It probably will take a lot of money to get to a point where we're even remotely attractive to the AAC. We need to build an IPF for sure and at this rate it could take us another 5 years to get to a point where we're consistently in contention for bowl eligibility.

I think the amount of money that needs to be thrown at the project is up for debate. If it's just the IPF then we're talking $15-20M for a really nice permanent facility or like $5M(?) for a bubble. That's quite a bit of $$$ but it's not out of the realm of reality.

If AAC isn't okay with us using an NFL stadium (like Temple and South Florida) then things get really sticky. Our stadium is "expandable" up to the low to mid 20k's using semi-permanent freestanding bleachers, and that'd be relatively inexpensive. However if we needed an expandable 30k+ stadium, a brand new stadium could be $100M+. Which is definitely out of the foreseeable budget. If the administration had $100M to invest, they'd put it into academic/research facilities over a football stadium (and rightfully so). Although we could could construct a stadium over several phases, which might make the expense a bit more palatable.

I will say, just the talk of improving on-field performance and building infrastructure is better than the alternative we've seen at UMass. We spent over hundred years (with arguably the exception of maybe a few years in the '60s and '90s) doing the absolute minimum effort. No effort to keep successful coaches, no effort to remove unsuccessful ADs and coaches, no effort to build and improve infrastructure, no effort to look at what other schools were doing, no effort to keep an eye on our conference and division affiliation.