(04-25-2020 10:56 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote: So can the SoCon, MVC, and Big West start FBS football too since they were FBS decades ago?
Don't forget the Southland Conference and the Ivy League if you include the SoCon. All three were forced down at the same time to D-IAA (now FCS) for not meeting attendance requirements which were much more stringent than today's requirements. The MVC and Big West held on for several years after the force down so they might qualify. I don't know. If I recall correctly, back then the majority of the conference members had to either have a stadium with a capacity greater than 30,000 and average 15,000 in one year out of four (fuzzy memory on attendance requirement tied to stadium size) or average 15,000 for four years. The SLC came close, and easily met today's requiremnts. McNeese State and Southwestern Louisiana (now Louisiana) met the original requirements. The conference just needed one more to remain. In a what-if, Lamar and at least Louisiana Tech would have easily met today's requirements and came close, but no cigar to meeting the original requirements. Arkansas State may have also.
I don't know about other conferences, but the force down was brutal and disruptive for the Southland Conference. UT Arlington and later Lamar both dropped their football programs within 5-10 years. The core of a really good, tight knit conference started to break up. First Louisiana left to remain in D-IA. Then Lamar, Louisiana Tech, and Arkansas State, left the conference to join Louisiana, UTPA (predecessor of UTRGV) and New Orleans to form the basketball centric American South Conference. In basketball, to name a few, those were the Karl Malone at Louisiana Tech, Joe Dumars at McNeese State, and Andrew Toney at Louisiana years. There were some really good players at the other schools at that time also. For example, Lamar had 1st round through 4th round NBA draft picks in addition to lower round picks during that period.
The Independence Bowl in Shreveport originally had ties to the Southland Conference. It was started, in part, because of what happened to Arkansas State in the 1975 season. They won the conference championship witih an 11-0 NCAA Division I-A (now FBS) undefeated record, one of two D-IA undefeated teams in the nation, with no bowl invitation.
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To get this back to the WAC, it looks like they have the ticket to FBS should they decide to exercise it. (Sorry for the trip down memory lane.)