(01-22-2018 12:07 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  I keep hearing about how much of a money drain it is to play in the G5.

I can't come up with an instance of all of the schools who have made the FCS to FBS migration the last decade where there is a regret about making the move.

App State for example much rather conference with the likes of Georgia St, AState and Troy than road conference games in a 7500 seat stadium. Its well worth the geography stretch to play bigger schools.

G5 has no regrets.c

I think you mistake my point. It isn't that the decision to play FBS rather than FCS that schools need to seriously look at....its the decision to play football at all. There are FCS teams that have larger deficits than any G5 school, and many FCS programs have higher per student per year subsidies than G5 schools.

From a practical perspective, for a school to move down or drop football, they big wigs at the college will have to admit that spending all that money was a mistake in the first place. Kind of hard to justify if you spent tens of millions of dollars on facilities in the last decade or so.


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And don't think that the P5 schools are exempt from football induced financial woes...Some could get caught up in it. But if the new TV deals suck for the P5 teams, their teams could be facing financial problems. I wouldn't celebrate too quickly as a G5. This might result in lower payday revenue, lower CFP payouts to G5 teams etc.

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We're probably a 5 or 6 years in front of a crisis. Here's what a school should be doing

1) Trying to really ramp up athletic giving, but not at the expense of academic giving
2) Really focusing on costs
3) Trying to really make an effort to make that investment valuable to all students (and not just traditional students)
4) Working to make your program more cost effective
5) Not needlessly angering stakeholders with boneheaded decisions (like hiring Baylor assistants for example).
6) And while your doing all that....you'll need to be putting a credible product on the field.

There will come a time when it might not be the College President starting a movement to shut football down...but it might come from the students.

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Its not the students that are upset about the prospect of playing Elon or Kennesaw rather than Louisiana Tech or Arkansas State that you need to be concerned about. They are interested in football. Its the students that don't care who you're playing because they couldn't care less about football period. Those are the ones you need to engage.