By and large looks pretty good.

Suggest reviewing the description for Army, Denver, East Tennessee
Army - left C-USA during realignment of 2003. Description should mirror that of Navy.
Denver - NDSU / SDSU FB now in Gateway, Northern Colorado in Big Sky, don't know where Denver hopes to go (perhaps Summit or WCC (WCC currently not interested in exanding).
I suspect the next Summit expansion will involve adding the Dakota U's.
East Tennessee - The OVC recently rescinded their requirement for new members to play FB.

I'd say the WAC would absolutely love to have Montana. They do have seem to have had luck with a certain former BSC school, and Montana has the same foundation to do something similar (minus the Humanitarian Bowl and blue turf). The main reason Montana hasn't and probably won't jump anytime soon (though no UMt officials will admit it for fear of political backlash) is that they would be forced to carry Montana State along, much like Boise had to do with Idaho, and MSU is very ill-prepared both attendance-wise and infrastructure-wise to make the jump, much like Idaho was back then.

Also, if UMass would make the jump to I-A, they would almost definitely be given an fb-only invite to the Big East right away, and brought along much like UConn was. However, in the event of a BE split before or during the upgrade, they would probably be offered full FBS-conference (likely remaining the BE) membership.

Chicago State would love a Horizon invite, but they will never get one. The reason they dropped from the now-Summit was to avoid heavy sanctions on their women's bb program, and that alone is going to count them out of any consideration for quite a while. Depending on what schools would leave the Horizon (namely Butler), IUPUI out of the Summit would be the most likely to step in (competitive mid-major hoops, Indy market), however would Butler stay and another team move they would probably throw a fit that IUPUI would even be considered.

It's official now, the Board of Regent meeting today in Beaumont approved Texas st FBS and approved Lamar's return to football.

Texas st continue to take steps towards FBS.
Lamar officially brought back football, hired Ray Woodard as coach.
UTSA??? Not a peep on football.

I think that if the Big 12 wanted to do a switch...they would dump BU and Tech and add Arkansas and TCU. Better travel to both schools and the apple cart would not be too upset in such a move.

TxSt-SM: Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS)
Upon motion of Regent Amato, seconded by Regent Flores, with all regents voting aye, it was ordered that Texas State University-San Marcos be authorized to take such actions as may be necessary and lawful to become classified as an NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) university, subject to approval by the Chancellor.

Why would they dump a very successful program ( TECH ) for another small private school that has been sliding. ( TCU ) ???

Three comments:

1. Georgia St. should be added to the CAA Football section. They're starting play as an FCS Independent in 2010 and will play CAA Football in 2012. Old Dominion as you know is on the 2009/2011 schedule. That brings CAA Football to 14 members in 2012: 8 full CAA members and 6 football-only affiliates. One of the more frequently repeated rumors is that, if there's a split between full members and affiliates, UMass, URI, UNH, and Maine will form a new football conference with Stony Brook (Big South football-only) and Albany (NEC football-only), probably under the America East banner.

2. Charlotte's chancellor recently concluded his football study and recommended to the Board of Trustees that they authorize the creation of a FCS football team to begin play in 2013. The trustees will vote on this in November. If approved, the earliest Charlotte could move to FBS is 2017. All new programs are required to play at the FCS level for at least 4 years. The most likely conference affiliation for them at the FCS level is the Big South. The CAA will likely have too many members unless there's a split, and the Southern Conference is rumored to be disinterested because of Charlotte's well-known ambitions to move to FBS level football.

3. In the grid comments, you're frequently using "BCS" when you mean "FBS". BCS only refers to the 6 BCS conferences: ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big XII, PAC-10 and SEC. FBS is the Football Bowl Subdivision, including all the former Division IA teams. I would take a school "considering a BCS move" to mean considering moving from FCS to a BCS conference, an extremely unlikely invitation for anyone to receive except Villanova.

You may want to give a little more love to UNT on the grid. It seems thata lot of information has come out in the pursuit of the new UNT stadium. Apparently, the word around is that the only reason they weren't #12 in CUSA instead of UTEPcame down to poor facilities, and they have replaced and/or are in the process of replacing all of the ir atheletic facilities. Apparently while TCU may not have seen the benefit of UNT in conference, SMU may not share that opinion. The new stadium should be up by 2010 or 2011, and at that point they would be probably the #1 expansion target for CUSA [or the SWC (CUSA West)].

"I would take a school "considering a BCS move" to mean considering moving from FCS to a BCS conference, an extremely unlikely invitation for anyone to receive except Villanova. "

To Minuteman:

Why would you think that? Villanova is a small Catholic university, in of all places, Villanova. (technically Upper Merion Township). They have 12,500 seat stadium in one of the most exspensive neighborhoods of Philly(The Mainline) and not even close to being a FBS program let alone a BCS program. They are a basketball school and if, or as most suspect when the overbloated screwy Big Eats splits into FB and BB conferences, they will remain with their Catholic brethern. They are doing fine in the Colonial League. They had hopes of once becoming "The Notre Dame of the East" decades ago but after a few games with Penn State, they quickly gave up on that crazy idea! Nova wil probably continue to play FB at the D1AA (FCS) level and do well. They have plenty of options in that areana.

The school that is most likely to jump up from FCS to FBS would be Delaware. They do have a 20k average attendance and a perennial contender in the FCS division. But remember CFB is a big money investment that rarely makes money in and of itself. I would be curious to see exactly how many schools actually make any money from it. I have heard that only 10 or 12 programs make money. But the advertisement that an elite program brings to a university is huge. I'm just not sure that does or can be translated in a dollar figure. I also don't know if that can contribute to vast increases in enrollments either. I'm sure there is some direct correlation in some cases. Mizzou has reported over a 3000 increase in freshman this year since Mizzou had a good year in CFB (best since the 50's). Pitt has sucked at FB for the past 20 years or more and they are barely averaging 30K to 32K per game. Yet the Pitt has done ok as a university in enrollments and scholastic achievements. There is just so many students and so many dollars out there to be had. Competition is tough and getting tougher for higher education. I love seeing all these schools adding or increasing FB but somewhere along the line CFB is either going to semi-pro or go back to the old collegiate standards. I think the dollars will dictate it.

Why would TCU want to downgrade from the MWC to the CUSA?

TCU is hoping to use the MWC as a stepping stone to the Big 12.

Right, Bugsy. Meanwhile they want to bring a trvel partner into the MWC. SMU has been mentioned, but Houston is more likely.

This is quoting a much older post and things have changed a little since then, but I think it is still mostly correct. It is quite questionable whether being in the MWC helps TCU long term.

The money is better and the esteem is better, but the travel budget is much higher and the TV exposure in Texas is much lower (no one gets the Mountain). I live in Dallas. We talked about it this year, how little TV time TCU gets. That will hurt recruiting. When fuel prices spike up again in 2 years, it will be higher than is was this summer, making travel more expensive than it was then.

SMU has June Jones. UNT has local high school coaching legend Todd Dodge and what will be the nation's first "green" stadium scheduled to be built in 2011. UNT is pretty clearly angling for CUSA and it is a legit possibility.

Recruiting will fall off.

The NFL cowboys have moved from Irving (closer to SMU) to Arlington (halfway between TCU and SMU). This will creat e rising attendance at SMU and further shrinking attendance at TCU. TCU already has seen a drop in attendance as they don't get travelling fans in the MWC. TCU's multi-year attendance average is now below B12 doormat Baylor's due to the move to the MWC.

IMO, they are in a position that will yeild diminishing returns.

Now that said, an outside catalyst (Sports fan President Elect Obama) could bring about major changes with some pressure from the top if he is so inclined.

The BCS is a coalition between the University haves (good academic schools with large endowments and large state flagships) and the big collegiate bowls (who need universities to play in their bowls who can fill 60K stadiums at remote locations all around the US). While I can see both parties in that coalition wanting to add BYU and Utah --- the only non-BCS schools that average more then 40K per game year in and year out and top academic schools to boot, the rest of the MWC schools don't cut the mustard with one group or the other (or both). Any schools the MWC could add to improve their standing (Boise & Fresno) don't cut the mustard academically and would in some ways HURT the MWC's changes with the BCS schools.

So if the MWC cannot acheive BCS membership, what does TCU get out of it? Being lower profile in Texas and nationally by not being on TV won't get them into the B12. That is why I think you may see TCU coming back, especially if CUSA west splits from the east. CUSA gives TCU a big attendance bump, more TV exposure in Texas and nationally, and better recruiting.

All this said, I could be wrong. I was shocked that TCU did as well as they did this year. I am chalking it up to Patterson being a better coach than I gave him credit for being, but I think talent eventually tells the tale, and I do not think TCU in the MWC will allow the school to maintain their recruiting.

On the Grid, Lamar has already brought back football by hiring a coach, recruits signed, and a very aggressive schedule
set for 2010.

UTSA is set to play in 2011. Coaching search is on....

Please note Georgia State's football status in your CAA Football grid.
Thanks.