Does new NCAA proposal imperil EKU’s dream of playing football in the FBS?

Mark Story
·5 min read

Eastern Kentucky University’s long-running goal of elevating its football program from the FCS to the FBS could soon face another challenge.

If adopted, a proposal earlier this summer from the NCAA Division I Council would raise the mandatory transition fee to be paid by schools moving from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision from $5,000 to $5 million starting in 2024-25.

One can’t help but wonder if the timing of the plan to so dramatically raise the cost of entry into the FBS is a coincidence.

Last winter, EKU, along with the other football-playing members of the ASUN and the Western Athletic conferences, joined together to form what is planned to be a football-only league. The long-range goal for the new United Athletic Conference is for all of its member programs to move from the FCS to the FBS.

“I don’t know if (the proposed $5 million entry fee) is necessarily directed at our conference,” EKU Athletics Director Matt Roan said recently. “I can tell you that, as a collection of schools, we still maintain the ambition to compete at the highest level.”

Would all 10 programs that will eventually comprise the UAC have the resources to put up a $5 million fee to move from the FCS to the FBS?

“I can’t speak to that,” Roan said. “Certainly, for my president (EKU’s David T. McFaddin) and I, (the proposed fee) is something we are certainly aware of and we’ve had conversation about. It’s a planning and preparing (scenario).”

For EKU, whose total athletics budget for 2021-22 was just over $19 million, a $5 million transition fee would not be a small thing.

Of Eastern Kentucky’s aspiration of moving its football program up to the FBS, EKU Athletics Director Matt Roan says the Colonels’ strategy is “to take care of ourselves and putting ourselves in the best position. We’re just trying to control what we can control, so to speak.”
Of Eastern Kentucky’s aspiration of moving its football program up to the FBS, EKU Athletics Director Matt Roan says the Colonels’ strategy is “to take care of ourselves and putting ourselves in the best position. We’re just trying to control what we can control, so to speak.”

Eastern’s aspiration of moving its program to college football’s top level has now existed across successive university administrations. In the previous decade, EKU fought hard for a bid to join the Sun Belt Conference in the FBS. Ultimately, Eastern Kentucky lost out to Coastal Carolina for that opportunity in 2015.

An increase in the transition fee for moving from the FCS to the FBS is not the only way in which the Division I Council is suggesting that the financial requirements for competing at college football’s top level be raised.

The body also proposes mandating that all FBS schools provide 90% of the total number of allowable scholarships over a two-year rolling period in at least 16 sports, including football. As a floor, schools would be required to offer at least 210 scholarships each year, amounting to no less than $6 million in athletics scholarship aid.

If approved, those requirements would take effect for all FBS schools on Aug. 1, 2027.

Even before the Division I Council suggested raising the financial costs of FBS membership, the attempt by EKU and the other UAC members to move together to college football’s top level faced impediments.

The NCAA has had in place a moratorium on the formation of new single-sport conferences in Division I. There also is no existing process for an entire league to move from the FCS to the FBS.

In seeking to work around such bureaucratic obstacles, it was considered a coup for the UAC to land the well-connected Oliver Luck, the former West Virginia University athletics director and NCAA exec, as its executive director.

However, according to the NCAA website, the UAC has been “denied a wavier-request to be formally recognized by the NCAA as a single-sport conference in 2023.”

Whatever ultimately happens with the UAC, the ever-churning wheels of college football realignment could provide EKU with an unforeseen route into the FBS.

When Oklahoma and Texas announced in 2021 they were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC, it set off reverberations that reached far down the conference food chain. Subsequently, the Big 12 raided the American Conference for new members. The American pillaged Conference USA. And C-USA reached down into the ASUN to replenish its ranks.

Just last week, Colorado potentially set off another round of league musical chairs with its announcement that it will leave the Pac-12 to return to the Big 12 in 2024.

“I personally think we are probably years away from all the (realignment) dust being settled,” Roan said.

The NCAA says the Division I Council will vote on the proposal to raise the financial floor for FBS participation, including the enhanced transition fee, “after membership feedback is considered.”

Roan will cast one of the votes. The EKU AD will join the NCAA Division I Council on Aug. 1. “I was nominated by the ASUN Conference,” he said. “I am looking forward to (serving).”

If the long-awaited day ever comes when EKU receives an invitation move up to the FBS, the decision around paying a potential $5 million transition fee “would certainly require much more participation on our campus, the proper people, our board (of regents),” Roan said.

In the meantime, Eastern Kentucky’s strategy is “to take care of ourselves and putting ourselves in the best position (to eventually move up to the FBS),” Roan said. “We’re just trying to control what we can control, so to speak.”

United Athletic Conference membership

The teams pledged to compete along with Eastern Kentucky in the football-only UAC:

▪ Abilene Christian.

▪ Austin Peay.

▪ Central Arkansas.

▪ Eastern Kentucky.

▪ North Alabama.

▪ Southern Utah.

▪ Stephen F. Austin.

▪ Tarleton State (not eligible for FCS playoffs until 2024).

▪ Texas-Rio Grande Valley (joins in 2025).

▪ Utah Tech (not eligible for FCS playoffs until 2024).