What is the future – and worth
Welcome to Week 12, aka the penultimate weekend of the 2022 regular-season schedule, aka the last go-round for among the most dissentious, borderline bar fight-igniting subjects amongst college football fans, specifically as the fandom’s cumulative blood starts to simmer towards boil ahead of Rivalry Week.FCS vs. FBS matchups.Saturday, there will be 4 of them.
It begins at midday ET when Austin Peay and East Tennessee State kick it off at Alabama and Mississippi State, respectively, and will involve the evening as the midafternoon matchups of North Alabama at Memphis and Utah Tech at BYU wind down just in time for dinner on the East Coast.They are the last of this year’s 119 games scheduled between the groups that play at
college football’s greatest level and those that live their arena lives one sounded down the ladder. However as the sport as a whole continues to alter directions more frequently and more unpredictably than a Hogwarts staircase, there are questions about when and if that previous sentence, the one that started” They are the last …”might one day end with”… FCS vs. FBS games ever set up.””Do I think these games are going to disappear? Yes, I do.” Russ Huesman said it flatly at the start of this 2022 season. His Richmond Spiders were preparing to take a trip south to Virginia, a game they lost 34-17. In 14 seasons as head coach at Chattanooga and Richmond, he has actually taken FCS teams into Auburn, Nebraska, Tennessee, Florida State, Boston College, Virginia Tech and made three trips to Alabama. His groups are 0-13 in those games.”I do understand a few of those FBS coaches do not want these games to go away. I believe they understand that Division I college football, which we dip into the FCS level, is actually important. We’ll simply need to see how crucial it is to some people.”< img data-src="https://a.espncdn.com/photo/2020/0917/r746985_1024x1024cc.jpg" src ="https://a.espncdn.com/photo/2020/0917/r746985_1024x1024cc.jpg"
/ > How will Saturday’s leading games impact the College Football Playoff go after? What are the existing chances for the top 4? The Allstate Playoff Predictor has the responses. Check back every week as the odds are upgraded following that week’s games.
Prior to we get too far down the road of what the future of FCS vs. FBS may look like, let’s eliminate some of the more popular misconceptions about these matchups in the here and now.First, there is
a perception that these games have actually reduced in frequency in recent years, as some coaches (see: Saban, Nick) have ended up being more vocal about the concept of transferring to an all-Power 5 schedule, most likely to reinforce their College Football Playoff résumés. But the reality is that not only do they occur all the time, however there are more now than ever. See: those 119 games this season.In fact, of
the 131 groups at the FBS level, just 15 did not play at least one game against an FCS school this year. That’s really a boost of three individuals from 2 years back, when 18 teams didn’t have an FCS opponent on their 2020 schedules prior to the pandemic reshuffling.During the 1990s there was
an average of around 70 FCS vs. FBS games per season. Considering that the 2010s that has actually increased to more than 105 each fall. Every SEC team played at least one FCS challenger this season, as did the schools of the MAC and Mountain West. Even the Big Ten, which tried to secure down on FCS matches in 2016 but relaxed those guidelines simply one year later on, saw nine of its 14 members book games with groups from the land previously called I-AA. Montana upended then-No. 20 Washington in 2021, the last time an FCS group beat a ranked FBS challenger. Jesse Beals/Icon Sportswire Second, some believe FBS schools make noise about ignoring FCS crossover games due to the fact that they fear the upset loss, aka Appalachian State-Michigan 2007. However the reality is because college football was split into 2 divisions in 1978, only six ranked FBS schools have lost to FCS groups. In fairness, the losses have actually increased in frequency, though only somewhat. The Mountaineers’win over the Wolverines was the second ever and the very first considering that 1983, when Cincinnati stunned No. 20 Penn State. The other 4 have all occurred because 2010, the most recent being Montana’s win over No. 20 Washington in 2021. According to fearthefcs.com, there have actually been 3,339 games played between FCS and FBS schools, and the FBS schools lead with a record of 2837-486-16. A substantial piece of those FCS wins was available in the years immediately following that 1978 I-A/I-AA schism, when the competitive and monetary gap between the levels was still minimal.And thirdly, there has constantly been that “big boys”understanding, the concept that every FBS team appears like the Monstars and every FCS group looks like the Tune Team without MJ or LeBron. Poor weakling football peasants sent into battle to trade injuries and humiliation for incomes. The reality is not only do FCS players and coaches relish the opportunity to step onto college football’s most significant stages, however those coaches recruit those players by promising opportunities to play in those games. The bigger curve of history aside, FCS does have 8 wins over FBS schools this season, to go with a dozen success one year earlier.” We definitely hired on the basis of, ‘Hey, you’re going to get to play at North Carolina, at Alabama, at Auburn,'”Mercer head coach Drew Cronic discussed leading into the Bears ‘Sept. 3 see to Jordan-Hare Arena. His group is arranged to go to Ole Miss in 2023.”These guys, these are rivals, athletes who matured here, imagining playing football in those locations. We can make that happen. And we might just give them more than they expected.” “If you see ever see our school on the schedule of an FBS school, you can stop with that sensation sorry for us stuff, due to the fact that we enjoy it,”Nicholls coach Tim Rebowe said one year ago
as his Colonels, members of the Southland Conference, gotten ready for the second of their season-opening back-to-back FBS matches vs. Memphis and Louisiana, all while stuck in a hotel away from house due to Typhoon Ida.During his 8 seasons in Thibodaux, Louisiana, Rebowe’s teams have actually played 13 games versus FBS opponents. They won when, a 26-23 OT win at Kansas that started a season that ended in the 2nd round of the FCS playoffs. In 2018 they gave Texas A&M all it wanted before losing 24-14, and in ’16 they notoriously rallied in the fourth quarter to frighten the dawg collars off Georgia prior to losing 26-24. “Those trips, for us, those are a measuring stick of where we are as a program,”Rebowe said.”We remain in Athens, Georgia, and was available in at halftime and our men stated, ‘Hey, we have a chance to be in this game
if we limit huge plays.'” That game was just Kirby Smart’s second Saturday as his alma mater’s head football coach. He remembers it well, still rolling his eyes whenever it is mentioned, even seven seasons later. In the five FCS games his teams have actually played considering that,
UGA has won by an average score of 48-8. But the head coach of the No. 1-ranked FBS group, safeguarding nationwide champs and existing flagship program of the almighty SEC, does not roll his eyes when the topic of FBS vs. FCS is raised. A week after taking apart Oregon in the season opener, Georgia locked out Samford of the FCS. Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports “I do know it’s important for these programs to be able to endure,”Smart said earlier this season, speaking of Georgia’s Week 2 game with Samford.” High schools are our feeder programs, similar to we are for the NFL. And if you’re going to have great high school programs, you have actually got to have kids getting opportunities to dip into all levels. Since there’s a lot more kids playing at a non-Power 5 level than at the Power 5 level. So, if you’re a supplier of talent and the development of the game originates from your youth sports and your high school sports, you’re going to diminish that as these programs vanish.”He reminded that his training career began at NCAA Division II school Valdosta State, and that his father, longtime high school coach Sonny Smart, was a two-year starter at center for the Samford Bulldogs. Kirby later on participated in football camps at Samford and was employed at Valdosta State by head coach Chris Hatcher, who has held that exact same position at Samford given that
2015. To host Samford this season, Georgia paid its guests from the Southern Conference $500,000. That amount sits directly on the average of this year’s 119 payments that range from the$ 750,000 Florida paid Eastern Washington to fly east to the $215,000 Hawai’i paid Duquesne to fly even further west. This weekend ETSU will receive a$ 415,000 check from Mississippi State. In 2015 the Buccaneers received that precise
very same amount of cash from Vanderbilt and won the game 23-3. ETSU’s whole football budget is around$3.8 million.By the way, that’s an anticipate a great ease-into-September or ease-into-Rivalry Week home game. The house stadium will still sell plenty of tickets and concessions, and it’s a more affordable date for a Power 5 school than reserving another Group of 5 matchup. Remember the carnage of Week 2? Notre Dame, Nebraska and Texas A&M paid Marshall, Georgia Southern and Appalachian State approximately$ 1.4 million to lose all three games. “A few of these FCS programs can not survive without these games, “Smart continued.”That doesn’t indicate that I welcome them and like them. It simply means that the programs can’t survive without the sort of funding without these games. For the overall health of college football, the sport we all enjoy, we require to be supporting it at all levels.”That’s terrific, Coach. However when we all check out our crystal footballs, will that support from above keep going?”You understand, I think it depends upon where it goes,”Smart responded
.”What they need you to do and where the FCS, some of those conferences, end up with the adjustment and some of those things … the scheduling, the number of conference games you’re playing. I truthfully don’t know.”No one does. However numerous appear to think that a glance of the FBS vs. FCS future was available in 2020, when the college football calendar was tossed into the COVID-19 shredder and the SEC led the charge into a conference-only schedule. FCS conferences pushed their schedules into spring 2021. That summertime, right smack in the middle of Southern Conference media day, the news of Oklahoma and Texas kick-starting a new age of realignment broke the web and left those in Asheville, North Carolina, questioning if it might also break their banks.”
A great deal of where I work, what I work with and even what my people use, that comes from the funding those games supply, however also the pride we have feeling like we’re all in this together,” said then-ETSU Buccaneers head coach Randy Sanders, who spent three decades on the other side of those matches as an assistant coach at Tennessee, Kentucky and Florida State.” I do not believe I completely comprehended that till I took this job. Now I make certain I talk my friends still training at the FBS level how crucial their cooperation is.”2 Related The push toward a nine-game conference schedule has actually been verbally led by Saban, the de facto commissioner of college football. He has actually never ever shied away from his belief that college football ought to be strong at all levels, but he likewise has actually done the post-realignment mathematics. It’s not Toledo science. Take the SEC alone. When it expands to 16 groups, a nine-game conference schedule becomes needed to make sure every member gets a shot at all the others at least sometimes. Saban has even stated it may take 10 games to make that take place. That leaves just 3, and even 2, nonconference weekends. As soon as that calendar fills up with standard cross-conference rivalries, CFP-friendly Power 5 cross-conference games and possibly one Group of 5 matchup, there are no chairs left for FCS when the battle songs stop playing.Publicly, lots of have downplayed the monetary impact if that were to take place. Earlier this season, Mercer athletic director Jim Cole told Georgia beat author Seth Emerson,”Just promoting myself, if we were to lose a game, I ‘d just go raise more cash. I ‘d need to invest more time on the phone. “But independently, there is admission of a great deal of wringing of hands. That deleted line on the monetary spreadsheet might be replaceable, but those one shining moments– OKAY, those 119 shining minutes– of lining up across from FBS challengers, there’s a relevance and spotlight that features that stage lots of think is worth more than even a huge income. A group of 130 happy football programs do not want the game they like to leave
them behind.”I love this level of football and this brand name of football. It is where I have actually invested my entire adult life,”said South Dakota State head coach John Stiegelmeier last month prior to the Dakota Marker game versus the king of FBS slayers, North Dakota State. “Coach Stig” has been on the Jackrabbits
personnel considering that 1988 and head coach since’ 97. His Jacks are presently ranked No. 1 in FCS. They opened the season with a 7-3 loss at Iowa. In 2015 they won 43-23 at Colorado State, and in 2015 they won at Kansas.”Perhaps to a great deal of individuals it seems like there is a big space between FBS and FCS, but there is a lot DNA that crosses over,” Stiegelmeier stated.”There are numerous coaches in FBS who have their roots here and the other way around. One day it might all carry on, stop setting up games, cut ties, all of that. I hope not. However if it does, I don’t believe you could find any genuine football individuals, even those who made that take place, that deep down wouldn’t seem like something was missing out on from the game of college football if it did.”