I’ve wondered about JMU with Mickey Matthews, who’s been their HC for 13 years. Matthews’ dislike of playing FBS teams is well-known. He goes along with it for the program’s finances, but he hates the injury toll those games can have on a FCS team.

I’d hate to think that teams intending to move from FCS to FBS would dump long-time coaches (championship-winning, at that) for someone more “FBS worthy”, but it doesn’t shock my cynical side.

What I’m afraid we’re seeing is FBS expansion driven solely by media markets rather than football tradition and experience, or the merits of programs at the schools making the jump. Charlotte is going to be in C-USA before they have even played a game at all. ODU is going to be in C-USA; and, although they’ve had remarkable success, they’ve yet to play a single game ever against any FBS team. Or a single game more than 650 miles away from home, or even outside of their time zone. Georgia State will be in the Sun Belt, but their 2012 season could be described as a Dumpster fire, and that’s being charitable. Playing UT in the Georgia Dome at least helped rack up their attendance.

But, those three provide some supposed introduction into the Charlotte, Hampton Roads, and Atlanta media markets. There’s not as much clamor for and glamor in the Boone, Harrisonburg, or Statesboro media markets, even though you and I know that ASU and JMU have pretty decent and supportive fanbases (don’t know about GaSou).

Appalachian State two or three years ago completed a feasibility study involving a move up to the FBS level. A study whose end result concluded that it is both feasible and recommended.

In 2006, our stadium went through a massive expansion project which included doubling the size of the “away side” as well as creating a new massive press box area equipped with corporate suites. The expansion boosted the capacity to 24,000, with an average attendance figure for the 2012 season of 27,000 (you can sit on a grassy hill on the north endzone). Comparing apples to apples, the average attendance for a SBC school this year hovered around 20,000, significantly less than App’s.

We are also in the process of a $200 million campus-wide capital campaign of which part is planned for use in expanding Kidd Brewer Stadium even more by building a new endzone grandstand and adding onto the “away side”. There are renders of the stadium out there but no numbers, but conservatively the additions will bring the capacity to 30,000 I would think. I’m not sure how far they are in the process, I think they have collected near $100 million so far, I would expect with an official invite to an FBS conference, the donations will begin to come in at a faster pace,

JMU’s stadium went through an expansion in 2011 and now Bridgeforth Stadium has a capacity of 25,000.

Either way, both teams are capable of heading into SBC or C-USA and delivering a strong presence just as much as Georgia Southern would. All three are FCS rivals too so that would help if they went in at the same time.

Georgia Southern has at least put the issue of going to FBS to a student vote, and the students voted to raise their fees for the move. I don’t know that App State and JMU have gotten that far.

Moving up from FCS to FBS is pretty daunting. You pretty much have to fund an additional 44 scholarships (22 for football and a like amount on the women’s side), make sure your stadium is in order and you can meet the attendance requirement, and then retain that enthusiasm while you probably spend a lame-duck year in your current conference (most likely without being eligible for the conference championship or even the conference BB tournament), plus the two year transition period. Then you can hope that in the fourth year you can do well enough to be bowl-eligible – and if you’re best expectation is a lower-tier bowl, you’re losing money.

Not to mention that you lose whatever rivalries you’ve built up over the year in trade for playing someone your alumni have never heard of a time zone or two away, and maybe you go from top of the heap playing for a national championship in your division to hopefully playing in some bowl game sponsored by a truck stop on the other side of the country.

Second — WKU is vital here. They could be targeted by MAC, and have been rumored in if C-USA goes to 16. If WKU leaves, SBC is in real trouble. If they stay, SBC goes for Appy State, and tries to get JMU to make the jump. Benson wants NMSU, but others don’t. Georgia Southern, Lamar, Sam Houston State are fallbacks. Idaho will never be voted in, unless they had to have one more to stay afloat.

$hit does roll down hill.