BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

Standard legal word salad.

 

Davis is Big Sky in football, Big West in most everything else.

 

If your conference does not offer FBS football, you can park all your other programs there and then go play somewhere else (or play independent) in FBS. I’m not super sure it works in the other direction, and thus don’t see how this would be permitted. And the MWC’s big problem is it needs football schools. I’m wondering if that isn’t the unspoken phase II

 

I agree, not sure what the Mountain West gains out of this, other than security for other schools leaving if they're concerned with dropping below the minimum for an automatic NCAA bid. There's really no precedent for a school staying FCS for football but joining a league that sponsors FBS football. I mean, there's Villanova, Georgetown, and Butler sticking with FCS, but the Big East doesn't offer FBS football, so that's not really the same.

 

Despite my NorCal roots, I have no idea how big a deal Davis or Sac State are in the Sacto market. I know the Causeway Classic used to be a big deal before the Kings arrived, and now the A's.
And the Sacto market is in the top 40 media markets.

 

Davis is becoming a FCS regular after transitioning from D-II, where it also had strong teams. Stadium currently seats 10K and some change, but there's plans to expand to 30K.

This might even help the Big West, which would go back to being a bus league. Davis was the only member school north of Bakersfield after Pacific left for the WCC.

 

Enlarging that stadium would be a huge mistake. Even when Jim Sochor was coaching them to all those D-II playoff appearances, their barely qualified as a high school stadium was rarely full. I remember playoff games against North Dakota State where there were more visiting fans than UC Davis students.

We watched the Illinois State game last weekend and it was an embarrassing crowd, even for UC Davis standards, perhaps because it's Finals Week. Usually there are a number of students in the grass end zone areas but even with nice weather, it was empty.

The athletics department does a great job but it has at least four strikes against it.

1. The Davis-Woodland area has grown tremendously but those people aren't casual college fans. The only game that's a guaranteed sellout is the Causeway Classic.
2. There are a lot of UC Davis alumni who are busy running farms, wineries or moved away who don't have time to come back to the campus for a football game.
3. At least 90 percent of UC Davis students are in demanding majors and don't care about sports.
4. Recruiting is especially tricky since you've got a relatively small pool of guys who weren't good enough to get a FBS scholarship but smart enough to be accepted. Illinois State's offensive and defensive lines dwarfed the UC Davis kids.

Picnic Day in the spring draws a nice crowd but UC Davis is definitely not a party school. The prevailing mindset, unlike a lot of places, is the bright kids go Davis because they didn't get into Cal or Stanford, or they're majoring in an ag program not offered anywhere else.

Obviously, Gwen is amazed that UC Davis has gone from scheduling Humboldt and Chico to playing Montana and Idaho. But as the Aggies have moved up, the interest in the program -- at least on campus -- has remained about the same.

 

@maumann My niece fits that profile. She went to Davis and is definitely not a sports fan. I pm'ed her after they won in Dayton and I don't think she was sure what I was talking about.

Mountain West still seems in good shape numbers wise for football with Hawaii, San Jose State, Nevada, UNLV, Wyoming, Air Force, UTEP and New Mexico.

 

I forgot they added UTEP to get to eight. Looks like the PAC-TBA is still short a football-playing school. Their best hope may be to add North Dakota State and South Dakota State as pigskin-only schools, which lets them get to eight league games a season and doesn’t water down basketball (and become a money pit for non-revenue team travel).

Otherwise, they’re going to have to make UTSA or Texas State an offer they can’t refuse to join for all sports. I just don’t see any remotely attractive options east of the Mississippi, certainly not any worth completely blowing up their footprint over.

 

Rumors are still pretty solid that Memphis, especially, and Tulane remain in play. Possibly a Texas school to get to 10. What I've heard is they are waiting for some more solid media deal numbers, but are close. Of course how it all works out is another story. I don't think an FCS school is in any plans. Also have to believe that UNLV is probably not super happy with how the MW shaped up, but I don't think there is anything they can do about it now.

 

Oregon State and Wazzu burned themselves by playing it cute with the initial invites. Needed to pluck UNLV and Utah State (I still can’t believe that was their second wave choice) right from the start so they weren’t sweating this and could pick off anyone else they wanted from a position of strength.