School: Virginia Commonwealth University
Location: Richmond, VA
Designated Media Market: Richmond (#59/210) 526K TV Households
Undergrad Enrollment: ~31k
US News and World Report Rank: Tier 3
Endowment: #197 nationally with 235M as of 2005. (#8 in Viginia)
Current Designation: IAAA (CAA)
Proposed Destination: Division I-FBS (CUSA/CUSA East/Sunbelt)
Football Stadium: ? (The University of Richmond does have a 22K stadium 2.3 miles away. That could serve until an on-campus 35-40K stadium could be built.)
Stadium capacity: ---
Football Attendance: n/a
BBall Stadium: on/near campus Stuart C. Siegel Center
BBall Capacity: 7,500
BBall Attendance: 4977 (66%) over the last 5 years

Argument:
This is a school that really should be playing football. With an enrollment of 31K in a football crazy state/commonwealth, VCU could fill an on campus 30-35K stadium fairly regularly. With an enrollment of 31K, student contributions would be (comparitively) easily borne and could potentially pay for most of the upgrades. They have a large university in a large city and as such their alumni base in the Richmond DMA is probably very large.

They have a solid market with no NFL competition in Richmond. The biggest football competition is the FCS level Richmond Spiders, and that wealthy university is small enough that they probably are not looking at FBS.

The University of Richmond Stadium is owned by the city of Richmond and VCU could play there TODAY. It is 6 minutes away--- 2.3 Miles. It is actually half the distance to VCU. There really is no excuse... You could probably work with the city and get it upgraded to 30-35K pretty easily.

They have a well developed basketball program that could quickly become a power with a larger arena.

Although VCU has not been bitten with the FBS bug yet, I think by 2025, VCU and Old Dominion University (ODU) in the neighboring Virginia Beach DMA will both be playing FBS football. I would not be suprised to see them in the same conference as schools like UAB, USA, ECU, UNCC, UCF, and maybe even App State, Georgia State, Jacksonville State, FIU, FAU, and Troy.

As an interesting footnote, if you look at the eight members of the Sun Belt during what many consider its peak, four are playing or plan to play Division I FBS:

USA (Sun Belt, football member in 2013)
UAB (Conference USA)
WKU (Sun Belt, football member in 2009)
UNCC (Atlantic 10, no football)
VCU (CAA, no football)
ODU (CAA, will play football in 2009)
Jacksonville (Atlantic Sun, Division I FCS Pioneer League football)
South Florida (Big East)

Soon it could be 5/8. UNCC as an institution is investigating moving up to FBS. There is a thread on them with news article links from the Charlotte paper somewhere on this forum.

From Wikipedia

"...The current university president, Eugene P. Trani, has been quoted as saying that he will not allow football to come to VCU under his watch due to the extra incurred cost..."

It is a shame President Trani is IMO being short sighted. There are threshholds in college football. Any FCS school that draws over 15K per game to an oncampus stadium will be financially profitable. Not viable. Profitable. With a student body of 31K, VCU could EASILY become a cash cow FCS football school today. With the size of VCU's alumni base building or enlarging the publically owned University of Richmond Stadium to an FBS level 35K would be VERY acheivable, it is a very reasonable proposition. Athletics are advertising for your University and football will get you on the national map---even at the FCS level if you excell.

Some people just don't like football so much they will ignore incredibly positive financials. It really is something that the President should take a look at fairly, as IMO he is both costing football players who might want to attend VCU a place to play and students who might want to watch a VCU college football team play an opportunity to support those athletes.

All of VCU's large student body would be paying nothing or close to nothing for tickets meaning to be profitable they would have to tap into the school's alumni base for the necessary gameday receipts. If the alumni make it worth it with serious interest and funding, I'm sure VCU would change their mind.

Given where VCU is located, the fact that they don't play at least FCS football is practically inexcusable. With the bulk of the CAA's membership in the Delmarva area, travel for conference play would be minimal. Even with the right non-conference games, travel would still be minimal:

Georgia State*
James Madison (VA)*
Old Dominion (VA)*
Towson (MD)*
William & Mary (MD)*
3 of Delaware/Hofstra/Northeastern/UMass/Rhode Island/Maine*
FBS game: choose from Virginia, Virginia Tech, UNC, Duke, ECU, Wake Forest, NC State, Maryland, Navy, West Virginia, or Marshall

The two remaining non-conference games can include any of the three SoCon football schools in North Carolina; Davidson; most of the Big South and MEAC.

Mrs. AppmaninVA graduated from VCU and we live here in Richmond. If VCU EVER has a football team, I'd be stunned. The University of Richmond stadium is a dump and will be torn down to make room for a senior living center, after the Spiders move into their new on-campus gem of a smaller stadium. There is whispers, but the powers that be don't want it. VCU wants the land near campus where the baseball stadium now sits (since Richmond is losing it AAA team) to build sports facilities (soccer stadium, tennis center, baseball stadium, etc. This site would be closer to campus than UofR stadium. Maybe they have plans for a football stadium on that site. Still, I doubt there would ever be a football team at VCU.