March Madness should be our focus not football.

[guinpen]

Boston, been thinking the same for years now, for a while I thought that the min attendance rule would force a change but they either changed the rule or just ignore it.

These mid level schools are happy to pretend and recruits love to tell their friends that they are going "big-time".

Not confident that things will ever change.

[YSUGO]

Motor City Classic

[YsuPride]

What teams even played in the Motor City Classic?

[33Y0]

Here were all the MAC bowl games last season:

UAB vs. Miami (OH)
Eastern Michigan vs. San Jose State
Toledo vs. Liberty
New Mexico State vs. Bowling Green
Buffalo vs. Georgia Southern
Ohio U vs. Wyoming

Yawn, yawn, yawn....

[YsuPride]

That's 6 teams and i'm sure some of them were .500 at best and some with winning records.   Oh well we still need to seek FBS affiliation none the less .   But maybe not the MAC.  Maybe some other conference will emerge out of the landscape in a few years

[IAA Fan]

Much, much easier to have success in Basketball than Football. YSU football program is dying and there is little interest so let's ride the success and excitement that Calhoun and staff have brought this year.

Not so. We ere into it, then we left early and interest tumbled back down. Don't blame fans for the teams performance. That will always be the case. FYI, this is a football town ... always will be. As I have stated before, I will  drop MBB in a second if it means a better FB program. WBB is where we need to focus.

[YsuPride]

IAA-Fan what are you crazy? Support WBB more than MBB.  Simply NUTS.  I support any team at YSU and possibly you should too.  We can do both Basketball and Football success.  It can be done.  It's not a choice.

[IAA Fan]

IAA-Fan what are you crazy? Support WBB more than MBB.  Simply NUTS.  I support any team at YSU and possibly you should too.  We can do both Basketball and Football success.  It can be done.  It's not a choice.

I too support all YSU sports. However, if we had good WBB team, our MBB can feed off it. Look at Uconn, or closer to home .. MO State or UWGB. This pattern is what we should have been following since the days of DiGregorio. We would have more consistency

[YSUinBoston]

I think Jim Calhoun would challenge where UConn's basketball prowess originated from.

[ytownchief22]

Much, much easier to have success in Basketball than Football. YSU football program is dying and there is little interest so let's ride the success and excitement that Calhoun and staff have brought this year.

Not so. We ere into it, then we left early and interest tumbled back down. Don't blame fans for the teams performance. That will always be the case. FYI, this is a football town ... always will be. As I have stated before, I will  drop MBB in a second if it means a better FB program. WBB is where we need to focus.

Such a ridiculous statement. There is so, so much more excitement for basketball right now than football. Nobody wants to sit with 5k other fans in a freezing cold stadium to watch a weenie principal head coach lose games. Even when the team was good and went on that run to the championship with Bo, the stands weren't even filled. Nobody cares about a dying program.

[YsuPride]

Football will be mediocre for years to come.  Basketball has Momentum now.  For those that think this is a football town it really isn't anymore.  Basketball is growing and i seen many High School games this past year and they were packed.   

[PENS16]

The FCS championship drew an audience of 1.07 million-opposite NFL playoffs. That was a little less than the average. When Sam Houston played in finals almost 3 million watched because of Houston market. The lower bowls averaged between 1-2 million this past bowl season. There is very little interest nationally for football under the Power 5 Conferences. I agree that the move up is probably not worth the amount of money it take to be even mildly competitive. Eventually I hope the MAC realizes the futility of trying to be relevant at that level and joins the FCS.

[YsuPride]

MAC will never take a step back to FCS.  Too much money to lose.  They would lose all of the bowl money of the 6 irrelevant bowls that they go to each year.  NCAA will have to restructure the system a little differently for that to happen.  It's unfortunately about the $$$$.  Sucks for us and the MAC

[YSUGO]

Last time I checked schools are if they can going to to FBS not running to go down to FCS.  The only way I see that happening is the economy tanks and forces a few schools to drop.  I feel with all that money in FBS nothing is going to change.  Yes the MAC had a contract for week nites but it’s ESPN prime time and it’s a professionally done production.  Not with students  etc as I’ve seen with most of the MVFC.  It’s some bad TV.  Heck, even the FCS championship game is played in a soccer stadium what a joke.  Maybe the ncaa should play The FCS, D2 and D3 games in Canton after they are done with the renovation at the HOF.  I know there’s cold weather but they doesn’t stop football fans never stopped me.

[YSUinBoston]

I am sure the MAC wouldn't willingly go down to FCS. My vision is a new structure to college football. I doubt Charlie Baker has the imagination for something radical though. Anyway----there is a level of college football that is really semi-pro football. The interest level and attendance is similar to the NFL. A good number of the student athletes are not serious students. There are currently ~130 FBS programs and ~125 FCS programs. I would suggest a three division format instead.

Division A-----This would be the top 64 programs in college football that are playing in your tradition Power 5 level of football. Split the league into 8 regions with 8 teams per region or something to that effect.

Division B----This would be the next 100 or so programs. This would include your traditional crappy lower level FBS teams (e.g. the MAC) and your upper-to-middle tier FCS teams.

Division C----This would be all the rest. Your low level FCS team and your non-scholly programs.

There would be a playoff at each level for the champion. You could have a relegation/move up system for programs that regularly excel or stink at each level.

In some ways, this system already exists. the top-top version of college football is what really captures the national attention....so let's call it what it is. By having regional conferences at the top level, this can limit this silly conference hoping that happens. The TV money for this top tier should be nuts. This would do away with this silliness of barely noticeable football programs jumping to FBS to be non-competitive or play in a bowl game no one cares about. I also think this allows for better competition by placing the sacrificial lambs together at different levels.

I suspect Charlie Baker will continue on with this amateurism farce though with big time college sports. I would just appreciate a return to some regional rivalries and some acknowledgement that there is a huge gap between the top of FBS football and the middle, let alone the bottom. Let's reduce some of the incentives for schools to throw good money after bad pretending they can compete in something they have no business competing in.