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Strong negatives and positives. Any opinions?

There are no negatives. If your athletic budget can support D1, you're going to want to be D1. Unless you think being D2 and playing with the likes of Grand Valley and Ferris State and Hillsdale is cool, which it's not.

PROS: Pretty much everything, if you have an actual football and/or basketball team. However....

CONS: When you Dominate D2 in a major sport. You have to give it up not to do so. Much like FCS vs FBS. ND State doesn't join FBS because of location... but also because, why? I'd rather be FCS Alabama VS being Marshall in FBS, if I'm in BFE from everyone else.

D1 for all sports except move to FCS for football has always been my preference. The MAC is essentially in FBS by name only.

Yeah yeah I know WMU was in the Cotton Bowl but that took a perfect storm and even a few other 1-2 loss midmajor teams to lose at the end of the season before WMU got the invite.

In FCS, WMU can still get the big money non conference games against FBS P5 teams and actually get a fair shake at competing for a national title. The fact that FBS doesn’t allow all its teams/conferences a fair shake to get into a playoff is hot garbage. No other college sport is like that.

Quote:In FCS, WMU can still get the big money non conference games against FBS P5 teams and actually get a fair shake at competing for a national title. The fact that FBS doesn’t allow all its teams/conferences a fair shake to get into a playoff is hot garbage. No other college sport is like that.

The playoffs don't even allow all P5 conference champs a spot in the mini-playoffs. In reality, we don't REALLY have a true playoff. You just have 2 of the top NY bowl winners playing an extra game for the Nat Championship, is all.

In FCS, not all conf champs go to their Actual playoff -- although that by itself, I can understand. Too wide of variance in talent + lack of talent sucked in by FBS + lack of $$ to constitute flying around for some Big playoff to cover all bases.

The FBS to have actual playoffs will happen -- and not in the distant future, either. To put all P5 Champs in.

A 6 team playoff would be unsettling (2 get a bye; 4 play off, to match those two; all P5 + 1 at large). Even though better than now, it serves potential problems:

1. It wouldn't be the biggest oddity to find a 2nd best SEC/B10/B12 team (or Notre Dame) being Clearly better than another P5 Champ who pulled an upset for their Conf win & got the auto-bid -- ranked really low.

2. A G5 Champ ranked higher than a P5 Champ who pulled an upset for their Conf win & got the auto-bid -- ranked much lower, while the G5 Champ plays in a nice bowl (pat on head).

3. Of 6 teams, it clears out more high-level "NY" bowls for this actual playoff -- which prevents the top G5 even more from the spotlight.

Instead, an 8-team playoff would be best.
- Max 6 Conf Champs auto-bid, if ranked within Top 16
- Max 2 Teams Per Conf, unless 3rd team or 4th team is ranked within Top 4 [Almost always it'd be 2 MAX; rarely 3; basically never 4 - but for those once-in-50-years type of things, gotta note]
- Auto-Bids: Conf Champs get a 2-spot ranking advantage when they don't get an auto-bid, when comparing against a non-conf champ to get in

Basically, as a G5 *or* P5 Champ, if we're not in the Top 16 -- do we REALLY deserve to get an auto-bid into a mere 8-team playoff? No.

So basically, it's more or less like it is now -- to get into NY bowl, you get into the 8-team playoff, sans occasional debacle among all G5 winners where the top one barely gets ranked. But most Very Good P5 teams are not getting in, either.

Pros:
Bigger budget, better talent, bigger fanbase, upsets, more national/media attention, bigger name

Cons
Going against schools that are paved in gold

But silly thread. You don't want to be DII unless you're forced down. Most DII athletics aren't GVSU and are more similar to K or bottom FCS.

No effin way to D2. FCS would have certain benefits but the savings probably aren't as much as you would think. Fewer scholarships and lower recruiting budget, but we'd still have to maintain facilities and we'd almost certainly get fewer ticket and merch sales, plus FCS teams generally get lower payouts for buy games.

We could go shoestring but at that point why have athletics?

(10-11-2019 05:11 PM)wmubroncopilot Wrote:  No effin way to D2. FCS would have certain benefits but the savings probably aren't as much as you would think. Fewer scholarships and lower recruiting budget, but we'd still have to maintain facilities and we'd almost certainly get fewer ticket and merch sales, plus FCS teams generally get lower payouts for buy games.

We could go shoestring but at that point why have athletics?

Fewer scholarships to athletes at the FCS level as opposed to FBS, so keep that in mind.

(10-11-2019 05:58 PM)tayles mullet Wrote:  

(10-11-2019 05:11 PM)wmubroncopilot Wrote:  No effin way to D2. FCS would have certain benefits but the savings probably aren't as much as you would think. Fewer scholarships and lower recruiting budget, but we'd still have to maintain facilities and we'd almost certainly get fewer ticket and merch sales, plus FCS teams generally get lower payouts for buy games.

We could go shoestring but at that point why have athletics?

Fewer scholarships to athletes at the FCS level as opposed to FBS, so keep that in mind.

Yes, I mentioned that. I don't doubt that costs would be lowered but..

http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

There are some FCS schools already spending close or in a couple cases even more than we do on athletics. If WMU was to try to be an FCS contender this would not save a ton of money.

(10-11-2019 06:29 PM)wmubroncopilot Wrote:  

(10-11-2019 05:58 PM)tayles mullet Wrote:  

(10-11-2019 05:11 PM)wmubroncopilot Wrote:  No effin way to D2. FCS would have certain benefits but the savings probably aren't as much as you would think. Fewer scholarships and lower recruiting budget, but we'd still have to maintain facilities and we'd almost certainly get fewer ticket and merch sales, plus FCS teams generally get lower payouts for buy games.

We could go shoestring but at that point why have athletics?

Fewer scholarships to athletes at the FCS level as opposed to FBS, so keep that in mind.

Yes, I mentioned that. I don't doubt that costs would be lowered but..

http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

There are some FCS schools already spending close or in a couple cases even more than we do on athletics. If WMU was to try to be an FCS contender this would not save a ton of money.

Plus, in most cases, fewer scholarship players equals an inferior product of football we'd have to watch on Saturdays. Even the very bottom programs at the FBS level should and would defeat the bottom 80-90 percent of FCS programs.

Moving to FCS would make us quitters. We would be quitters, plain and simple.

Why don’t we have a thread discussing the move up to a better conference? The MAC limits the type of team we can bring into Waldo in October and November.

People living in a big ten state, who are accustomed their whole young adult life to watching Michigan State and Michigan don’t want to get up off the couch in a Saturday to go see Easter play Western. That’s the bottom line.

Threads like this that talk about moving backwards are for losers, plain and simple. Why would anyone (Flashboski) want this!???

Yeah Flash is a loser, totally sucks at life.

Quote:Pros:
Bigger budget, better talent, bigger fanbase, upsets, more national/media attention, bigger name

Cons
Going against schools that are paved in gold

Cons going D2: WAY lower budget, less talent, less fanbase, upsets against a low-end D1AA, less media attention, lesser name.

Going D2 will never happen of course. Crazy notion.

Going D1AA? Exact same, to lesser extent. Won't happen either. But if things in college football shift due to paying players and we get another sub-division, that could happen where G5 + top 2-3 divisions of FCS combine.

Don’t know why anyone would ever want to willingly drop to FCS or D2, if the enrollment trend continues we may be forced to at some point. Tuition already funds a large part of our athletic budget.

Quote:Don’t know why anyone would ever want to willingly drop to FCS or D2

The only "drop" I would be for would be having an extra sub-division in D1 football, if pay-to-play stuff takes off and things get jumbled up. Throw in allowing colleges to pay scholarship players a lot more (alumni dropping coin to finance), then you'd see some real shifting going on.

If they made an "FG5S" sub-division for the G5, but nothing changed Except the FG5S having their own 8-team playoff (5 Autos, 3 at-larges), while the rest could still go to bowls -- I'd be all for it.

The downside to that though would be less funds from the NCAA (ie more to the P5s), so some of the weaker unsuccessful G5s would drop down to FCS.