Since transitioning from the FCS to the FBS in 1996, Idaho football has gone 66-122 and 20-54 in the last five years, and has seen more starting quarterbacks than wins in the past two seasons.
Graphic by Kaitlyn Krasselt | Argonaut
This year in particular has been difficult for Vandal football — a 1-11 record with 509 points allowed in 12 games (42 PPG), the loss of a head coach and starting quarterback and the threat of a future without a conference.
When the season began, the goal was to finish atop the dying Western Athletic Conference — but by the end, simply competing was the most fans could ask for. That and an invitation into an FBS conference for the 2013 season — a wish yet to be granted.
The last time Idaho found itself without a football conference was in 1962. Since then, Idaho has played football in four different conferences and at two different levels. Media markets have expanded while the demographics of Moscow and the university have not. The multi-million-dollar media industry in athletics, combined with the economic shortcomings prevalent in higher education haven’t done the university any favors.
Despite the challenges facing the department, athletic director Rob Spear and the rest of Idaho’s administrators are hopeful as they make the transition to competing as an FBS Independent program for the foreseeable future. All other sports will compete in the Big Sky in 2014. But a rigorous schedule, the competiveness of BCS teams both on and off the field, the TV-driven media market and the challenge of scheduling games in a small, indoor stadium located in rural north Idaho won’t make it easy.
“It’s unfortunate sometimes that the lack of success in football magnifies the perception of the athletic department where in fact we are pretty competitive in everything else that we do,” Spear said. “It’s the driver of everything. It’s the driver of conference realignment. It’s the driver of television revenue … it’s just such a big sport that is followed across the country.”
For this reason, Spear and the athletic department had big choices to make in order to determine Idaho’s future for at least the next two years. When Idaho didn’t receive an FBS conference invitation Spear had to choose what would be best for the program — become an FBS Independent or move back to the FCS to compete in the Big Sky.
Finances
The finances of the department and the money the football program is able to bring in to support the department and contribute to the rest of the university were the primary factors in Spear’s decision.
Matt Kleffner, senior associate athletic director, said the main sources of revenue for football are ticket sales, money games (such as when Idaho traveled to play LSU for nearly $1 million) and a combination of novelty sales, advertisements and sport camp revenues. Football generated total operating revenues of nearly $5 million in 2011.
On the flip side, the programs expenses neared $6 million for 2011.
“What do we spend our money on? Well we’ve almost tripled our scholarship expense,” Kleffner said.
The department is allowed to offer 85 full scholarships for the football team each year as designated by the NCAA, and because the department is fully funded it offers all of its designated scholarships in all sports.
“You pay your fees,” Kleffner said. “They go up a lot … quicker than anything else. Every time we have an increase and your student fees go up 5 percent that’s like $50,000 we have to come up with that we have no money for.”
Kleffner said the money the department brings to the university, between the scholarships they cover, the walk-on athletes that pay their own way and the money brought into the bookstore and other departments on campus, is near $4.5 million every year.
“We write a check. It’s hard money … back to the university,” Kleffner said.
When Idaho made the transition to the FBS and Big West Conference in 1996, it was coming off more than a decade of winning records and had earned nine conference championships during its 33-year tenure in the Big Sky. This put Idaho in the top quartile of the FCS.
Kleffner compared the 1994 budget to today’s, and since making the transition to competing as an FBS school Idaho’s overall athletic department budget has nearly tripled, despite being an unsuccessful FBS program in recent years.
In 1994 the department earned about $3.8 million, which translated into today’s dollars is roughly $5.8 million. The annual revenue of the athletic department today is approximately $15.8 million.
The football program alone brought in more than $2 million from playing money games on the road this season.
Spear said there are a couple of benefits to continuing to play at the FBS level rather than transition back to the Big Sky, primarily the revenue at stake at the FBS level with the introduction of a four-team BCS playoff next season.
“They are talking about the money involved quadrupling from where it’s at right now,” Spear said.
Spear said it is predicted that the media interest in the playoff system could increase BCS revenue from $120 million to between $400 and $500 million.
“When you start talking about that type of money obviously you’re very interested in staying at the table as an FBS program,” Spear said. “You hope you can realign yourself with a conference because the conference revenue that is going to be generated from the playoff that’s going to trickle down through the conferences is going to be a significant increase.”
Spear said this money is a driving force behind remaining at the FBS level because of the financial challenges that present the need to find external revenue.
WAC Revenue
Spear said one reason it is important to be in a conference in the long run is that a conference can help generate revenue that is more difficult to come by as an independent school.
As a part of the WAC in all sports, the athletic department earns money in five places: basketball units, media, the NCAA basketball tournament, the BCS and other conference dollars including exit fees from teams who leave the conference.
Spear said this year, Idaho will receive about $1.5 million in exit fees from the five schools that left the WAC this season.
“This year the WAC had five (football) teams leave it,” Spear said. “When you leave you forfeit all your conference revenue for your last year in the league.”
Basketball units come from a contract CBS and the NCAA have that pays the NCAA based on how well the teams in each conference perform over a six year running average.
“You get so many units and so much money per unit that is then divided up among the teams in your conference. The amount we’re getting is going down. Teams that did well six years ago are falling off the back end,” Kleffner said.
Media and BCS revenue fluctuate depending on media deals signed by teams in the conference and the success of the conference teams in the BCS. In 2007 when Boise State won the Fiesta Bowl, the WAC — and by association Idaho — saw a significant increase in revenue for the fiscal year of 2008.
“If a member of the non-BCS leagues plays in a BCS bowl game these conferences get a huge amount of money … like $12 million … and if yours is a conference that they play in, it goes up even more,” Kleffner said.
Finances in the FCS
One of the biggest concerns for Idaho making a return to FCS football, and a big reason for not doing so next year, is the drop in revenue when moving from the FBS to the FCS. However, Big Sky Commissioner Doug Fullerton said the top fourth of his FCS conference is “healthier” than the bottom fourth of FBS programs.
“The way you measure the health of an athletic budget is by how much money you raise compared to how much money you have to get from the institution or students,” Fullerton said. “The top of our level … is actually healthier and bigger than the bottom of the FBS level. But if you think about it that shouldn’t surprise anybody because we’ve been recruiting to success and they’ve had a hard time keeping up.”
Fullerton said the median spending of the bottom quartile of the FBS where Idaho resides is around $20 million, whereas the top quartile of the FCS is about $22 million. Fullerton also said if Idaho were a member of the Big Sky he could save the athletic department around $3 million in expenses.
“First of all, we play with 22 fewer scholarships and probably that means you’ll give less scholarships on the other side to have the equitable balance of your gender,” Fullerton said. “Given that most of those are out of state that’s probably a half a million dollars right there.”
Fullerton said an FCS team would have fewer coaches, which he said saves a program around $75,000 per coach.
“Then you’re going to adjust the salaries and stuff that we pay our coaches. You pay your offensive and defensive coordinators more than we pay our head coaches,” Fullerton said. “And you don’t need as many sports. All of that will add up to somewhere between $2-3 million a year.”
Guarantee Games
The final financial difference between an FBS and FCS conference is the ability to play money games on the road as a source of revenue. As an FCS team the athletic department can still schedule these money games, but because the games won’t count toward an FBS opponent’s bowl eligibility an FCS school will only get paid about 60 percent of the amount an FBS school would make.
“If we’re playing for $1 million, an FCS school is playing for $600,000,” Kleffner said. “We’re more valuable to them as an FBS team because we count toward their bowl eligibility and if you’re FCS you don’t. Plus their fans would rather see an FBS opponent than an FCS opponent.”
Fullerton said scheduling money games is one of four ways he’s seen athletic departments make the move from an FCS school to an FBS school, but it hasn’t been successful.
“I’ve never seen a school be successful that moves from FCS up to FBS if they have to make their budget by playing games on the road … because quite frankly you don’t win the games on the road and your fans, while you’re gone, they find other things to do and instead of having sold out houses like we do in the Big Sky, you have empty seats,” Fullerton said.
The other Idaho sports
Spear decided all Idaho sports other than football would remain in a football-less WAC conference for the 2013-2014 season, but would move into the Big Sky in the 2014-2015 season.
Spear said the decision to stay an extra year in the WAC was simple and based largely on the revenue generated by the WAC exit fees.
“It’s about money,” Spear said. “We stay in a year, the revenue we’re going to lose next year is going to be minimal compared to this year.”
Spear said the department is excited about moving to the Big Sky because it will be a better conference with more regional rivalries and less missed class time for student athletes.
“When you look at the potential re-buildup of the WAC, it’s going to be made up of schools in the most southern part of Texas, to the Northwest to possibly the Midwest and you talk about significant travel expenses and then significant missed class time,” Spear said. “I think the Big Sky is a perfect fit for us with our other sports.”
The Tiered FBS
As conferences continue to shift and the major BCS conferences remain successful, Fullerton and Spear predict the divisions to change once again.
Fullerton said the impending change would put Idaho at an advantage as an FBS school.
“The vision of the future in college athletics is a little murky right now,” Fullerton said. “People are thinking … that there may very well be a group of schools that move off the top of Division I.”
Fullerton said the prediction is the five major conferences would form their own FBS level, and a new FBS level would form right below it that would house the rest of the current FBS conferences as well as successful FCS conferences like the Big Sky.
“The independent thing is to keep us at the table in anticipation of additional conference realignment,” Spear said. “I would be thrilled if they did it. They go away, create their own rules, maybe they have 85 scholarships. Then create a tier two, which I think Idaho, the Montanas, Eastern Washington — which I think they’d love to be in — maybe offer 75 scholarships and make that your tier two. Then a tier three would have 63 scholarships.”
Fullerton said if the tiered system did develop, he doesn’t think it would matter if Idaho were an FCS or an FBS school at the transition.
“My pitch to Idaho is though, that’s where we belong too. If that happens, that’s where we are going also,” Fullerton said. “So I don’t think that staying FBS is that important because where they want to go and where we want to go is the same thing.”
WAC Interim Commissioner Jeff Hurd said as Idaho moves into the future, patience will be the key to success.
“Part of it is letting things play out around you,” Hurd said. “The conference situation is so fluid right now that you don’t know what’s going to happen in a year or six months.”
Hurd said competing as an FBS Independent school during the conference shake-up will allow Idaho to do whatever’s best when things settle down.
“If the University of Idaho is committed to playing FBS football, the solution is to play as independent for the next couple years and see what happens,” Hurd said “It may be that in two or three years nothing has changed, but it may also be that everything has changed.”
Kaitlyn Krasselt can be reached at [email protected]
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Understanding conferences
Currently, there are three divisions of NCAA collegiate sports, Division I, II and III, which were defined in 1973. Prior to this time, Divisions I and II were known as the University and College divisions, respectively.
The Big Sky Conference was a part of the College division (Division II) until 1977 when Division I was divided into I-A and I-AA, and all Big Sky sports were moved into Division I-AA.
In 2006, I-A and I-AA combined to form a single Division I with the exception of football. At this time, the Division I-AA football programs such as those in the Big Sky became known as FCS. Division I-A programs became the FBS.
FCS: The Football Championship Subdivision (Formerly Division I-AA)
· More regionally based
· Typically occupied by schools with smaller media markets.
· Budgets tend to be smaller because schools like the ones in the Big Sky bring in less money from their football program, but they also spend less on things such as travel.
FBS: The Football Bowl Subdivision (Formerly Division I-A)
· Tend to be larger and generate more revenue through media contracts and travel.
BCS: Bowl Championship Series
· Originally formed by six major FBS conferences now known as Automatic Qualifiers (AQs).
· AQs come from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC and three independent schools that signed a formal agreement to form the BCS. (Regular season winners receive automatic bowl game bid)
· Provides for five post-season bowl games for 10 qualifying teams.
· Mid-major FBS teams (Non AQs) qualify based on regular season win-loss record.