Would you support the return of football at WSU?

[SubGod22]

Everybody is always talking about lottery tickets and Koch donations for football. I think we should avoid that kind of narrative. It's fuel for the C.A.V.E.R.'s who stomp in the moment football is mentioned and screech, "It's gonna take 100 MiLLiOn DoLLeRz!!111".

Football can be restarted w/ a grassroots effort. With enough voices and individual dollars, we will gain momentum. Then the big donors will rush to get their names stamped on things; maybe even local government will ask how they can help. If we ever got to the 15k+ attendance mark, it would be the biggest recurring event in Wichita. All kinds of synergistic activity would spring forth. Every commercial promoting Wichita would include Shocker football imagery. This town needs a local football team. It's time.

I don't disagree. The 100M number is only used to scare people and isn't based in actual reality. I was just saying if I won hundreds of millions that maybe I could help spur momentum towards a football reality. I'd happily earmark a certain amount to be used to help establish a football team if I won that kind of money. But I don't play the lottery and don't gamble in general outside of tiny amounts in FanDuel along with some friends. Put money into that account about a year ago and don't plan to add anymore at any point.

But as I've said many times, the plan needs actual leadership to have a plan in place in order to move forward and DB isn't a visionary. Perhaps if there was enough money committed to the cause, someone at Wichita State would make some sort of effort.

There have been too many schools over the last 20 years start up football at schools that are smaller or have lesser conferences and smaller followings. Some may benefit from large markets, but they're generally considered irrelevant in those markets and they've still done it. I have no doubt it can be done. There's just nobody at the University willing to rock the boat or put forth an effort. I know at one time there were millions of dollars pledged to football if WSU would make an effort. I'd also heard that there were a few wealthy and well known individuals who were committed to using their name, time and money to assist should the project move forward. Beggs was never going to do anything more than he had to. Sexton was never the right man for the job. DB has little vision and I don't think he's willing to move on such a thing. If The Bardo were still with us I'd have more hope. He was at least open to it as a process of everything else. Wish we'd had him during the Beggs years. Who knows where we'd be if he were.

[Shoxing Me Softly]

There have been too many schools over the last 20 years start up football at schools that are smaller or have lesser conferences and smaller followings. Some may benefit from large markets, but they're generally considered irrelevant in those markets and they've still done it. I have no doubt it can be done. There's just nobody at the University willing to rock the boat or put forth an effort. I know at one time there were millions of dollars pledged to football if WSU would make an effort. I'd also heard that there were a few wealthy and well known individuals who were committed to using their name, time and money to assist should the project move forward. Beggs was never going to do anything more than he had to. Sexton was never the right man for the job. DB has little vision and I don't think he's willing to move on such a thing. If The Bardo were still with us I'd have more hope. He was at least open to it as a process of everything else. Wish we'd had him during the Beggs years. Who knows where we'd be if he were.

UNCC, UTSA, Costal Carolina off top of my head.

UAB killed theirs and brought it back from the dead a few years later.

Seriously what's the cost of a southland/OVC competitive FCS team? 10-15 million?

Pretty sure, although haven't heard a thing since they first said they were tearing down Cessna, that the plan is to build something suitable for track. As long as that means a press box, and 8-10K seats I'd say your good to go for FCS.

Of course I always forget about the women's facilities/scholarships that would need to be added.

[SubGod22]

UNCC, UTSA, Costal Carolina off top of my head.

UAB killed theirs and brought it back from the dead a few years later.

Seriously what's the cost of a southland/OVC competitive FCS team? 10-15 million?

Pretty sure, although haven't heard a thing since they first said they were tearing down Cessna, that the plan is to build something suitable for track. As long as that means a press box, and 8-10K seats I'd say your good to go for FCS.

Of course I always forget about the women's facilities/scholarships that would need to be added.

Another reason I've supported the addition of women's teams over the years. Then it wouldn't be everything at once. There's really no reason we don't have women's soccer. We already have women's Crew as a club sport, bump it to a scholarship level and then add gymnastics. They wouldn't really need new facilities for any of that. Soccer could play at Cessna, or if necessary, could be moved to Stryker. Pretty sure Crew has what it needs already, but any additional needs would be relatively cheap. I know gymnastics is hosted at the Heskett for younger types and I'm pretty sure could still be utilized. Maybe they would need a small facility of their own. But the overall costs of these sports aren't that great. You could even add women's swimming and diving and utilize off campus facilities until something else could be done. Not significant costs to start or to operate as a whole.

And I believe 10-15M at the FCS level would be on the higher end of those football budgets. As I've said many times over the years, you don't have to do everything at once and can slowly build what you need. And it's possible that the city would help in a stadium investment in some way. That wouldn't be popular to a lot of people, but I could see the city seeing the potential of what Wichita football could do for the city in attracting more development and visitors. Anywhere a stadium would be built would be bound to have things pop up around it. I don't think there's anywhere on or near campus for one, so you'd probably be looking at north Hillside nearer 235 or 96 and Greenwich. I'm not sure if there's room downtown anywhere.

[pogo]

Yeah that grass roots thing worked well for the Wichita Wings. Instead of selling bricks to WSU why not initiate a sales tax to fund building and maintaining the program and infrastructure. The best part about having all of the residents and visitors participating by a tax is that our friends with loyalties to other institutions would help fund the project.

[Shoxing Me Softly]

Looks like riverfront can host football.

https://www.kwch.com/2021/10/08/riverfront-stadium-host-its-first-football-game/

I don't know what it holds for football but anything over 5K works for FCS.

So no need for a stadium to get started, Wichita already has one. If FCS takes and FBS looks to be in future then worry about something better.

[SubGod22]

I am curious to see the setup and how it works for football.

[Shoxing Me Softly]

I am curious to see the setup and how it works for football.

Here is oneok in tulsa for soccer. The field in Wichita will be north/south, so similar I imagine but along 3rd baseline instead of 1st.

soccer.JPG

[Shoxing Me Softly]

I mean that is more than sufficient for FCS.

[SubGod22]

Looks like max capacity for baseball is listed at 12k. I'm not sure how much that will differ for football.

When WSU hosted Butler and Blinn college a number of years ago, there was probably around 12k there based on my observations. I don't recall ever seeing an official number.

Looking at current standings, Independence and Coffeyville lead the way with Butler and a couple of others behind them. Having Butler or Hutch would obviously help attendance, but it doesn't look like that's meant to be this year. Butler and Hutch have both lost to the leaders. Still, I might see if I can get a few friends together to go to this.

[SubGod22]

I mean that is more than sufficient for FCS.

I don't disagree that it could be a good early program usage. Not an ideal setup for game atmosphere, but it could work while funds were raised for something more permanent.

[Shoxing Me Softly]

I don't disagree that it could be a good early program usage. Not an ideal setup for game atmosphere, but it could work while funds were raised for something more permanent.

I'm not suggesting WSU could use this for FBS. You have to start FCS anyways, and this eliminates a huge upfront investment.

[SubGod22]

I'm not suggesting WSU could use this for FBS. You have to start FCS anyways, and this eliminates a huge upfront investment.

Agreed. But I could see Wichita maxing out what Riverfront would offer and would be in need of a larger capacity place to play, even in FCS. Maybe I'm overly optimistic about the support we would have, but it would be a nice problem to have. I'm sure there would be potential ways to get creative with seating at Riverfront if necessary. I did see it holds 18k for concerts. I know that means nothing to football, but it was interesting.

[Shoxing Me Softly]

Well 10-12K is more than enough for FCS to start. Southland averaged 6800 a game in 2019 and Ohio Valley 7600. Missouri State only averaged 6500 a game in 2019. Funny, Pitt State averaged 7,700 a game in 2019.

It just avoids even having to worry about a place to play. Focus on getting women's rowing (dang 22 scholarships, bang for the buck), soccer, and one more sport going. A practice/training facility for football. After that and if it takes then focus on a stadium.

[pogo]

A question about the requirement for a program to be at the FCS level for two years and then making application to the next level. Years ago when they put this rule in there was talk that perhaps WSU would not have to play FCS for two years since they had been in the upper division and voluntarily dropped the program. Talk was WSU could perhaps be grandfathered into football but not have to go FCS first. How did that ever play out? Just asking for a friend.

[SubGod22]

A question about the requirement for a program to be at the FCS level for two years and then making application to the next level. Years ago when they put this rule in there was talk that perhaps WSU would not have to play FCS for two years since they had been in the upper division and voluntarily dropped the program. Talk was WSU could perhaps be grandfathered into football but not have to go FCS first. How did that ever play out? Just asking for a friend.

I'm not sure and would guess that was wild speculation. I know I've seen debate in the past about a conference like the WAC that sponsored FBS football and might be able to sponsor it again without major hurdles, but I'm not sure if that's legit or not. I know New Mexico State would love to be able to get some of their new conference mates to bump up to FBS and the western portion of the country wouldn't be hurt by having one more FBS conference.

But why would you want to try and start straight FBS? It makes sense to lay some groundwork, especially if you need to work on some of the financing or facilities side of things, depending on fundraising. But, you can begin your transition pretty quick, and being in the AAC would help with that. Even if they didn't allow us to just plop football into the conference, it would be in their interest to at least help us get to FBS with some scheduling assistance. So the move to FBS wouldn't be difficult in itself. Also, I think FBS requires an average attendance of something like 15k to move up. So I think you have to show a certain level of support to do it as well. The problem with the above plan is I don't think Riverfront would hold 15k for football and outside of somehow salvaging Cessna as a place holder, there's nowhere in the city to do it. So I think we'd have to be FCS until we could build a 20-25k seat stadium (with expansion options).

I know there used to be a rule about requiring a conference invite to move up, but that pretty much got eliminated when Liberty couldn't get an invite and threatened to sue the NCAA as they had everything else needed to do so. There are five or six independents now that typically need help getting games later in the season to fill out schedules.