last 6 games last year because of a depleted roaster. They did not have enough players after injuries. If you count Azusa Pacific? That is 3 teams in the top 2 divisions. I am watching these California schools getting pressure by the students of those schools to add football to bring the school spirits up. Long Beach State might be closer to restarting their program because they want to be part of the MWC. If any shifts begin in the future? And any schools that MWC needs to get to replenish their ranks have to come from the Big Sky schools, but some of them will not budge. If any of the Big West schools want to be in a bigger multi-bid basketball conference? They have to add football and join the MWC if they want to be part of a bigger prize.

The kids at Long Beach State want football "to bring the school spirits up?" Well, they had the chance a few months ago. Only 3,084, or about 10 percent of the student population, voted, with 52 percent voting thumbs-down.

California is not Texas. With Cal Baptist moving up, there are 25 D1 programs in California. Only 11 play D1 football, seven at the FBS level and 4 at the FCS level. There are 21 D2 programs in the state and only two play football.

In Texas, as a comparison, there are 23 D1 programs, 12 play FBS football, 8 play FCS football. At the D2 level, there are 13 D2 schools in Texas and 7 play football.

I never get the sense that people really miss college football at places like Long Beach State. Sure, if someone else is paying for it, they are good with football coming back. Some of the people might actually show up at a game or two. But no one wants to pay for it and the issue of adding football is just not that important to students.

This statement is misleading. Because of Cal Now, the cost of adding football isn’t just the 90 men. Long Beach State is 56.4% women. That means 116.5 female athletes also have to be funded. So the vote is to fund 206 athletes just for football.

If Marie Wright had pushed the Cal Now consent decree in Texas God knows what some Bubba might have done.