Football Realignment: What is the Big South to do?

In the summer of 2021, the Southeastern Conference shocked the college sports world by adding Texas and Oklahoma to the current 14 teams.  By the time, the game of musical chairs had ended, the changes had reached Wofford’s doorstep at the edge of the Southern Conference.

James Madison was called up from FCS to take over the Sun Belt.  They had the largest football budget and overall athletics budget in the division.  As a result of James Madison leaving the CAA, the Colonial raided the Big South for Monmouth, Hampton, North Carolina A&T, and Campbell.

The Atlantic Sun and the WAC started football conferences with the goal of transitioning to FBS in a few years.  This month they merged their efforts in a football only conference which intends to move “from what is currently known as FCS football to what is currently known as FBS football at the earliest practicable date.” Kennesaw State and North Alabama left the Big South for the Atlantic Sun.  The trio of Jacksonville State, Sam Houston, and Kennesaw State decided not to wait, leaving the new conferences for FBS Conference USA.

The ultimate result is that Big South football has become a revolving door:

To receive an auto-bid, a conference must have “six member institutions classified in Division I in the sport in which automatic qualification is sought.”  Provisional members, such as North Alabama do not count.  Further, “the six active members must have conducted conference competition together for the preceding two years in the applicable sport.”

When North Carolina A&T and Campbell leave the Big South at the end of this year to join the CAA, the Big South will drop to 4 teams with 2 all sport members and 2 associate members in football.  The Big South entered into a temporary scheduling and bid sharing arrangement with the Ohio Valley Conference.  The OVC will have five playoff-eligible teams during the 2023-2025 seasons since newcomer Lindenwood is transitioning from Division 2 and won’t be postseason eligible until 2026.  The agreement has a 4-year term, going through the 2026 season.

The Big South needs additional football schools if they are going to continue to sponsor football.  It seems unlikely that they can draw any of the Southern Conference teams or any of the four schools that joined the Atlantic Sun.  The MEAC is down to 6 teams, but they send their champion to the Celebration Bowl and do not use an auto bid to the playoffs.  Despite being private schools, the current Big South football teams both spent around the same as SoCon member Western Carolina on football in 2019 ($3,135,056)

Several southern schools (Davidson, Morehead State, Presbyterian, and Stetson) are playing in the non-scholarship Pioneer Conference and seem unlikely to adopt scholarships to join the Big South or the Southern Conference.

There are more than 100 institutions which play Division 1 without fielding a football team.  Less than 20 of those are in the Southeast:

George Washington sponsored football from 1881 to 1966 and was a member of the Southern Conference.  The school has an urban campus located in the District of Columbia, and shared RFK Stadium with the Redskins.  A potential future football venue could be Audi Field, 4 miles from the college.  GW’s current soccer field is 3 miles away from the main campus.  An article discussing Colonial’s football suggested the biggest issue keeping the University from giving football serious consideration is the availability of land to build facilities such as a stadium, practice field, locker room and weight room.

Virginia Commonwealth is one of the largest non-football-playing D1 schools in the country.  They have nearly the highest revenue of any non-football D1 member and an endowment approaching $1.7 billion.  It is located in Richmond, which hosts University of Richmond and Virginia Union, and is less than an hour to Hampton Roads which hosts Hampton, Norfolk State, Old Dominion, and William & Mary.

George Mason is another one of the largest non-football-playing D1 schools in the country.  In 2010, they estimated annual costs for a program to be $12.4 million in the FCS and $30 million in the FBS, in part due to the need to add women’s sports under Title IX.  The school sits in one of the wealthiest areas in America, has a strong fan base, and has explored adding football many times in the past.  Finding land for practice and playing facilities would be difficult and expensive in the DC metro area, and the team would face competition from Virginia, Maryland, James Madison and professional football.

The three Florida schools are in an excellent recruiting area, but there are still issues.  Jacksonville just folded non-scholarship football in 2019 citing business reasons.  North Florida has discussed football in the past and the prospect of an Osprey football team is a popular topic among students and the community but administration believes they need more students to afford it.  Florida Gulf Coast is the youngest institution competing in NCAA Division I, having been officially founded in 1991 and started classes in 1997.  Financial issues may prevent a team at FGCU: the average graduate is 32 years old – FGCU struggles to fully fund the sports it has now with only two of its 15 sports having the maximum amount of NCAA scholarships allowed.  A football facility would have to be off campus because FGCU has limited land and much of it is environmentally protected.

Lipscomb and Belmont are relatively small schools in Nashville, already home to Vanderbilt and Tennessee State.  Neither has ever fielded a football team.  Geodis Park, a 30,000-seat soccer stadium is 1.5 miles from Belmont and 3.5 miles from Lipscomb.

College of Charleston is also relatively small on a tight urban campus in Charleston, which is the home of the Citadel and Charleston Southern, two FCS teams.  Space would be an issue: the school’s soccer, softball, and baseball programs play across the river at Patriots Point Athletics Complex in Mt. Pleasant.  The stadium only seats 3900, expandable to 5000.  They fielded a team from 1899 to 1923 despite a lack of players, financial resources, institutional support and opponents.

UNC Greensboro and High Point are located in the Triad, home to 1.7 million people and three football teams – Wake Forest, North Carolina A&T and Elon.  UNC Greensboro is a relatively large school in a large market but lacks facilities.  High Point University had football from the 1920s until 1950.  High Point’s Vert Stadium seats 1100-2500 for soccer and lacrosse.  There is often speculation about High Point restarting a football program but no timeline has been announced.  High Point University president Nido Qubein says, football is “Inevitable”, but he is asking community leaders to find the school land to build on.

There are potential options playing Division Two football today, but they would not complete their transition before 2026.  There is considerable concern about new barriers to joining and staying in Division 1 in the future.

With no likely prospects to field a new division 1 football team before 2026, the remaining Big South football teams (Charleston Southern and Gardner Webb) face a difficult decision.  Before the announced Atlantic Sun-WAC football merger, they could consider joining the Atlantic Sun, a conference with four teams across Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas.  They would also probably be welcome in the Ohio Valley with 3 teams in Middle Tennessee, two in Missouri, and one in Kentucky and Illinois.

There is another alternative:  the Southern Conference could bring Charleston Southern and Gardner Webb as associate members for football only.  Even though Gardner Webb won its first playoff game this year, they do not have a strong history of success on the football field.  Gardner Webb is 3-10 against members of the SoCon since 2015 and 10-26 since 2004.  With the exception of the Jimmy Chadwell years (where 4 wins over the SoCon were vacated), Charleston Southern is 2-26 against members of the Southern Conference since joining the FCS.

Adding these teams would not improve the SoCon’s computer ranking, but they would likely provide potential additional wins in an increasingly balanced conference.  Adding a couple of teams to the bottom half of the conference, the SoCon would lose a true round-robin schedule with 11 teams, but like the other mega conferences (Big Sky, CAA, and Missouri Valley) SoCon teams would be spared from over-cannibalizing their own great teams.  Last year, MVC had 11 teams and placed 6 in the playoffs.  One of the keys to MVC’s success can be seen as the games that were not played between the teams at the top of the conference:

Had Southern Illinois played conference champ #1 North Dakota State (10-1) and #4 South Dakota State (8-3), they would likely have not made the playoffs.  At the same time, Northern Iowa’s 4-4 conference record was enhanced by the games they played.  Imagine if Chattanooga or Mercer had missed Furman or Samford this year and replaced that game with Gardner Webb (Mercer beat the Running Bulldogs 45-14) or Charleston Southern.  Both teams would have made the playoffs at 8-3.  If Furman and Samford missed each other in the regular season, they both would have been undefeated in the conference and likely seeded in the playoffs.