Post by Sly Fox on Sept 7, 2005 7:19:23 GMT -5
Here's Chris' story from the fishwrap on the subject we have discussed ad nauseum on this board for the past year:
www.newsadvance.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=LNA%2FMGArticle%2FLNA_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031784910411&path=!sports
While we've discussed all these topics here, its nice to see them getting some attention in the community. For that we thank you, Chris.
[glow=red,2,300]LU still contemplating Div. I status[/glow]
By Chris Lang
Lynchburg News & Advance
September 7, 2005
Moving from the relatively safe ranks of Division I-AA football to the volatile Division I isn't for the faint of heart.
Ask the folks at Florida A&M, which tried to become the first historically black university to make the jump. The NCAA approved FAMU's move in July 2003. By February 2004, the school's board of trustees voted to delay it, citing the need for more financial resources and improved football facilities.
In short, the school was shortsighted. FAMU officials saw a potential money grab in moving up in classification and didn't think things through properly.
In Lynchburg, officials at Liberty University were keeping a close eye on the situation at FAMU and at other schools jumping to Division I, like Florida Atlantic, Florida International and Troy.
Major college football has always been a vision at Liberty, and school officials aren't shy in talking about it.
"When I came here, one of the things that was exciting to me was Dr. (Jerry) Falwell's vision to be a I-A team," Karcher said after Tuesday's Flames Club luncheon. "Now anyone associated with Liberty knows that's a comment that people will probably laugh at. But they laughed 30 years ago when they said there'd be a university here."
The vision is still alive and well, and the process of actually making the move is only just beginning.
Ten-year vision
LU athletic director Thom Park cannot emphasize this point enough:
This is a process. You don't just wake up one day and say, "Hey, let's play major college football."
That's why Division I-AA exists. The financial discrepancies between football at the two levels are staggering.
The average operating budget of a Division I football institution's athletic department is $29 million, Park said.
"And if you look at where we are, we're nowhere near that," he said. "We're in single digits. So we've got a long way to go in terms of the income from the various sources and conduits."
For instance, Division I schools fund 85 football scholarships; I-AA schools fund 63. At Liberty, a football scholarship is worth $18,000 per year. So to bridge the gap, the school would have to add another $1.58 million in scholarships.
Some of that money will have to come from sources outside the athletic department, meaning fund-raising is a key part of any move from I-AA to Division I.
Before LU can worry about that, though, the school has to improve the basic groundwork of the athletics department by adding full-time administrative positions. Falwell hired Park because of Park's extensive financial experience both in university athletics administration and in sports marketing outside the scope of college sports.
Park is responsible for external relations and fund-raising. Kim Graham, the former AD who remained on staff as a senior associate AD, runs the internal portion of LU's athletic department. Also, the school gave Park the money to hire Bob Good, who was charged with resurrecting the Flames Club; Kevin Keys, the new assistant AD for sports promotion and marketing; and Mickey Guridy, the former director of football operations who is now the assistant AD for business management operations.
"You've got to put the infrastructure in place to do a job," Park said.
Already, the school has seen results. The Flames Club, which topped at 91 members last year, has moved into triple digits in membership in just two months under Good. That money will be crucial to future scholarship endowments, especially in football.
The next goal is to find more major donors, something Connecticut coach Randy Edsall said was key to the Huskies' move to Division I in 2000. It was a nine-year process for UConn, a state-funded public school.
Nearly every part of UConn's football facility, including the new Rentschler Field, is named after a major donor. And with those naming rights comes money. Lots of it.
When to move?
Realistically, a move to Division I is at least 10 years away for Liberty.
Schools that have made the move too quickly have failed miserably. Louisiana-Monroe, once a I-AA power that made four trips to the playoffs and won one national championship, is 34-79 since making the move in 1995 and has no hope of competing for anything better than a berth in a low-tier December bowl game. Already this season, ULM has lost at home to a I-AA team.
Others who have struggled include Buffalo, a member of the Mid-American Conference, and Middle Tennessee State of the Sun Belt. Things got so bad in Murfreesboro that MTSU thought it would be bumped back down to I-AA because it couldn't meet Division I attendance requirements.
Many schools jump to Division I as an independent before finding shaky conference affiliation. Idaho and Utah State fit this bill until the two Intermountain West schools found refuge in the Sun Belt, setting up regional "rivalries" with the likes of Louisiana-Lafayette and North Texas. Both landed in the Western Athletic Conference, but only after several WAC schools moved to Conference USA this year.
"There's a lot of hazard and risk to it," Park said, "so you'd better not speed."
Park said that if Liberty is to move to Division I, doing so as an independent is not likely. Conference affiliation is a must, and it's very difficult to tell what the conference landscape will look like a decade from now. Remember, 10 years ago, Virginia Tech was in the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West Conference didn't even exist.
Discussing conference affiliation down the road is counterproductive anyway, Park said. While the school goes through the process of building its financial base, the football team has several goals to meet. It must consistently compete for the Big South Conference championship and continue to schedule up, which means teams like Connecticut, Saturday's opponent, will be a staple on the schedule.
Wake Forest has been confirmed as an opponent next fall, and talks with another prominent school are progressing. Auburn, rumored to be on the 2007 schedule, is a "long shot at this point," Karcher said, before adding, "There are some other teams, the names I can't say right now, but the name recognition will be just as good."
Playing these games not only gives the school a hefty paycheck, anywhere between $100,00 and $500,000, but it also helps in recruiting. Players get excited to play quality opponents, and it would be easier to lure athletes to LU when playing ACC and Big East teams is real possibility.
LU won't be favored in such a game, but there are too many positives to pass up such an opportunity.
"There are growing pains," Karcher said. "Sometimes people, and specifically fans, don't understand why we're doing what we're doing. We could play a schedule that has four or five Division II teams and maybe go 9-2 every year, but that's not the vision."
There are other concerns, too. Williams Stadium, and the school's soccer and track and field facilities, must be upgraded. Liberty's fan base must grow exponentially. A school must have a base attendance of 15,000 (either in one year or as an average during a rolling, two-year period) to remain in Division I. (LU averaged 8,464 fans in 2004, up from 6,504 in 2003).
Those issues are far down the road, though. Park's goal for the rest of the year is to map out an athletics master plan. Now that he has seen the university commit needed resources to the athletics department, that's a much easier thing to do.
"(Moving to I-A) is an admirable goal, and it's a building process to get there," said Dave Young, LU's senior vice president. "We're at the beginning stage of that. I have all the confidence in the world that, long term, that's what we can do. It's just going to take a lot of work, a lot of resources and a lot of commitment by the university."
By Chris Lang
Lynchburg News & Advance
September 7, 2005
Moving from the relatively safe ranks of Division I-AA football to the volatile Division I isn't for the faint of heart.
Ask the folks at Florida A&M, which tried to become the first historically black university to make the jump. The NCAA approved FAMU's move in July 2003. By February 2004, the school's board of trustees voted to delay it, citing the need for more financial resources and improved football facilities.
In short, the school was shortsighted. FAMU officials saw a potential money grab in moving up in classification and didn't think things through properly.
In Lynchburg, officials at Liberty University were keeping a close eye on the situation at FAMU and at other schools jumping to Division I, like Florida Atlantic, Florida International and Troy.
Major college football has always been a vision at Liberty, and school officials aren't shy in talking about it.
"When I came here, one of the things that was exciting to me was Dr. (Jerry) Falwell's vision to be a I-A team," Karcher said after Tuesday's Flames Club luncheon. "Now anyone associated with Liberty knows that's a comment that people will probably laugh at. But they laughed 30 years ago when they said there'd be a university here."
The vision is still alive and well, and the process of actually making the move is only just beginning.
Ten-year vision
LU athletic director Thom Park cannot emphasize this point enough:
This is a process. You don't just wake up one day and say, "Hey, let's play major college football."
That's why Division I-AA exists. The financial discrepancies between football at the two levels are staggering.
The average operating budget of a Division I football institution's athletic department is $29 million, Park said.
"And if you look at where we are, we're nowhere near that," he said. "We're in single digits. So we've got a long way to go in terms of the income from the various sources and conduits."
For instance, Division I schools fund 85 football scholarships; I-AA schools fund 63. At Liberty, a football scholarship is worth $18,000 per year. So to bridge the gap, the school would have to add another $1.58 million in scholarships.
Some of that money will have to come from sources outside the athletic department, meaning fund-raising is a key part of any move from I-AA to Division I.
Before LU can worry about that, though, the school has to improve the basic groundwork of the athletics department by adding full-time administrative positions. Falwell hired Park because of Park's extensive financial experience both in university athletics administration and in sports marketing outside the scope of college sports.
Park is responsible for external relations and fund-raising. Kim Graham, the former AD who remained on staff as a senior associate AD, runs the internal portion of LU's athletic department. Also, the school gave Park the money to hire Bob Good, who was charged with resurrecting the Flames Club; Kevin Keys, the new assistant AD for sports promotion and marketing; and Mickey Guridy, the former director of football operations who is now the assistant AD for business management operations.
"You've got to put the infrastructure in place to do a job," Park said.
Already, the school has seen results. The Flames Club, which topped at 91 members last year, has moved into triple digits in membership in just two months under Good. That money will be crucial to future scholarship endowments, especially in football.
The next goal is to find more major donors, something Connecticut coach Randy Edsall said was key to the Huskies' move to Division I in 2000. It was a nine-year process for UConn, a state-funded public school.
Nearly every part of UConn's football facility, including the new Rentschler Field, is named after a major donor. And with those naming rights comes money. Lots of it.
When to move?
Realistically, a move to Division I is at least 10 years away for Liberty.
Schools that have made the move too quickly have failed miserably. Louisiana-Monroe, once a I-AA power that made four trips to the playoffs and won one national championship, is 34-79 since making the move in 1995 and has no hope of competing for anything better than a berth in a low-tier December bowl game. Already this season, ULM has lost at home to a I-AA team.
Others who have struggled include Buffalo, a member of the Mid-American Conference, and Middle Tennessee State of the Sun Belt. Things got so bad in Murfreesboro that MTSU thought it would be bumped back down to I-AA because it couldn't meet Division I attendance requirements.
Many schools jump to Division I as an independent before finding shaky conference affiliation. Idaho and Utah State fit this bill until the two Intermountain West schools found refuge in the Sun Belt, setting up regional "rivalries" with the likes of Louisiana-Lafayette and North Texas. Both landed in the Western Athletic Conference, but only after several WAC schools moved to Conference USA this year.
"There's a lot of hazard and risk to it," Park said, "so you'd better not speed."
Park said that if Liberty is to move to Division I, doing so as an independent is not likely. Conference affiliation is a must, and it's very difficult to tell what the conference landscape will look like a decade from now. Remember, 10 years ago, Virginia Tech was in the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West Conference didn't even exist.
Discussing conference affiliation down the road is counterproductive anyway, Park said. While the school goes through the process of building its financial base, the football team has several goals to meet. It must consistently compete for the Big South Conference championship and continue to schedule up, which means teams like Connecticut, Saturday's opponent, will be a staple on the schedule.
Wake Forest has been confirmed as an opponent next fall, and talks with another prominent school are progressing. Auburn, rumored to be on the 2007 schedule, is a "long shot at this point," Karcher said, before adding, "There are some other teams, the names I can't say right now, but the name recognition will be just as good."
Playing these games not only gives the school a hefty paycheck, anywhere between $100,00 and $500,000, but it also helps in recruiting. Players get excited to play quality opponents, and it would be easier to lure athletes to LU when playing ACC and Big East teams is real possibility.
LU won't be favored in such a game, but there are too many positives to pass up such an opportunity.
"There are growing pains," Karcher said. "Sometimes people, and specifically fans, don't understand why we're doing what we're doing. We could play a schedule that has four or five Division II teams and maybe go 9-2 every year, but that's not the vision."
There are other concerns, too. Williams Stadium, and the school's soccer and track and field facilities, must be upgraded. Liberty's fan base must grow exponentially. A school must have a base attendance of 15,000 (either in one year or as an average during a rolling, two-year period) to remain in Division I. (LU averaged 8,464 fans in 2004, up from 6,504 in 2003).
Those issues are far down the road, though. Park's goal for the rest of the year is to map out an athletics master plan. Now that he has seen the university commit needed resources to the athletics department, that's a much easier thing to do.
"(Moving to I-A) is an admirable goal, and it's a building process to get there," said Dave Young, LU's senior vice president. "We're at the beginning stage of that. I have all the confidence in the world that, long term, that's what we can do. It's just going to take a lot of work, a lot of resources and a lot of commitment by the university."
www.newsadvance.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=LNA%2FMGArticle%2FLNA_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031784910411&path=!sports
While we've discussed all these topics here, its nice to see them getting some attention in the community. For that we thank you, Chris.