BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

Wake's stadium, while nice, only seats around 31,000, which isn't much more than Wallace Wade. Everybody else in the league has a reasonably sized stadium.

 

One of the most exciting things I remember as a kid was when Notre Dame came to Clemson in 1977. This was before Clemson added the upper decks (the first in 1978, the second in 1983) so seating capacity (with general admission) was close to 60,000. Clemson was ranked so this was a complete sellout. My father's closest friend from high school was the sheriff then, so he somehow finagled us two law enforcement passes. My father and I (at the time I was a high school sophomore) sat there in a corner of the general admission area and watched Joe Montana engineer a stunning comeback. Even though the outcome was disappointing, it's still a really nice memory.

 

Sounds like a great memory. Thanks for sharing.

 

It's funny how strong memories are from those years (and I apologize for the quasi-threadjack, but I am enjoying heading down memory lane here). That was Charley Pell's first year as head coach and the whole area (I grew up just a few miles down the road) just lost its mind. Very few games were on TV in those days, but when ABC announced a regional broadcast of the Clemson-South Carolina game (the Notre Dame game wasn't televised, believe it or not) we had some friends over to watch. My mother (who'd gone back to college when I was in elementary school and finished when I was in junior high) was beginning to make some good money as a CPA, so we splurged and got a new TV just for the occasion. It was a Curtis Mathes brand, which billed itself as "The most expensive television set in America, and darn well worth it." I remember thinking, wow, we must be rich! It's remarkable to think how excited so many people were over an 8-3-1 team that didn't even win its conference championship. Nowadays you wouldn't see close to that level of excitement over such a record.

 

WAC starts the road back to relevance by adding Utah Valley and Cal State Bakersfield in 2013-14.

 

Not the most glamorous additions, but at least they make geographic sense.

 

The WAC's slogan for 2013 will be "Putting the 'W' back in WAC!'"

 

WAC football will disappear; Idaho's going independent and I suppose NMSU will try for the Sun Belt or someplace. But it keeps the WAC in business and more importantly, protects the automatic NCAA berth (and conference payout) for men's basketball and other sports.

 

I suppose the rumors of an infusion of eastern FCS upgrades to prop up the WAC has all but died. It didn't make a lot of sense unless you had a bunch of schools that wanted to move up ahead of a rumored long-term moratorium on going FBS. Appalachian State and Liberty are on the first train to FBS, it seems, but Georgia Southern is taking their sweet time, Delaware doesn't seem interested and nobody seems to know what James Madison wants.

Of course, if Georgia State can move up, who can't? Last week against New Hampshire they hosted a money drop -- $10,000 dropped from the roof of the Georgia Dome and all 40,000 students were eligible if they also attended the previous home game against Richmond. So how did that turn out?

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Also in their final season before moving to the Sun Belt, they're 0-6 and their closest loss is by 21 points. They've lost to a poor South Carolina State team 33-6 and an almost-as-poor William & Mary 35-3. And they're moving UP!

 

The way the WAC is now, geographically Utah Valley makes sense, but I've felt all along Bako was a better fit for the Big West. With the exception of Hawaii and with Pacific going to the WCC next year, it's essentially a bus league.

 

Yeah, Georgia State is definitely going to have issues being competitive. I guess it's because it's a large state university in Atlanta that they felt compelled to go FBS ASAP. Or something. Not sure what.

 

Idaho will likely be back in the Big Sky within a couple of years. About all I can see the WAC doing it recruiting independents, from the Great West or Div. II teams looking to move up, all current DI schools in the West seem to be committed elsewhere or uninterested.