The University of Idaho FCS Move Should Be Lauded and Considered

This past week, Chuck Staben, president of the University of Idaho, wrote an explanation for why the Vandals are moving down one click from the NCAA’s highest DI football collective, the Football Bowl Subdivision. The Vandals, who are members of the Sun Belt Conference through 2017, will begin membership in 2018 in the Big Sky Conference of the Football Championship Subdivision.

Considering the lack of football success Idaho has had over recent years (7-40 over the past four seasons), this conference change hasn’t made tremendous waves with 24-hour sports news cycles and has been largely drowned-out by the NFL draft, NBA playoffs, and other big-ticket items. I’d argue, though, that what Staben and his staff have chosen to do is worth further examination both in the present and future by athletic department administrations as it exemplifies a concept sorely lacking in college athletics today.

In his explanation, Staben states that:

Success on the football field should complement the prestige and relevance of our academic institution. But football affiliation or performance should not define prestige and relevance. The impact of our institution should define us, as measured by the entire experience for our student body, including our athletes; by academic excellence across the university; by sustained research, scholarly activity and creative success; and by deep engagement with communities and partnerships with industry.

This sentiment is frequently parroted by school administrators at press conferences and in news releases but is rarely coupled with an action that mirrors its message. The officials at Idaho should be lauded for being willing to make a counter-cultural move away from America’s new national pastime back towards the true purposes of colleges and universities.

Cynics will look at this decision and claim it is an easy decision because of the Vandals’ difficulties on the football field at the FBS level. This viewpoint fails to account for the rabid appetite alumni and fans have for “big-time” college football as well as the pride-swallowing required to admit that perhaps Idaho’s move to DI’s highest level twenty years ago was in error. There is no doubt Staben will have a fair share of detractors for this decision; in fact, he alluded to such in his explanation, saying, “some UI alumni and supporters do not agree that the FCS is our best option. Many passionate Vandals view our place in FBS as a mark of our institution’s ‘prestige’ and ‘relevance.’”  To take the cynic’s view and claim this was a “no-brainer” is inaccurate.

It will be difficult to forecast how Staben’s decision will affect those most impacted by the move, namely the student-athletes and coaches, but it seems reasonable to expect positive returns. One very good sign is that Idaho will immediately become more financially competitive in the Big Sky Conference than it was in the Sun Belt. For example, 2015’s Big Sky Conference football champion, Southern Utah, spent $27,860 in operating expenses per football player for the 2014 season. Eastern Washington, conference champion from 2012-2014, spent $44,011 in 2014. Comparatively, in 2014 Idaho football spent $73,604 on each of its football players. In terms of overall athletic revenue, Idaho will again be a leader in the conference. Compared to the $11 million and $13.5 million Southern Utah and Eastern Washington generated in 2015 revenue, respectively, Idaho generated $20 million.

University	2014 Operating Expenses per Football Player	2015 Overall Athletic Revenue
Idaho	$73,604	$20 million
Eastern Washington	$44,011	$13.5 million
Southern Utah	$27,860	$11 million

Again, the cynic’s view might be that money doesn’t win games and Idaho might remain a perennial loser on the football field. However, as a much-maligned thinker of the twenty-first century once said, “money isn’t everything; not having it is,” and it would be naïve to suggest that Idaho doesn’t benefit from being closer to its competitors in the ledger books.

Staben’s uncommon decision to shift from the FBS to the FCS was not the easiest course of action nor necessarily a popular one on campus. It was, however, the best thing to do for his university, and its athletic programs will benefit as well. Athletic department administrators should watch Idaho in the coming years to see how this move affects both academics and athletics, for if more schools really took a hard look at themselves, they might be surprised to see their situations are not that different from the Vandals’.