South Alabama to start 1-A football in 2009

[MOBILE-BAMA]

Central Florida is a commuter school and look where they are. I'm sure every one said the same things about UCF being in between Miami, UF and FSU. Also, look at Florida Atlantic. They started just a few years ago and they are in a bowl. If done right, football at South can succeed.

 

[Proxigean Tide]

I'm a USA grad and I think its a dumb idea. USA is a commuter school.

So is South Florida.

 

[BAMA1979]

So is South Florida.

A commuter school with 43,000 students that plays its home games at Raymond James Stadium. That's a little different than USA.

 

[BAMA1979]

South Alabama's first few schedules could look something like this:

Birmingham Southern
Alabama A&M
Georgia Millitary College
Jacksonville State
Millsaps
Hampden-Sydney
Delta State
West Alabama
Miles
Stillman

I thought that was Hawaii's schedule.

 

[#14#13]

nm i decided to read the post...

 

[#14#13]

You have to schedule 60% of your games (at least 8 games in a 12 game season) against D1A schools. You have to average at least 15,000 in home attendance. And you to award at 90% of the maximum allowable football scholarships to players. There are a few other requirements I can't think of.

The attendance requirement is often the biggest hurdle for maintaining the status. Bottom-end schools often have to resort to gimmicks to keep the average up. Stuff like playing "home" games at larger stadiums that can be filled by the opponent's fans (for example, Arkansas State played a "home" game against Missouri at the Chiefs NFL stadium in Kansas City. They were able to crowd as "home crowd"). A few years ago, Middle Tennessee staged a major rock concert at their stadium after a game, selling the tickets as football tickets and counting the crowd toward their average.

didnt Movie Gallery buy all of troy's tickets to get them bumped to 1A? It might have been a rumor when I was on campus at JSU though.

 

[Just Win]

I thought South Alabama already had a football program. Oh wait....that's South East Alabama Polytechnic Institute. AKA...the barn. Sorry. Maybe the two of them can compete for the recruits left behind by Alabama, UAB, UNA, Samford, B'ham Southern & Troy.

 

[Just Win]

I thought that was Hawaii's schedule.

Nope, it's Ohio State's and LSU's.

 

[derek4tide]

A commuter school with 43,000 students that plays its home games at Raymond James Stadium. That's a little different than USA.

No doubt. USA has 14,000 students, while USF is the 9th largest school in the country with 44, 000. USA will never make this work.

 

[BAMA1979]

Didn't Alabama play its first night game against Spring Hill at Murphy Stadium? (Maybe I confused multiple facts together)

This is correct. It was in 1940. Alabama won 26-0.

 

[J4Bama]

I'm surprised that Auburn hasn't tried to get on their schedule yet.

 

[rpeastep]

One thing USA has over both Troy and Jax is they are both in the middle of nowhere. USA is in the 2nd largest city in the state with Pensacola an hour away. A large pool of people to draw from. And for the first half of the season people can travel to home games and go to the beach in the same trip. And even a short side trip to Biloxi. They can probably get by in Ladd for a few years but they shouldn't make the mistake UAB did by staying in Legion field. Nobody is going into that area of Birmingham if they can help it. Ladd is not in as bad a neighbor as the old Gray Lady, but an onsite stadium soon is a must.

 

[exiledNms]

They shouldn't have any problems outdrawing UAB. _green:

Doesn't Daphne high school in the Bay Area outdraw UAB?

 

[Displaced Bama Fan]

A commuter school with 43,000 students that plays its home games at Raymond James Stadium. That's a little different than USA.

Exactly...10,000 v. 43,000. 2,000 of USA's students are Muslims anyway. They don't count.

 

[Displaced Bama Fan]

Doesn't Daphne high school in the Bay Area outdraw UAB?

Daphne
Fairhope
Foley
McGill Toolen
Murphy
UMS
Baker
Mary Montgomery
LeFlore
Blount
Williamson

All outdraw UAB and probably would USA as well.

 

[B'hamBlazers]

South Alabama has fewer students and is in a small city than UAB... yet they think they can do better in terms of attendance. The only thing playing in their favor here is that they don't have Alabama playing 50 miles away from them. But they'll still face competition from Southern Miss, Troy, and Auburn... LSU and Florida State are just several hours away as well.

The thing is... even out of the 16,000 or so students that they have, they got about 2,500 students to sign a petition saying they wanted football. So they'll be raising student service fees by $300 per semester (based on what I was reading) and they base this whole move to add football and raise those fees on the wishes of about 15% of the students enrolled there.

 

[B'hamBlazers]

Daphne
Fairhope
Foley
McGill Toolen
Murphy
UMS
Baker
Mary Montgomery
LeFlore
Blount
Williamson

All outdraw UAB and probably would USA as well.

Wow... didn't realize so many high schools in Metro Mobile averaged 20,000 a game.

 

[#14#13]

Exactly...10,000 v. 43,000. 2,000 of USA's students are Muslims anyway. They don't count.

???

 

[Dixiedawg]

First of all starting a program does not mean they jump off in the deep end of the pool right off the bat. They will petition to move to D 1 after 5 years, so it won't happen until 2013 three years before my retirement, it also means money to the local economy and considering we will be getting about 2700 new folks in the area around 2010 when the steel mill opens it makes sense. The season tickets will be cheap initially so they can try to develop a following and Ladd Stadium will be made available by the city and it seats 40K. I would expect it to impact USM more then anyone else as far as recruiting goes, but there has been some great talent from this area that did not go to an SEC school Hanford Dixon comes to mind as well as Jeff Kelly and others that may have gone to South if they had football. It will be interesting to watch this overthe next few years.

 

[Dixiedawg]

Wow... didn't realize so many high schools in Metro Mobile averaged 20,000 a game.

Well let's see they probably average better then the 16,706 UAB averaged this past year. DT_ow: