What Sam Houston's challenges teach us about CFB realignment

16-20 minutes 7/22/2023
This is the final installment of a five-part series in which Chron will explore the motivations, factors, personalities and events at the center of Sam Houston's move to Conference USA and FBS football.
While Sam Houston's move to the FBS has been a unique journey for the Bearkats, the obstacles they face in their transition can also be viewed as a microcosm of modern-day college football.
Whether it's rising operational costs and facility upgrades or the dissolution of historic rivalries, Sam Houston is dealing with a handful of common themes that have emerged in recent years as the sport has evolved. Some of these hurdles are specific to conference realignment, but others can be seen across college athletics, from the highest to lowest levels of Division I competition.
Here is a closer look at the challenges facing the Bearkats, how they plan to address them and where these issues fit into the larger picture of what college football is today.
Elevated competition
One of the greatest and most visible challenges faced by athletic departments in a transition period—whether it's Division II to Division I, FCS to FBS or Group of Five to Power Five—is the uptick in competition. This includes athletic success, but also overall funding for the school's sports programs.
According to the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, which compiles data from expense and revenue reports of more than 230 Division I public schools, Sam Houston's athletic expenses for 2022 totaled just under $21 million. This is less than half of the FBS median, though the gap isn't as steep when compared with the teams in the Bearkats' new league, Conference USA. The expenses for the five returning CUSA schools ranged from $28,294,724 (Louisiana Tech) to $39,433,624 (Florida International), while new additions New Mexico State and Jacksonville State—which like Sam Houston, is transitioning from the FCS—had expenses of $32,457,148 and $20,288,342, respectively.
Sam Houston athletics director Bobby Williams notes that his department's budget will immediately increase to the neighborhood of $25 million, with plans to raise this to the $28-30 million range over the coming years, which will help decrease the disparity between the Bearkats and their peers. The primary outlier in CUSA is Liberty University. The Flames' financial information was not available in the Knight-Newhouse study, as they are a private institution, but their athletic budget is expected to be approaching or upwards of $50 million.
Matt Brown, the publisher of the Extra Points newsletter and a leading expert on conference realignment and the business of college athletics, notes that the relatively small size of the gap between the Bearkats and most CUSA schools should help ease their growing pains to some degree.
"What will make the learning curve a little bit easier is that outside of Liberty, I don't think anyone is dropping $45 million a year into their athletic department," Brown said. "The staffing increases, while significant for a Sam Houston or Jacksonville State, I don't think they're going to have to triple in size or anything. But it's going to be bumpy for a lot of people.
"What Liberty specifically is able to bring to the table in terms of facilities and in terms of staff spending and salary is significantly larger than what anyone else is doing. Those will be difficult games in multiple sports."
As for the on-field aspect of the equation, history indicates that teams transitioning from the FCS should expect early struggles as they move into an FBS conference. Of the eight teams to jump straight from FCS to FBS leagues over the past 10 seasons, only three posted a winning season in their first year. The other eight schools had a combined record of 17-43 in Year One.
With two Power Five programs on the schedule in BYU and the University of Houston, the Bearkats will face an uphill battle to post a winning record in 2023. It's certainly not impossible, though. Of the seven CUSA teams listed on ESPN's Football Power index, only two—Western Kentucky (88) and Liberty (97)—cracked the top 100. Sam Houston has also seen an influx in talent in recent years, with eight of the 10 highest-rated recruits in program history signing with the team during the last two recruiting cycles, according to 247Sports' rankings.
Perhaps the Bearkats' greatest chance to find early success in CUSA is a strategy employed by head coach K.C. Keeler during the first season of the team's two-year FBS transition period. With Sam Houston ineligible to compete in the postseason or play for conference titles in 2022 and—barring a waiver—2023, a bevy of impact players hit the transfer portal. Roughly 15-20 of those who remained and were eligible to do so took a redshirt last season, extending their NCAA eligibility.
This included a handful of key pieces from the team's FCS championship run in the spring of 2021, such as receivers Ife Adeyi and Noah Smith, offensive lineman Ethan Hagler, defensive end Jevon Leon, linebacker Trevor Williams and defensive back Isaiah Downes. As a result, Sam Houston's 5-4 campaign during its final season in the WAC likely isn't the best indicator of how the team will perform this fall.
"It was brutal," Keeler said of the 2022 season. "We're a team that's all in all the time. We're always about winning a championship, never rebuilding, and now I'm looking at 15 of the best players I've ever coached standing behind me ... and it's hard.
"I thought we took a little bit of a step backwards last year, but we had to if we wanted to go into Conference USA with a chance to compete. We feel very confident that we can go in and compete."
The current FBS attendance requirement, which states teams must average 15,000 in home attendance at least once during a rolling two-year period, isn't as much of an issue for Sam Houston as it may appear at first glance. For starters, the Division I Council is considering eliminating the attendance requirement altogether in favor of new scholarship standards.
Per NCAA.com, "all FBS schools would be required to provide 90 percent of the total number of allowable scholarships over a two-year rolling period across at least 16 sports, including football. Schools also would be required to offer at least 210 scholarships each year, amounting to no less than $6 million in athletics scholarships offered."
These potential changes will be voted on at a future meeting, but even if they are not approved, Sam Houston still has a path to meet the current requirements. One way it plans to increase attendance figures is with an annual game at NRG Stadium. This will take the place of the Battle of the Piney Woods rivalry game against Stephen F. Austin, which featured an average crowd of 26,065 after moving to Houston in 2010. The Bearkats will face Air Force and Texas State the next two seasons, and according to sources, multiple Pac-12 schools have inquired about playing the game in the future.
As The Athletic detailed in a 2019 article, it's fairly common for Group of Five programs to hit the 15,000 threshold through creative methods, such as charity giveaways and sponsorship arrangements. The proposed requirement changes would eliminate the need for such tactics, while placing the emphasis on investment amid a decade-long stretch in which FBS attendance figures have slowly but steadily decreased.
Regardless, Sam Houston will need to boost its home attendance figures. Bowers Stadium in Huntsville has surpassed the 10,000 mark in just five games since the 2012 season. For comparison, just two FBS teams—Northern Illinois and Hawaii—reported an average attendance below 10,000 last year.
Most important, though, is enhancing the overall fan experience. At the moment, Bowers Stadium is both undersized and outdated for an FBS program, with a listed capacity of 14,000 and amenities that hardly reflect big-time college football. To its credit, Sam Houston has already begun to address these areas, with plans to expand to around 18,000 capacity in addition to several changes that will impact the fan experience in the near-to-immediate future.
One of these will be the implementation of "party deck" terrace areas at the edge of the seats on the home sideline, which "will be in place or at least under construction this fall," according to Williams. The idea is to create a "less confined" space than a typical seat provides, allowing groups to come and go as they please while still providing quality sight lines to the action on the field.
A more ambitious project that aims to enhance the fan experience will involve a "complete teardown" of the structure on the home side of the stadium, which currently includes a press box and suite level. The plans for the new-look space—which Williams hopes will be ready in 2025—will include increased concourse space and improvements to the press box and suites, as well as the introduction of a new club level.
Due to construction, it's possible Sam Houston will have to play some of its games at a separate venue in 2024.
"Huntsville is not a huge town, but we do have a pretty big community with Huntsville, Walker County and Montgomery County," Sam Houston president Dr. Alisa White said. "If we provide more options for a fun experience in a suite, in club seating, something a little less structured, I think we'll be a viable entertainment venue—and that'll make a big difference."
Among the significant challenges facing the Sam Houston athletic department as a whole as it begins its new chapter in the FBS are fundraising and the size of its external operations (advertising, communications, marketing, ticketing, ect.) staff.
According to multiple sources, fundraising has and continues to be a challenge for the Bearkats as they attempt to get on the same level as their FBS peers. As for staffing, Sam Houston's staff directory has only five employees listed under external operations, as well as one full-time communications staffer. Fellow CUSA member Florida International, for example, lists four staff members dedicated to sport-specific communications and another four that work in ticketing alone, not to mention various other employees involved in marketing and other external areas.
"Not just with Sam Houston, but broadly, a conference adjustment where your footprint is larger and the budgets are larger has to be accompanied by new external fundraising and new revenue sources," Brown said. "You're going to get a bump from TV, you might get a slight bump from your licensing revenue ... but you have to increase your typical operating budget if you want to be at the medium level of your peers."
The Bearkats plan to invest more in external operations moving forward, and it's worth noting that they have already made substantial increases in areas such as academic support staff. But part of their strategy moving forward involves incorporating athletics into the university's overall umbrella in terms of marketing, communications and similar aspects of their operation.
"We have some really good, experienced people here, but a very shallow bench—just because they haven't had the funds to do that," White said. "Part of it is Bobby and [the university's chief marketing officer] building a relationship of trust where athletics can rely on a larger bench to bring expertise. They have the street cred and the knowledge of what's going on inside, but they need to get more people to help do the work and carry the message."
According to Dave Campbell's Texas Football, only five college football rivalries in Texas have been played more times than the Battle of the Piney Woods. Sam Houston and SFA had competed in the same conference since the early 20th Century, but with that no longer the case and the football rivalry on pause for the foreseeable future, the Bearkats must develop a new primary rival.
Like many of the themes involving their jump to the FBS, this is hardly a Sam Houston-specific concern. Roughly an hour's drive west of Huntsville, Texas A&M found itself in a similar position over the last decade after it left the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference. The Aggies were able to develop somewhat of a rivalry with LSU while renewing one with former Southwest Conference foe Arkansas, but none of their new opponents invigorated their fan base like the Lone Star Showdown with the University of Texas did. Texas A&M and the Longhorns will reunite on the football field for the first time since 2011 next year, when Texas makes the move to the SEC.
Texas quarterback Case McCoy (6) breaks away from Texas A&M defensive back Terrence Frederick (7) for a long run to set up a game-winning field goal for the Longhorns during the fourth quarter of an NCAA college football game at Kyle Field Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011, in College Station.
Texas quarterback Case McCoy (6) breaks away from Texas A&M defensive back Terrence Frederick (7) for a long run to set up a game-winning field goal for the Longhorns during the fourth quarter of an NCAA college football game at Kyle Field Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011, in College Station.
"That's a risk, and that's a big problem with realignment across the board," Brown said. "The thing is, you can't force a rivalry. You can't just proclaim, 'The rivalry with Stephen F. Austin is over. UTEP is my new best friend and hated enemy.'
"Rivalries happen organically because of competitive games with real stakes. They happen because of conflict, and they happen because of continued interaction."
Previously, Sam Houston hung its hat on contending for championships. The Bearkats made the playoffs in nine of their last 11 years in the FCS, winning the program's first national title during the spring of 2021. At least on a national level, such goals are simply unrealistic for the time being, forcing the program to develop a new identity and the fans to adjust themselves to this new reality.
While there might be some trepidation and discomfort with the change externally, it presents an opportunity for Sam Houston to maximize its potential and become more of a household name among college football fans. For all the magic of the Bearkats' national title run, only three of their contests were broadcast on national television. They will have seven such games during their first season in CUSA.
There are also new opportunities in being eligible for bowl games, as well as getting a higher caliber of opponent to come to Huntsville given their FBS status. Sam Houston has its share of shortcomings at the moment, but for the most part, these are issues that can be addressed over time. Meanwhile, the Bearkats' proximity to the high school football hotbeds of Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex provides a location benefit unmatched in CUSA, outside of perhaps Florida International and Kennesaw State when it joins the league in 2024.
However unlikely an appearance might be, the College Football Playoff's expansion to 12 teams starting next year is also a source of excitement, with the fact that at least one Group of Five school will make the field providing a glimmer of hope for schools like Sam Houston.
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"We knew that possibly was coming," Williams said. "One of the negatives people were saying was, 'We enjoy the playoffs.' Well, maybe we'll have an opportunity, if we do things right, to get into something like that."
July 22, 2023
Josh Criswell is the sports editor at Chron. He is a Houston native and has previously worked at the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, Huntsville Item and iHeartMedia. He enjoys Australian Rules Football, LSU game days in Baton Rouge and being tortured by the DePaul men's basketball program.