I’d like to say that Jeff and I are always on the front lines of what happens in the world of FCS, but this move even surpises me. Late last night, the Statesboro Herald reported that Georgia Southern will move its football program to the FBS. Two parts to this story... Here are the two links to the story.
For those that missed our discussion last week, Jeff and I talked about Georgia Southern moving up, fast forward to about 8 minutes in.
- GSU President believes moving from FCS to FBS makes school more national than regional university.
- Soaring to Victory Campaign; it’s an 8 year, 36.6 million dollar campaign to ensure future athletic success, with 5 phases, the most expensive going towards Stabilizing the Program (15.5 mill) that’s towards recruiting advantages and paying their coaches, to upgrading facilites, the centerpiece is the Football Operations Center, a 57,000 square foot building that will cost 10 million dollars, the school believes can transform the program.
- 5.1 million dollars has already been raised, if GSU gets the necessary 10 million, they believe construction can begin in 12-18 months, they have not yet begun a marketing campaign to raise the remaining money.
- GSU’s Athletic Budget is 12 million dollars, the school says they’d need a minimum addition of 4.4 million annually to cover everything from travel costs to more scholarships (going from 63 to 85)
- Georgia Southern’s budget ranks 95th out of 125 schools in FCS
- Part of the expansion project would be to expand Paulson Stadium from it’s current 18,000 seats to nearly 25,000 and a new scoreboard.
- Interesting comments from the President, saying “Locker Rooms are atrocious, don’t show it to recruits” also went on to say, “No one gets excited about FCS, no one knows where Frisco, Texas is and who plays in the Championship Game”
- No Conference lined up yet, several in discussion
My initial thoughts are stunned and surprised, if I thought one member of the Southern Conference would leave it would be Appalachian State, which entertained thoughts right around this time last year. The article reads that GSU is not moving up to one-up Georgia State, which just moved up to the Sun Belt earlier this month. If GSU leaves, it’s a huge blow to the FCS, losing a 6-time champ. It also begs two questions, why leave as a top member of one division to be a lower level school at the top division? The second and more pressing to this blog, if Georgia Southern is moving up, should NDSU be considering it?
Much more on this topic in the coming days, working on having GSU Athletic Director Sam Baker join Dizzo’s Den, he was on during the week of the NDSU-GSU playoff game and much more from the Bison end.
“No one gets excited about FCS, no one knows where Frisco, Texas is and who plays in the Championship Game”
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Exactly. FCS is not much more than glorified DII.
Ok.. we had 2 games on ESPN and 2 more games on ESPN Gameplan and 4 games on ESPN 3. Tell me how that is less exposure than some no name bowl Georgia Southern is going to make? Quick poll. Who won the MAC and what bowl did they go to? Didnt think so
I like that GSU is progressive and wants to establish itself at the next level. However, they need to realize the reality of it all. Their budget does not look like they can afford to make the move unless they raise multi-millions of dollars MORE than they are getting now. That looks like a tough task. This move will affect the whole school, both academically and athletically by moving money around to fund the athletic department. There is only a handful of schools in the country that actually make money from their athletic departments. Tuition will sky rocket, along with needing more donation $ to afford this move. With that said, I think NDSU could make the transition. But I would rather win the FCS than go 5-7 or 6-6 every year and hope to play in a No-Name bowl game.
The price of game tickets will rise big time. You would also need more than 19,000 people a game to show up. But that does no good when that is our capacity.
I think Georgia Southern is dramatically over estimating the amount of TV exposure lower level FBS teams get. I looked closely at the MAC conference and typically we received more TV coverage than the low end MAC schools did last year. The top MAC schools typically get a couple more ESPN games than we did.
The reality is if we can get 3-4 games on a channel like Fox Sports Net North and make a playoff run, we would be at the top of the MAC on TV exposure.
If they think going to the FBS with a weak conference is going to make all the Jayhawks recruits come to Georgia, they are delusional. Maybe if they can go to the Big 12 but with a stadium capacity of 25k, we all know the Big Ten or SEC would never add them.
But the reality is if you want REAL exposure, you’re best opportunity is to make basketball into a regular in the NCAA basketball tournament.
The only good plan Georgia Southern has is their fund raising. I would like to see Teammakers start a coaching fund so we can keep our coaches. And letting people /businesses sponsor lockers is an awesome idea.
If you want TV exposure you need to make it happen yourself. FSN North and Fox College Sports will televise games for a price.
You can sponsor lockers at NDSU. Just not many people do it.
How much is it and who do you contact
Call Simmers.
In response to Dean: nobody gets excited about lower tier FBS football either. NOBODY! The only excitement from the media is from BCS teams + Boise State. That is a small fraternity of schools. So we could say that DII is glorified DIII, FCS is glorified DII, and lower tier FBS is glorified FCS. So in reality, Fresno State is glorified glorified glorified DIII. KAPOW!