With The BCS schools poised to become independent from the NCAA I think in my own opinion that the MAC Sunbelt and most of the rest of FCS will combine with the FBS to become just Division 1 no 1-a or 1-aa or fbs or fcs. any thoughts on that realignment fans.

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I don't look at it as them separating themselves from Division 1. These are potential big moves, that's for sure. But maybe you're right and the NCAA will revisit and change their nomenclature. If you recall, the I-A and I-AA to FBS and FCS was a push by the non-I-A schools. They felt it made them appear secondary. I was in favor of just merging I-A and I-AA but they chose differently. In that event, you'd have seen no national championship playoff, and instead an NIT type of postseason for non-bowl teams.

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I think there would be a better chance of the FBS/FCS merging. The reason for this might be for bowl purposes. Adding 120 or so teams would give a better chance for more teams to be chosen from. They can add another 20 bowls give or take. It would also maybe more renationalized bowl match ups like the sun belt vs the southland or MEAC vs. SWAC. If there was a playoff have the conference champs play in the playoffs with at large teams to make the brackets work.(BCS criteria?) Anyone else with over a .500 season is then eligible for bowl games to be played on the weekdays. Playoff games will be played Saturday or Sunday.

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I agree with teams like odu, georgia southern and south alabama and georgia st you will see the ncaa drop its ban and there will be massive schools flood d1 quick and fast. the only problem i see is television but espn, fox nbc/comcast and others will be glad to show these schools on tv after all it is FOOTBALL.

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Not to mention a TV network that combined 2 or more conferences. (like sun belt and southland TV network) I could see more Monday through Friday games on TV also. You also have to realize that things like espn3 (espn 360) can also show games in the case i can see a further expansion of online viewing of games and yearly subscriptions either by the TV networks or conferences themselves. Not to mention if they can download. things to the Flo portable TV and the like. There still allot of money and unused ideas to go around.

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Then you will see CSTV2, ESPN4, Fox 2,3,4, NBC2,3,4 NBC 2,3,4 AND CBS 2,3,4 Because Of Digital TV

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i can see espn 4 but not rally the other stations. I think it might cost to much for providers to offer. If anything some conferences might buy time on smaller regional TV station. I live in southern cal and on channel 10 (KCVCR or something) they show SEC football games from the SEC network.(like Tennessee vs Western Kentucky) The big west conference also occasionally shows basketball games on the regional channels. Instead of creating new channels they might try and make separate deals with more renationalized channels to carry 1 game. like the Tennessee game was carried by both the SEC network and channel 10.

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I guess they could always revisit the idea, but the NCAA already passed on merging I-AA and I-A. Instead, they opted just to go with a name change to FBS and FCS.

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yea, Didn't they rework the entrance admittance between division 2 schools to division 1? Maybe after the current school movement ban is lifted they might revisit the reemerge of division 1 football. I think the big question left would be scholarships. Would the conferences be able to still determine amount of scholarships?

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The reason FBS and FCS won't merge is the same reason anything happens in college sports and life: money.

The 119 teams playing FCS football would have to add 22 scholarships for football; AND another 22 for a women's sport.

That's an average of about $1.1 million for the 48 FCS schools who's tuition were readily available on the USNews&WR site.

Now, they could decide to meet halfway: If they went to 74 scholarships instead of 85, the FBS schools would save about $600,000 a year.... but that savings including cutting 11 women's scholarships. And that's never a smart move politically.


The other big caveat is that some schools (PFL, NEC, Patriot, Ivy) play non-scholarship football. It would cost THEM up to $7 million a year to move to FBS. Butler (PFL) has a budget is like $2 million. So, they'd have to almost quadruple the size of their budget if they merged FCS and FBS.

Not to mention that the Ivy just wouldn't do it.


So by "merger," we'd really have to mean "eliminating the minimum scholarship requirements." Which basically makes 240 D-I college football teams; 120 playing with more scholarship players than the other 120, and 40 of them playing with none. And those not with the full allotment of scholarships would either play the same schedules they are playing now... or get killed if they played up.

You'd be eliminating the FCS playoffs, not to mention the effects on the BCS scheduling (four body-bag games at home, never play a non-conference game that matters), which would make the regular season much worse; and make conference alignment worth much more.

I don't think that works for anyone.


One interesting thing I pulled out of the research for this post, was that there's some FCS schools which could pull off the leap based on their relatively low tuition.

For example, the Dakotas. UND, NDSU, USD and SDSU. Based on the tuition reported by USN&WR, it could cost them $2,117,368 to add 44 scholarships. COMBINED. other schools who could possibly afford the leap:

Idaho State ($700,000)
Montana State ($802,912)
Montana ($872,696)


However, I should probably point out that ALL these numbers are TUITIONS, and might not include room & board.

Plus for 22 to 44 more scholarship athletes, you have to add trainers, secretaries, SIDs, etc; as well as coaches and operating costs for your new women's sport

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JPSchmack nailed it in my opinion. Which is why I would like to see the opposite happen. I would like to see a new third level of D-I football for smaller less competitive FCS schools, especially the ones that don't offer many or any scholarships. I think with the expansion of Super conferences we would see 8 large FBS conferences at the highest level (my hope is that there would be an 8 team playoff among the conference champions). Sun Belt and MAC Conferences would drop to the FCS level along with the better FCS conferences (Big Sky, CAA, MVFV, ect). I would imagine 8 conferences at this level as well. The remaining 7 conferences would form a new level (FDS? lol). This would be the Pioneer League, Patriot League, and Ivy Leagues for example. They too could have a playoff and a champion. This would balance the competition levels quite a bit allowing many more teams to compete for a championship. There are far too many teams at both levels that cannot compete for a championship at all and that should change.