sctvman
1st String
Posts: 1,101
Joined: Nov 2010
Reputation: 46
I Root For: C of Charleston
Location: Charleston, SC
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RE: WORST FCS promotions/launches
(04-19-2020 01:11 PM)whittx Wrote: (04-19-2020 12:46 PM)CitrusUCF Wrote: (04-15-2020 08:14 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote: (04-14-2020 10:40 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote: (04-14-2020 01:23 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote: The programs at ODU, Charlotte, UTSA, GA St, and USA all seem pretty interchangeable. They’ve all had their highs and lows.
Texas St sticks out to me as the poor performer of that class.
CCU and Liberty are both incomplete works in progress and it remains to be seen what trajectory they are on.
CCU, good for them if they can win and sustain at the FBS level, and I'm glad they were able to get around and over the blockage in SoCon and CAA/F, but, it wouldn't surprise me if they were bad for a long time. It goes back to the readiness thing in their selection, and the stadium/facility matter. CCU's upside was its growth and location. Football did well for where it was in the FCS landscape, but, it wasn't like Big South was a power player in the sport (it could at least send more than one team to the playoff, though).
As for a historical dog? UMass. Akron. I agree that Texas State isn't showing well. Two of the first three seasons, they were .500 or better, but it's been pretty bad ever since.
I have a feeling that CCU is going to take a lot of lumps. App St and GA Southern are well positioned to dominate SBC East. GA St could too with the right coach.
CCU got a bad deal in FCS with conference’s giving them the black ball. It’s too bad. I think the size of that school is very well suited for a great FCS program but as an FBS program I think they will always struggle against older and richer programs.
Texas St is feeling similar pains in a West dominated by the established Ark St and ULL programs.
We shouldn't even be talking about CCU. The College of Charleston is who had the worst launch...by not even having football in the first place when they're sitting in a nice metro area with a good academic reputation. And CofC has a real male:female imbalance that football would help address. They should have started football back in the 90s or early 00s, and they'd probably be in CUSA right now at worst.
CofC has really lacked ambition overall excepting the move to the CAA in basketball. They allowed a private, for-profit law school to set up in Charleston when they could have launched one. They demurred on setting up graduate programs and The Citadel ended up setting up some graduate programs to serve the community, which makes not a lick of sense institutionally. It really could be a premier school if the administration had some ambition.
But they wouldn't have gotten the permits to put the football stadium at Patriot's Point and the Citadel had a G5 ready stadium at the time.
(04-20-2020 09:19 PM)Michael in Raleigh Wrote: (04-19-2020 03:22 PM)sctvman Wrote: They have been behind since the mid 1990s with a few decisions. Some they made, some others made.
You have to remember CofC didn’t even go D1 until 1991. As recently as 1988-89, CofC was in NAIA and the only D1 games they played were Baptist College (now Charleston Southern) and Citadel. They were a D1 independent for four seasons. In the last independent season they beat Georgia Tech, 8th in the country at Tech.
They then went to the TAAC, which was horrendous for travel. Two schools in Louisiana, FIU, FAU, Mercer, Samford, UCF, and Georgia State. They weren’t allowed to play in the conference tourney until 1997, but stole an at-large in 1994 losing to Tim Duncan’s first Wake team.
In 1995 and 96 they got NIT at-larges, then they made the tourney in ‘97, beating Maryland as a 12 seed even though they were ranked #16 in the nation. They then lost to Arizona by four points in the 2nd round, the national champs. They then made it again in ‘98 and ‘99.
They announced they were going to the SoCon in December of 1995, but couldn’t play in the league until 1998-99 because the TAAC wanted two years notice of a school leaving. That meant two more years of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars and playing in mostly band-box gyms.
Football wasn’t a consideration at the time. The Citadel was getting 12-15K a game at Johnson-Hagood, and was even using CofC’s cheerleaders.
Also not building their arena until 2008 cost them a lot. If they had built it in 2001 or 2002, they easily could have been added to the CAA in 2005 instead of Northeastern, which would have been a boon to recruiting. Georgia State was also added.
That move was all about football, which Hofstra and Northeastern dropped after ‘09, but Yeager (the commissioner at the time) adding them and Davidson would have sealed them as one of the top mid-major leagues. Northeastern probably would have stayed in the America East.
Do you think CofC's move to the CAA in 2013 was not the best, considering it came AFTER VCU, Ga. State, ODU, and Mason had left? All the best basketball resources had been depleted. Meanwhile (and granted, no one saw this coming) the SoCon has surged up the NET/RPI rankings.
Do you think CofC would return to the SoCon if it could?
BTw, my brother is a graduate of CofC. We remember that '97 team that beat Maryland and lost barely to national champion Arizona. That was a heck of a team.
At the time it was the right move. The SoCon’s TV deal was terrible at the time. Public television sub channels their last year. No cable games except for the finals on ESPN2. CofC’s home games were televised locally.
The TV deal was great the first couple of years in the league with NBCSN and Comcast, but then the commissioner basically gave up. The CAA had just the conference finals on national TV in 16-17, and most of the games were on Sinclair’s ASN effort.
Then CBSSN had the semis and finals the next 2 years. This year was when CBSSN added more games.
CofC has the highest basketball attendance in the CAA now, so the fans have mostly acclimated to the league.
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