OT: Houston signs home&home with FCS team
As part of the State of Texas Tier One Initiative to increase the number of tier one research institutes in the state, the University of Texas - San Antonio is likely to be one of the schools that gets the boost. With that, the expanded their athletic department to include a football team, acting as an independent in the FCS. They hope to be a full fledged FBS team by 2014.
That said, the Roadrunners will be playing a home and home series with the University of Houston, another of the schools (this one all but guaranteed to be part of the Tier One Initiative) in the 2013-2014 season. This, to my knowledge, is the first time a FBS team will play "at" a FCS team's stadium (2013 is in San Antonio). The reason for the "at" is that the Roadrunners have been playing at the Alamodome, which could easily be filled with Cougars fans.
The Roadrunners also have home-and-homes set up with Arizona, Arizona State, and Baylor already lined up after their jump to the FBS. Which, like damn. A new team with that schedule set up at home already? Crazy.
Is that the team Coker is coaching?
Yeah, it is. They actually don't play their first real game in the FCS until 2011, but they do start their first "season" this year. From what I understand, it's practices and scrimmages only. They had 27 recruits in their last class, all of them obviously redshirting this year.
I was thinking that would be confusing with two schools labeled "University of Texas", but I suppose California has a bunch. I am guessing they will quickly become TSA.
Don't forget UTEP
There's Nevada and UNLV.
delete
That they could play the "Coyotes".
(uniforms provided by Acme)
See, this is what happens when I stop wasting time at work and try to get actual work done. Someone beats me to the punch.
UTSA is cleared by the NCAA on a path to enter the FBS. So it is more than a hope, unless they run out of money or something like that. The other school that is cleared to go from no program to the FBS is USA (University of South Alabama, in Mobile).
I believe there is currently a moratorium on schools applying to do this or to move to the FBS from the FCS, probably sparked by these cases. I don't remember where I read about this, but I'll Google a bit and see if I can find it.
I believe Jacksonville State was on that short list as well. I recall a post by Holly on EDSBS, or maybe even her own page about it.
Best thing I could find in a 5 minute google was that the moratorium was put in place August 1, 2007 through 2011 unless a school had already stated that it had a plan in the works for the jump. The guy says something about 20 schools on that list, but no list could be produced. Could just be hearsay.
The city is very supportive of the Spurs, as far as I can tell. It's a good sports market. I can see why a bunch of (south)western teams would want to play there.
The Spurs have OK attendance figures, but they've sometimes failed to sell out in the playoffs, which is inexcusable for the only major team in town (which has won four titles in 11 years, no less).
There is enough talent in TX to field another team, hope this doesn’t make it harder to pull that talent up to AA.
I think UT San Antonio will be able to challenge traditional powerhouses for players as much as Western Kentucky. That is, not much.
My take is that it would be like FAU having a serious chance at taking a Denard Robinson away from UM. Just because they have a team doesn't mean that they will actually challange for elite prospects. It would take a lot of "Texas Oil Handshakes" for a new school to suddenly establish itself as an elite BCS-caliber program.
Can Thomas Jefferson be mentioned at Tier 1 schools in Texas?
Seriously, this game smacks of pressure by state officials to boost attendance figures at UT-San Antonio. Houston is a huge get for a school that will have only two seasons of football under their belt by gameday and it seems pretty unlikely that game would have been scheduled without outside influence. Hopefully the coaching staff doesn't want to run up the score too much...
Or so the SBOE would say.
I think this is more of a "celebration" for both schools moving up to Tier One. The other school in consideration is Texas Tech, but being in a BCS conference already, it's even more of a step down for them. Tech could at least claim it's already part of the "big boys." I'm just somewhat surprised at the two Arizona schools signing to play there already. I guess it's an easy win in a recruiting hot bed.
As for those above that speak to taking away talent, the SA area is very fertile when it comes to D1 talent. The Roadrunners won't steal much from the BCS schools like Texas or Okalahoma, but they may be able to get those 3*s that sometimes defect out of state. I would put their ceiling at Texas Tech recruiting pre-Leach era. Probably closer to that of Houston currently.
That's going to be a pretty boring sign. I prefer "Tebow bongs holy water" or some shit.