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Post by jim68 on Sept 23, 2021 16:15:03 GMT -5
My thoughts would be no, unless both UTC & ETSU were to depart. I have told members of this board that ETSU will not stay in the SoCon for very long. They did not bring in a Power 5 Coach to stay in the FCS ranks. The 2 schools that played a role in the startup of their Football Program were Old Dominion & UNCC. If you remember these schools jumped up to the next level from almost nowhere. I have no clue about UTC.
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Post by jim68 on Sept 23, 2021 17:07:13 GMT -5
Bottom line. In our current situation, there is no FBS conference that will ask Western to join. Three factors which are not in our favor control our destiny. 1) Lack of FBS facilities. Some very serious expensive facilities upgrades will have to happen first, 2) Lack of winning tradition. You guys are talking about moving up and we consistently finish in the bottom of the SoCon and most years we have not been able to win 4 games and less games than that in the conference. 3) Rural Location and lack of corporate sponsorship. I don’t need to explain this and location we can’t change. Unless we fix 1 and 2 above, we are living in a fantasy world if we are speculating about moving to FBS because of the changing landscape of college football. In our current state, there is NOT one FBS conference in America that is going to invite us to join and we are years if not decades away from that. Flacat, remember Liberty University moved up to the next level as an independent. You do not have to be a member of a conference to move up. Just like Coastal Carolina, they had to increase their Stadium Size, increase Football Scholarships to 85 and increase attendance to 18 to 20 thousand per game. They also had to increase scholarships in female sports to coincide with the 85 Scholarships in football. The College Administration was fully in support of this move. They got their Board of Governors to approve Bonds to enlarge their Stadium. The Athletic Attitude is like on another planet as compared to WCU. As far as having a winner history in Football is concerned, UNCC & ODU did not have a history of winning football games at any level. Now CCU is ranked number 16 in the Nation. All this can happen at WCU with total commitment by the Administration & some creative financial planning. The first step is to enlarge the WCU Stadium & Coach Bell start putting winning football teams on the field. Remember, UNCC never played a football game in the history of the school & did not even have a field to play on. They just beat Duke this season. When we talk about enrollment, they have around 28 thousand students. When I was a student at WCU, UNCC did not have dorms & their students were all day students. ENROLLMENT is a must to be competitive in Football at a State Supported Institution. More students means more revenue for Athletics at WCU.
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Post by FLCATAMOUNT on Sept 23, 2021 17:54:43 GMT -5
Bottom line. In our current situation, there is no FBS conference that will ask Western to join. Three factors which are not in our favor control our destiny. 1) Lack of FBS facilities. Some very serious expensive facilities upgrades will have to happen first, 2) Lack of winning tradition. You guys are talking about moving up and we consistently finish in the bottom of the SoCon and most years we have not been able to win 4 games and less games than that in the conference. 3) Rural Location and lack of corporate sponsorship. I don’t need to explain this and location we can’t change. Unless we fix 1 and 2 above, we are living in a fantasy world if we are speculating about moving to FBS because of the changing landscape of college football. In our current state, there is NOT one FBS conference in America that is going to invite us to join and we are years if not decades away from that. Flacat, remember Liberty University moved up to the next level as an independent. You do not have to be a member of a conference to move up. Just like Coastal Carolina, they had to increase their Stadium Size, increase Football Scholarships to 85 and increase attendance to 18 to 20 thousand per game. They also had to increase scholarships in female sports to coincide with the 85 Scholarships in football. The College Administration was fully in support of this move. They got their Board of Governors to approve Bonds to enlarge their Stadium. The Athletic Attitude is like on another planet as compared to WCU. As far as having a winner history in Football is concerned, UNCC & ODU did not have a history of winning football games at any level. Now CCU is ranked number 16 in the Nation. All this can happen at WCU with total commitment by the Administration & some creative financial planning. The first step is to enlarge the WCU Stadium & Coach Bell start putting winning football teams on the field. Remember, UNCC never played a football game in the history of the school & did not even have a field to play on. They just beat Duke this season. When we talk about enrollment, they have around 28 thousand students. When I was a student at WCU, UNCC did not have dorms & their students were all day students. ENROLLMENT is a must to be competitive in Football at a State Supported Institution. More students means more revenue for Athletics at WCU. It is my opinion that this administration just like all previous administrations over the last 40 years is going to do absolutely nothing to improve our fortunes in football. We have been hearing about a large fund raiser to raise $60 million for sports and $60 million for academics. I do not believe it. Also, if the administration was serious about raising money for facilities, they would issue bonds now so we could start now. We have been talking about more facility improvements for 15 years and nothing has been built. Don’t be fooled. Western has a football team to have a football team. They refuse to fund it so that we can be competitive because they do not think it is important. We have been lucky with enrollment growth but there is an enrollment cliff coming where there will be a lot less high school students and even fewer attending a 4 year college. When that happens, our enrollment will drop year over year. In the South, Schools that have spent the money on better football facilities and gotten national recognitions will grow because students will choose to go to schools where the student life experiences winning sports team. Our short sidedness and lack of vision will hit Western big time. I am sure that our administration and BOT have absolutely no clue what I am telling them but hindsight will be 20/20 and it will be too little too late when this happens. Unfortunately if we do not do something significant in the next couple of years, it will be too late and with dropping enrollments, we will not have the means to improve. Remember whereyou heard this when it happens. Our enrollment actually dropped by 377 students this fal semester year over year.
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