About 6 miles east of the biggest stadium in college football and a program that peppers the news almost daily when it comes to college football stories, they are discussing dropping the sport altogether.
A report issued by students and faculty last Friday to the Eastern Michigan Board of Regents called for a dropping of its FBS football program, possibly to a different level, possibly all together.
The numbers are sound and stark. According to the report, from 2005 to 2015, athletic spending at the school increased 65 percent, up $13 million, while revenue dropped $3 million over the same time span. In any successful fiscal model one can find, spending more to get less is not overly sought after.
In addition to financial drain, no one shows up to watch the team, one that’s had all of two winning seasons since 1990 and two bowl appearances all time. Rynearson Stadium, which seats just over 30,000, has sold out twice in its history. While the NCAA requires at least a 15,000 attendance or the risk of being put on probation, the actual butts in seats at EMU home games is probably closer to 5,000.
Corporate sponsors can make the numbers look how they need to look for basic viability, but the optics of it is terrible, not that most people would know because EMU is rarely, even in this day of 100 games on every Saturday, somewhere, on national television.
The report presented to The Board of Regents called for the Eagles to drop the program either to the Division II or III level or have them play in the Horizon League, which would not require the school to have a football program.
But … why not go FCS with the program?
The prevailing theory is and will be until further notice that winning cures all ails in sports. If EMU relegated itself down to the FCS level, their ability to compete at a basic wins and losses game would be much more manageable. With that comes increased exposure, campus buzz, and attendance.
It’s no secret that people like winning and want to be around it. I’m not sure a study needs to exist to validate that wild opinion.
On top of that, while the big gap between the FCS and FBS is and always will be television revenue, it’s no secret that the FCS continues to show more games on national television in their contract with ESPN than ever before. ESPN also has scratched their backs as well, taking their popular College Gameday show to FCS locations on occasion.
In the last three years, they’ve taken the show to FCS locations four times after never previously attending that level of a game in the history of the show (the program did attend an Division III game in 2007).
“Dropping” the program to the FCS level should be thought of, not only for EMU, but probably for a significant amount of programs as the FCS continues to get more visible. In a very savvy, forward thinking move, the FCS held a game betwixt Montana and North Dakota State last year prior to the beginning of the FBS season, allowing a football-starved audience a chance to get their fix against no other competition for the league.
Programs like North Dakota State and Montana are becoming household names for college football fans, and FCS wins over FBS teams have now become common enough where they’re not the automatic punch line they were even 7 to 10 years ago.
Specific to Eastern Michigan, completing this move would allow them probably to compete at a level they’re much more capable of being successful at. On top of that, their visibility as a potentially highly ranked FCS team would increase over being at best, an also ran in the MAC and at worst (which is most years) a bottom feeder.
Dropping the program altogether would seem to be a move that’s not necessary if spending cuts can be made and revenue increased. That’s common sense, but the key is getting there and how you do it. While dropping it to a non-scholarship level would keep the program in tact, it’d remove opportunity from scores of players in that area and even success at something like the Division III level would have limited, if any exposure.
The FCS, on the other hand, continues to create itself a more visible product with a new found penchant for doing things like getting in front of people at unique times when they’re willing to watch football and with little competition. Times like the aforementioned pre-FBS season game and the down time between the gaps in the bowl schedule for its playoff.
EMU football doesn’t need to die, it just needs a different avenue to succeed, such as that a lot of folks do. It’d be a mistake to drop it all together rather than move it to a different town with more open jobs and opportunities. Success is within their grasp, but it will take a U-Haul, not a bulldozer, to get there.
