Will more schools take Idaho path from college football’s FBS to FCS?

As UConn transitions back to the Big East, their college football future is uncertain. Might more programs follow Idaho’s example and move down to the FCS?

Conference realignment is never really complete. Affiliation is not a static concept, even for athletic departments that have remained anchored in the same league for decades. But while conferences have always been dynamic, every shift in the conference sands has ancillary impacts that might seem inconsequential in the moment but onerous as time passes.

After the introduction of conference championship games in 1992 and the growing importance of conference affiliation in the last decade of the 20th century, money drove a number of programs to transition from what is now called the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) to the top tier of college football. In total, 11 teams moved up from the FCS to the FBS between 1992 and 2000, with more than a dozen programs following in the first decades of the 21st century.

Some of those teams, like UCF and Boise State, evolved into titans of the Group of Five ranks. Others have experienced more tumultuous histories. Those stories are riddled with tales of frequent realignment, forced independence, and the attendant impacts of instability and long-term uncertainty as programs struggle to find permanent homes in the FBS ranks.

So far, only one school has decided to undo its transition and return to the FCS ranks. Idaho transitioned upward to I-A football in 1996, spent 22 years bouncing between four different conferences and through two bouts of independence, and opted after 2017 to move back down to the FCS to join the Big Sky. As of now, it is the only example of a program making the transition in both directions.

As I sit here on this Sunday morning, though, the recent talk about UConn moving back to the Big East for the 2020 season has slapped a giant question mark on their football program. Precarity is the name of the game for many programs in the Group of Five ranks. As the division between haves and have-nots widens, the Idaho story could eventually evolve from an anomaly into a trend. In this week’s Sunday Morning Quarterback, let’s think about what it might look like to see more programs follow the Vandals back to the FCS ranks after a stint at the top.

Let’s first consider the case of UConn further

The Huskies were the last program to transition to the I-A ranks in the 20th century, moving up to play the 2000 season as an independent. Already part of the Big East in basketball and its other sports, Connecticut joined the league for football in 2004 and quickly evolved into a mid-tier program. In Randy Edsall’s first tenure at the school, the Huskies won a share of the Big East title in both 2007 and 2010 and went to the 2011 Fiesta Bowl after the second split championship.

Life in the Big East was great for UConn, which benefitted from the league’s position as an automatic-qualifying conference in the BCS system. When the defection of the league’s basketball-only schools led other full members to assess their options in 2013, though, the Huskies came up short in the game of realignment musical chairs.

A league that was already gutted by the loss of marquee powerhouses like Miami and Virginia Tech was further weakened as Pitt, Syracuse, West Virginia, Louisville, and Rutgers all found new homes in Power Five conferences. After losing rights to the Big East brand, the football league rebranded as the American Athletic Conference. To fortify its ranks, a league ravaged by defections turned around and poached a handful of Conference USA members as replacements.

The attendant loss of revenue and exposure did no favors to a program like UConn, the last charter member of the original Big East to remain in the rebranded version of the conference. Unable to replicate their earlier success, they brought Edsall back to Rentschler Field in hopes that he would right the ship.

But no coach can make the same level of profound impact that a realignment brings to a school. Edsall was always going to be stacked up against the weight of his previous expectations, even though the material conditions had substantially changed between his first and second stints at UConn.

What the Huskies have found, though, is that remaining anchored in the AAC has done no favors to either its football team or its other athletic programs. Basketball, the lifeblood of the school, suffered with the departure of traditional Big East rivals. This time, instead of making a calculus based predominantly on the football team, the inverse is taking place as UConn opts to plan for a future where the gridiron is deemphasized.

Remaining in the American Athletic Conference would prove awkward after breaking away in every other sport. Convincing a league like the MAC or Conference USA to take on UConn as a football-only member will be equally tough. And, unless your name is Notre Dame, independence is a tough world to navigate in the 21st century college football landscape.

Consider for a moment what it might look like to transition back to the FCS. Connecticut could easily join a league like the Colonial Athletic Association, a league already boasting a half-dozen football-only members. Geographic proximity to their conference opponents would reduce travel costs from the expansive AAC schedule. And a path to the FCS playoffs would in many ways give the Huskies greater opportunity for gridiron success than they will ever enjoy as a Group of Five member.

But this is a trend that could go far behind UConn alone

Not every team can be a Boise State or a UCF. Even a program like Marshall, that entered the I-A ranks on a tear after winning the I-AA national championship and immediately became the bully of the MAC, can hardly sustain that level of success on a perennial basis for more than a few years before falling back to earth.

Even Boise State and UCF have never been able to sustain their Icarus-like zeniths in perpetuity.

For every perfect (regular) season in Orlando, there is also a perfectly winless season to point to as a counterbalance. And while Boise State has never collapsed quite as impressively, they have also never been able to replicate life as the biggest fish in the WAC pond now that they have moved on to the Mountain West. Even when Chris Petersen was still in Boise, the Broncos are more than four years removed from their last major bowl appearance.

Those teams have established themselves to the point where a drop down to the FCS level makes zero sense. Programs locked into a relatively stable situation where they can punch at their weight class have no reason to transition to the lower subdivision.

Not every team can make such a claim. Whether they transitioned up to the FBS since the divisional split in the late 1970s, or they are merely a top-division program that lacks the competitive advantage to capitalize on the wealth that is becoming increasingly concentrated at the top of the sport.

While UConn is unlikely to make such a move down to the FCS, it might honestly be the best move for them from a competitive standpoint. It would allow the school to focus more resources on its championship-winning men’s and women’s basketball teams, as well as other sports, while giving the Huskies gridiron crew a clearer pathway toward conference and national championships.

For teams without a conference affiliation, as Idaho was left after their football-only deal with the Sun Belt expired after the 2017 season, a transition to the FCS looks like a shrewder move than trying to slog through independence. Notre Dame can get away with the arrangement, and service academies like Army also have enough traditional matchups each season to make independence feasible.

BYU is the only other team to make the move from a conference to independence voluntarily. Liberty is still in transition to the FBS, so their independence did not come after a previous conference affiliation in the FBS.

UMass and New Mexico State, the last of the independent programs heading into the 150th anniversary of the game, were both effectively booted from the MAC and Sun Belt respectively. The Minutemen and Aggies have averaged three wins per season over four combined seasons as independents. They also sport two of the three worst winning percentages over the past decade at the FBS level, and would almost certainly be well served by a drop in subdivision.

Texas State, which transitioned up to the FBS in 2012, has only played out one winning season in that span and has yet to reach a bowl game. One wonders if even more established teams that have fallen behind in the past decade might consider a shift downward. It isn’t contingent on geography, either — long-established MAC schools like Akron and Eastern Michigan could benefit from a downshift just as western schools UNLV and UTEP might find greater competitive balance at the FCS level.

But how many schools would really consider a move down to the FCS?

To reiterate, this is all a thought experiment as so many of our counterfactual projections are here in the Sunday Morning Quarterback. There is currently no reported discussion at UConn about moving down to the FCS, whether to the CAA or any other conference.

With UConn all but locked into a return to the Big East and a reunion with its traditional basketball rivals, though, all contingencies should be on the table for the Huskies. For other programs who like Idaho have never been able to find lasting success in the FBS, the precarious nature of life in the Group of Five might make this look like an appealing option in the near future.

While I am certainly enamored with the storylines that surround a Cinderella run, athletic departments at smaller schools need to embrace a long-term vision that provides legitimate opportunities for academic development.

Given the FCS has a ready-made postseason national tournament already built into its system, that structure could become a more viable counterweight to Power Five predominance. All it would take is a few middleweight Group of Five teams opting out of a system that guarantees at best a shot at a third-tier bowl and deciding that a real playoff system looks more enticing.

For now it is merely a fun thought to ruminate over with a Sunday morning cup of coffee. But the tools are already in place for a revolt by the Little Sisters of the Poor in college football, and all it would take is more teams recognizing the opportunity available with a shift to life in the FCS.