https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2019/1/31/18200696/fbs-membership-leave-fcs
Interesting article by Mr. Matt Brown. Mentions UTEP a few times.
Interesting article by Mr. Matt Brown. Mentions UTEP a few times.
UTEP Should Be One of The Teams to Leave FBS
- Thread starter JCorona
- Start date
My sentiments too.
If you don't follow FBS football closely this article makes sense and appeals to the "Yes, that sounds so true" folks. This argument goes back decades and gained some steam when NCAA allowed more FCS schools to move up and the power programs said "why?". However, due to scheduling challenges bigs are a little more silent and now starting fee for a mid major to visit a power program is between $750,000 and $1,000,0000. When KState got caught in a scheduling problem a few years ago they made a direct call to Stull. According to the story Stull wasn't interested but jokingly threw out "Sure, for a million". They said Ok.
I wouldn’t put too much credence on this article since the author is a big BYU homer. This guy is taking aim at certain programs based on his dislike and not using real data.
We've had two historically bad seasons back to back. That would kill anyone attendance. It's been proven you can win here the last three coaches have had winning seasons and bowl appearances. We're putting pieces in place structurally to be a consistently winning program. We've been to more bowl games than NCAA tournaments in the last 25 years. Keep the faith. We will win.
I don't get the rationale that of you drop down you will win. I've heard sportstalk callers make the same argument. Yes, a current UTEP team would do well at a lower level. But when we are a lower level we would not resemble a FBS team. We will have to play by the same rules as all the FCS schools. Fewer scholarships, lower coach pay, small budgets, etc.... There is not a single reason to drop a level. The article states that the reason you drop is because the investment is too high. It's the price you pay for National recognition.
That’s the way I see it too. We’re not going to magically become a powerhouse at the FCS level. As an example I’ll use our current conference affiliation. I really believed that we would be the kings of CUSA 3.0. We had so many advantages over the former Sun belt and FBS start ups. Five years later we are fighting for our lives to keep up with them. I think a similar fate would await us in the FCS ranks.
It's a total non starter and stupid idea. If you were to go fcs you will lose 1/2 if not more donor money. You would also lose 1/2 sponsorship money, because people wont spend as much to sponsor and fcs team as an an fbs team. Then you also take down your entire athletic program. We would be in the Southland or Big Sky. We could play football at kidd field and basketball at memorial gym and not fill up either of them.
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The article mentions Conference USA and the Sun Belt Conference combining. If we were going to jumble things up, we wouldn't have to drop levels to do it. If we were on a money saving kick, the two conferences could swap teams in order to be more geographically compact and save on travel expenses. We still wouldn't have to drop levels.
Attendance was declining a bit towards the end of the Price area due to too many mediocre/losing seasons. What turned out to be a cheap and bad hire by Stull kept the decline going and the 0-12 season just about killed attendance altogether. With Dimel's 1st team losing it's opener to an FCS team by 20 points, attendance was pretty much dead. Winning is the cure and I hope we see reason for optimism this year. Three or four wins would help. Third year, 2020, a winning season and UTEP will be back among the leaders in G5 attendance.
In Kugler's one winning season, attendance was nowhere near the heights of the Price era. I'm not sure a simple winning season is enough to get us above 30,000 attendance.
(Although 30,000 average attendance would be more than enough to shut up the BYU homers calling for UTEP to drop to FCS.)
