Seawolves Fans

Campi  right now football is funded at nearly 5 million dollars . We would need  to have a stadium  large enough for 15,000 fans  . Right now  with the expansion we are just over 10k.   The main obstacle is fan base we need 10k fans every home game plus.  We have the money for the extra scholarships and travel and expanding the fan base would increase revenue and fill seats our present stadium can be  expanded to 22 or 23 k  .  We just need that magic invite from another conference

Seawolf97. I agree with assessments, but no FBS conference will ever invite an FCS team who doesn't have a history of a winning season.. There are dozens and dozens of other teams in the FCS who are more qualified to make the move up, not SB.

I read something online last week about this exact subject. Since 1978, when the FCS was formed under 20 teams have made the move up to FBS and about half are successful today.. In order for SB to ever be considered for a move up to FBS they would need to start winning conferences and start selling out stadiums. SB is nowhere near any of the above. Now, that could all change in an instint. But the change has to come from the top. SH. Heilbron needs to give coach P the boot and bring in somebody who has the experience of moving a team up from FCS to FBS or someone who has a winning caliber in either conference. Like you said. SB has the $$$ to support the move up to FBS, but with money being the driving force with TV deals, SB is only on the outside looking in. I would love nothing more but to watch a game at LaValles stadium where we are playing Clemson, BC, Cincinnati, Temple ..... at home!!

Respectfully Hammertime, you couldn't be more wrong on this one.

I think in general, you guys are way overestimating what it takes to be an FBS program. The bar is much, much lower than you make it out to be. Many current FBS programs didn't even have a football program a decade ago. South Alabama, Georgia State, UNC Charlotte, Old Dominion, and UTSA all fall into that category. They didn't even have a team ten years ago and are now FBS. Texas State was an average at best program in the Southland a decade ago, now they're in the Sun Belt.

I'd like to field a competitive FCS program before we move, but that's not required. Our academic reputation will carry us far further along the path to FBS than winning ever could. We're a top 100 research university located just outside of NYC, and we're arguably the top public school in the whole state. Of the four research centers, we're the closest to the city and thus the main population center of the state. All these TV execs want to talk about large markets? Look no further. 

We also are a member of the AAU. That's a big friggin deal. If you look at the schools who are in the AAU who field football programs, the majority of them are in power 5 conferences. Of all the public schools in the AAU who have football, the only ones who have it in the FCS are UC Davis, and us. Every one else if they field a football program is either FBS, in the Ivy League or don't care about athletics and put their programs into D3 like John's Hopkins, Washington U of St. Louis, University of Chicago, etc. That's very good company to keep.

If schools like ULM, and Eastern Michigan can be FBS, we can be FBS too. 15k average attendance is the minimum cutoff, but those numbers are often fudged by the universities through buying up their own tickets. We've done the same thing. There's no chance in hell 12k people attended Homecoming last year, but that was the reported attendance. Never mind that the NCAA doesn't even enforce the 15k rule. With the cold weather and all the mid-week games, I guarantee you most of the MAC isn't hitting 15K.

The two newest additions to FBS; Coastal Carolina and Liberty are both teams we used to frequently lay the beatdown on when we were in the Big South. Coastal's stadium was smaller than ours when they got the invite from the Sun Belt. When smaller schools in tiny markets with worse academics than ours are getting called up to FBS, I don't for a second believe that we'd be overlooked for an invitation. Get the stadium up to 20k (or promise to), and the invite will come. Winning is just icing on the cake for us.

For a lot of schools, they have great athletic programs, but have bad academics or are in a poor location. We don't have those problems. It's much easier to improve the athletics than it is to improve the school. Remember when the Big 12 was looking to expand last year? The academically strong private schools (Rice, Tulane) made it further in the process than the football powers Boise State and ECU. Boise will never be in the Pac-12. Academics matter folks.

The NCAA I'm sure made it At least 25K and whatever the budget is now it will have to be doubled because once you move to the BCS level you have to increase your scholarships to 85 I believe Coaches salaries will jump Travel Budget will definitely increase and we can't fill the stadium now what makes you think that we could get 15K or more to each home game

agree with the comment that what we have on our side is the academics.  and that's good, because these are students first.

but as far as filling 15k into a stadium once per week- cant do that if no one's on campus on a saturday- well i suppose you could but we've all been stuck in nichols traffic both going in and out of the game...

The NCAA I'm sure made it At least 25K and whatever the budget is now it will have to be doubled because once you move to the BCS level you have to increase your scholarships to 85 I believe Coaches salaries will jump Travel Budget will definitely increase and we can't fill the stadium now what makes you think that we could get 15K or more to each home game

It's 15K, not 25K, and all you need is 15K sold. The school would just need to buy up it's own tickets and it'd be fine. Schools fudge the numbers all the time. I'd like a legitimate 15k, and we'll get there, but it's not a very hard thing to at least pretend like you're compliant on attendance. Again, this never gets enforced. If that rule was actually enforced, most of the MAC and Sun Belt, Idaho, NMSU, and others would have been demoted to FCS long ago.

Yes the budget would increase, but we wouldn't have to double our budget. See my other thread and the associated statistics. We're already outspending 1/3rd of public G5 schools despite being FCS. Many of the programs we're outspending are good ones too (GA Southern, Marshall, WKU). If we literally doubled our budget we'd be spending at near power conference levels.

Take Buffalo for example. They're FBS, yet they're only ~$3M more a year than us; that's nothing. Our spending in the past year or so has grown by more than that. The scholarship issue is easily fixed. Add the 22 for football, and then add a women's sport or better fund the women's sports we already have. Alternatively add to football, cut men's soccer, and we're title IX compliant if not most of the way there. The scholarships will not the problem.

I think IF, big if, SB goes FBS they could come very close to filling up 15k seats. The news would be huge and heard all around the Island and NYC.. I also think if they find a well known name to replace coach P, that will also help fill the seats. Winning a few games against FBS foes definitely helps with filling seats, too...

I agree completely. That's the benefit of being a good school in a large market. If even a fraction of a percent of the population of Long Island (not even counting NYC) cared enough about SBU football, we'd sell the place out easily. We have a very good opportunity to position ourselves as a closer, affordable alternative to the NFL teams if the Athletic Department markets this team correctly. We need to WIN to maximize that interest though, so Priore has to go, but win and people will come. As an FBS school with our academic reputation, local schools will be much more willing and able to come to campus and play us. A good home schedule would be key. Being FBS opens up the opportunity to play all these regional teams we simply cannot get right now:

Umass would play us no matter what as they're independent and need games
Uconn
Temple
Army
Navy
Cincinnati
Buffalo (likely to be a conference game)

These are only the G5 programs near us who could play at Lavalle. Turn out for these games would be way better than Rhode Island and Maine. Opposing fans would travel well too obviously. If we can get a deal to use Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, or Metlife for games? We could host neutral site games against P5 schools like Syracuse, Maryland, BC, UVA, Pitt, etc. Our location opens up a lot of doors since the big schools can use the game as a recruiting trip for the talented kids on LI and Jersey. Location is how ODU can get UNC to come to campus for games and how perennial bottom dweller FIU is able to get Big Ten schools to come to campus. If you're located near talent, schools can use the away game near you as a recruiting trip to access that talent. If Buffalo could get friggin Baylor to come to town when they were good, I'm sure we could get even better programs to come.

   I  want to  see how our new seats fill out for home games this year .I'm  sure we sellout for homecoming but after that it could go down  hill again.   If we can fill  10k seats and make basketball do the same in our arena we are in good shape.

We didn't have a problem in 2012-2014 when we were good and/or had some hype behind our program. 2014 even had a couple games above 10k. Now that we've been a doormat for a couple years people don't care anymore. We beat the #2 team at home last year and it was the least attended game of the year. Even homecoming looked empty last year. Priore could damn near kill this program if we can't finish with a decent record this year and build up some hype.

Quote from: VA_Seawolf on July 19, 2017, 01:16:42 am

Quote from: Seawolf97 on July 18, 2017, 02:27:45 pm

   I  want to  see how our new seats fill out for home games this year .I'm  sure we sellout for homecoming but after that it could go down  hill again.   If we can fill  10k seats and make basketball do the same in our arena we are in good shape.

We didn't have a problem in 2012-2014 when we were good and/or had some hype behind our program. 2014 even had a couple games above 10k. Now that we've been a doormat for a couple years people don't care anymore. We beat the #2 team at home last year and it was the least attended game of the year. Even homecoming looked empty last year. Priore could damn near kill this program if we can't finish with a decent record this year and build up some hype.

I am curious to see where the CAA ranks us this year. I say 2nd from last place, right behind RI and I hope I am dead wrong but this is where I think we belong. Maybe the Polls see something else with this team this year... This week started the FCS conference rankings..

Hemphill was the only reason we haven't gone 1-10 the past three seasons, so with him gone, we very likely could be predicted last in the conference.

We'll probably beat Wagner, but the rest are toss-ups honestly. I'm sticking with my 3-8 prediction. I haven't seen Fields play in an actual game yet though so maybe by some miracle he bails us out and we finish 5-6 again.

Street & Smith one of the most respected magazines in the country ranks us 9th

Carbone is going be the starting QB and Fields will get playing time and that is a fact

The only way Coach P. is let go is if they really bomb as he still has a lot of support by the ones who make those decisions

The real key to the 2017 season is how physically they get beat up by South Florida if they come out of it in good shape they'll be okay however if they come out in bad shape then the season could be a long one