Missouri Valley Football Conference commissioner Patty Viverito came out of the gate with both arms swinging today in the annual coaches pre-season teleconference. She said the quiet off season by league teams made her feel blessed compared to the firings, tragedies and alignments other conferences have dealt with. “I feel blessed leading a conference that is playing for championships rather than bowling for dollars,” she said.
She said the expanded playoff field from 20 to 24 teams is expected to get the final OK today from the NCAA executive commitee. Seeds will now be given to the top eight teams rather than the current five, which will virtually guarantee the Missouri Valley champion of being seeded and getting a first round bye.
She also said the Football Championship Subdivision moniker is a mouthful and there is movement to perhaps change that – again. It was Division I-AA for many years, but was switched because I-AA schools that have good basketball teams, for instance, felt people regarded their basketball programs as second rate. She said the FCS level of football has an “identity crisis” and that FCS has not necessarily been better than the old I-AA name.
Pressed further on it, she turned it around and asked me if I have any good ideas on a new name — meaning there is nothing out there right now. Anybody? Comments are open.
How about I-AA?
My thoughts are that over time the top 64 teams will create their own conference with 4 super conferences. With that said, they could have their own new division name. The remaing FBS schools join the existing FCS to become D1, the lower tier FCS schools drop to D2 to give them some depth and the remaining 700 schools stay in D3. Just my thoughts and most likely a pipe dream. Afterall the money is in football not basketball, why should basketball power schools care or have a say.
I think you are right about the top 64 starting a “Super” Division and having 4 “Super” Conferences. Big Ten, Pac 16, SEC and an ACC/Big 12 mix of some kind.
I can even see the top 64 telling the NCAA to hit the road and they’ll negotiate their own deals with ESPN, CBS, Fox, etc.
Why should they continue to share money with the UND’s, NDSU’s, and Neb.-Omaha’s of the world?
Siouxper fan that could very well happen too. They really don’t need the NCAA.
In basketball there is no difference, most everybody is in Division One. when commentators talk about the smaller schools in Division One, they refer to them as Mid-Majors. Why not use something thats already in use.
Because there is a scholarship difference between FBS (I-A) and FCS (I-AA).
Maybe they need to use the scholaship number and call the FCS schools Division I-63 and the FBS schools Division I-85. Of course with the non-scholarship leagues (which I don’t really understand how they can let schools without scholarships be considered division I instead of division III) would have to be called Division I-0.
This would at least accurately portray why there is a difference.
Here is what I even find harder to believe about Division I non-scholarship football, is it still counts as a D-I win for playoff purposes yet a win against a Division II or NAIA team does not (and they have scholarships). Nothing against Butler, Valparaiso, and Drake, but to be fair I have always thought either you count a DII win or you don’t count non-scholarship wins. (i.e. FBS schools get to count one FCS win on their record)
PS – I like putting the number of scholarships after the name.
DI Football (85), DI Football (63), DI Football (0)
Unfortunately the NCAA sounds like they are ready to give an autobid to the non-scholarship conference The Pioneer League. I don’t believe they deserve one.
I think it should be
NCAA D1-AA Futbol or D1 Mid Major
How about they just let fcs teams go to 85 scholarships and call them mid majors. 85 or 63 the fcs isnt going to get 4 star blue chippers. It would improve the quality of play and the weak teams can go D2
Everyone . . . understand that all our sports are DI. So the Division label should remain DI, and not anything other than DI. The old DI-AA label was horrible for teams that played football as the 63 scholarship level. Why would anyone want to go back to some inferior Division label when you are DI? That’s crazy talk.
So, if you change it, it must be at the sub-division level. What wrong with FBS/FCS, I think its great. If I was going to change it from FBS/FCS, I would simply call it . . .
Football (85) and Football (63). Anything else would be a step backwards from the current naming.
As long as there continue to be Bowls at the FBS level, along with the “playoff”*, FBS remains a correct and accurate label. No need to change.
*What a frickin joke and sham of a playoff. MWC/SBelt/MAC/CUSA commissioners, you have no spine . .. and no shot at a title.
No- FCS is not really D-1. If so, the Bison would be in bowl games and have a legit TV exposure. This is fact. Basketball, wrestling, volleyball etc. are true D-1 as they play in the same tournaments as the rest. Not football. So it’s really D2.
The Bison don’t play division II schools or play in the division II playoffs so it’s not division II.
The Bison are division I…just ask the Gophers who have a harder time beating the Bison than the Hawkeyes.
The Bison will finally find out what true D-1 football is when they travel to K-State and Iowa in the next few years. Maybe they won’t be facing first-year coaches who took over bad programs as in Minnesota{2} and Kansas. These lucky draws look to be coming to an end. At least the Bunnies have manned-up and faced real D-1 teams in Illinois and Nebraska.
The Bunnies played the Gophers and lost…playing a game doesn’t matter…winning does.
South Dakota got pounded by Wisconsin last year…that doesn’t make them a better team than the Bison team that dominated the Gophers.
The Bison signed to play Kansas a year after the Jayhawks won the orange bowl and they beat the Gophers in a bowl game the next year. It isn’t NDSU’s fault that Kansas fell apart and fired the coach. The Gophers bugged the Bison to start playing even a year before the Bison wanted to. Eveyone talks how they beat a bad Gopher team. So you’re saying the Gophers sucked when the Bison beat them in 2007 and then the Gophers were great when they beat the Jacks in 2009 and then the Gophers were bad again in 2011 when the Bison beat them again? Come on the Jacks have played the Bison tough and I give them credit and I pull for the Jacks to beat everyone they play except the Bison cuz my relatives in SD are big Jacks fans. But don’t even start trying to tell me the Jacks are on the same page as North Dakota State in Football, No Way! In Hoops they are ahead of us they were great last year and should be better this year and they have a great basketball tradition. But Football here is a whole different animal. GO BISON!
When is the TV schedule ready to go? They have never released it later than August 2. HD would be appreciated.
FCS has always been a terrible moniker. I laugh at some who have such an inferiority complex when it comes to deciding what to call our division of football. We are not LSU or Alabama and never will be so no need to worry about what others think about our team.
If Fargo ever hosts the best college football team in America it will be a result of a phenomenally unique quirk of history.
The best teams will congregate around the densest populations. To see the currently densest population regions look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MapofEmergingUSMegaregions.png Hmmm… Does that align with any thing else in football? Hmmm…
To extrapolate the **future** densest population regions see above and make the highlighted regions bigger.
DII became DI-FCS because our country’s population is growing. Bison Football **will** be what is now DI-FBS someday. But what is now and currently DI-FBS will have become something else that is bigger and better than what it is now.
North Dakota is great. But it is a landlocked state in the dead center of a huge continent. Geography and history are very much working against us.
Sounds like another marketing solution looking for a problem.
I’m sure there’s a firm in Pittsburgh that someone could through a couple hundred thousand dollars at that would be happy to provide a mediocre solution to this pretend problem.
Divison ! Playoff Champion Level
TCBF- The Countries Best Football.
Football Championship Subdivision (NDSU, Montana, App St, etc)
Football Moneygrabbing Subdivision (Alabama, USC, Ohio St, etc)
Face it, FCS programs get little, if any, respect from the NCAA. Reference where they sent the championship banner.
DI FCS got enough respect from the NCAA to eliminate the incorrect DI-AA problem. Thankfully the NCAA had enough sense to do that and not penalize all sports at DI FCS football schools.
DI FCS is what it is. It’s not DI FBS, and it’s not Divison II. So if you don’t like FCS football don’t watch it and get off this Blog. If FBS football is your thing, then just sit back and enjoy while the Bison take out another one. What will be your excuse when the bison give K-State all they can handle and pick up another win? Probably something to do with thehockies. What will be your excuse for FCS football when the bison take out a middle of the pack Colorado State on the road? Face it, the Bison are a top 50 team, at any level.
http://youtu.be/-dlLBJYBbcM