You should half like it
look, i wanted my pipe dream of a texas state-emaw mnc to come true some day so i could bbs my ass off and get super binge-y no matter the result :(
I don't like this thread. Not one bit.
I'm curious on your view as a Texas St fan. Would you rather be FBS in the Sun Belt hoping for a New Orleans Bowl birth or would you rather be in the FCS playoff? I would think as a fan I would rather be in the playoffs. I've never understood why schools would want to make the jump to the FBS. Is the money that much better? What's the appeal? I know there is an appeal otherwise schools wouldn't be making the jump. Do you think Texas St could be the next Boise or USF? I'm honestly curious. Since I moved to Tulsa I've met a lot of Tulsa fans and enjoy following them, but I've noticed to 98% it's just a hobby with no real enthusiasm for something more.
Well, the revenues are bigger based on tv agreements alone, but expenses go up so financially it's kind of a wash. Honestly in our case it's more about perception. We've always been regarded as a party school afterthought that Texas dropouts go to. There has been a considerable amount of mismanagement of Texas State's potential as a university and a football program since arguably the mid 1980's (maybe earlier) and I think there's a realization that we need to stop being small time. Since the mid-2000's the university has attempted to shed that image and is trying to stand on its own two feet and going into FBS was considered part of that initiative. We won't ever be Texas or A&M--or Tech unless we get super lucky--but the hope was to leverage the two metro areas and fertile recruiting grounds (i.e. keep 3-star kids who wanted to stay in state rather than go to KU/ISU/KSU/middling P12 and Big 10 schools) to build a strong program and eventually become another mid-major power and bring back some of the lazy Texas fan/Texas State alum types who never took us seriously in the 1990's because we languished in FCS.
In terms of what I'd rather do...the 2005 playoff run to the semifinals was fun as hell and people went nuts. But having covered the program from up close during the final FCS years, there's a certain ceiling you hit as a program (15,000-18,000 attendance at most, maybe 2-3 playoff games on ESPN3 if you're lucky, etc.) that limits your opportunities to spotlight yourself. The Sun Belt tv deal is much better than what we ever had in the Southland--I can watch away games on ESPN3, and occasionally the ESPN2 or ESPNNews. In the Southland we were lucky to get any games on regional tv. So as things stood when we made the jump to FBS, I preferred the possibility of us eventually getting our crap together and making it to the big stage, however remote it was. As for whether we could be Boise or USF, we could be if we had the right leadership (i.e. UTSA's athletic director) and we got very lucky. But our administration is still led by many of the same people who were dragged kicking and screaming out of FCS by the student body, so that doesn't seem likely anytime soon. Of course, it's even less likely now that we're going to essentially be back in the equivalent of FCS after the P5 conferences basically wall off the G5 schools in their own ghetto (sysbait).