re: North Dakota State Bison vs FBS

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How many people actually care about FCS?

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Same that care about most non P5 FBS schools.

There is a solid fan base that follows FCS







NSU and McNeese used to draw great crowds before their programs fell. (NSU obviously worse than McNeese)

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It probably hurt Georgia State and Georgia Southern

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I went to GSU during the transition to the Sun Belt. You are an idiot.

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They were winning National Championships in the FCS.

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Not really sure of the economics of G5 vs FCS other than the obvious physical requirements aND scholarship numbers.

I know G5 schools are included in $500 milion Bowl/CFB playoff deal with ESPN

It's almost always about money. Even playing in a shite bowl game is a huge payday for some of these schools. If you're a fan of an FCS school and you like seeing them compete for championships every year, then you would hope they would stay put.

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Why does everyone assume that they would go to the Mountain West? Its really not feasible. MAC would be much more likely.

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Probably depends more where they’re going to target recruits and what conference has the best tv deal in place.

North Dakota State in the MAC would be quality Tuesday night football.

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and have moved to FBS where their ceiling will only ever been a low-tier bowl game.

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That's also the ceiling for most P5 teams most years.

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I love how you guys forget it isn’t just football. They also have to match schools academically. NDSU doesn’t have the money for other sports to move. Football alone won’t do it. Adding 27 more scholarships with no partials also

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It has zero to do with money or academics, NDSU is funded like a MAC school right now and from an academic standpoint would more than fit in either the MAC or MWC.

NDSU is FCS for one reason...Geography and that is a tough thing to change. Once the old WAC died, any way for western FCS schools to move up pretty much died with it.

The only way it happens is if there is a P5 and G5 split and the G5 establishes their own championship. The feeling in the Dakotas is if that were to happen you could see the top half of FCS, the MVFC, Big Sky, CAA, etc schools move up to the G5 level. Heck, I could make a strong argument the MVFC is already better than the MAC, and Sagarin agrees with that given their conference power ratings.

In that scenario the MVFC may move up en masse, or for the Dakota schools to form a new G5 conference with some of the Big Sky schools as there is a desire to be at the 2nd level of CFB, whatever that level looks like in the future.

A conference of ND State, North Dakota, South Dakota, SD State, Montana, Montana St, Idaho, Eastern Washington, Idaho St, and a few other Western FCS schools has been discussed amongst our fan bases.

Quite a few moving parts there but I can say many of these schools have been positioning themselves to be ready for a move like that. There are already stadium expansions or entirely new stadiums being built by many of these schools. SD State has just built a new 20,000 seat stadium. South Dakota has expansion plans starting this winter that increases stadium capacity. I believe there are also plans underway at Montana St and EWU. So there is something that is going on where these schools are planning for something to happen in the future.