AUGUST 20, 1998

Exuberant:  Proponents of the football program's proposed jump to Division I-A are too far ahead of their time

Justin Griffin
Sports Editor

The alumni are at it again.  It seems that every four years or so, the rumblings from Appalachian State grads get loud enough that the school administration feels the need to appease the rumblings.

This time it’s with a study.
When the belly aching got loud enough four years ago, Appalachian got together with The Citadel, Massachusetts, Marshall, and Army to discuss forming a new conference of their own.

What are these people thinking?  The motivation behind such a jump at this point in the growth could only be to ensure that alumni have something to talk about at the water cooler on Monday.

Perhaps one of the biggest questions concerning the jump for Appalachian is to which conference they would go.  The Atlantic Coast and Southeastern Conferences don’t seem to be the answer for the Mountaineers, with their lofty expectations of member schools and the amounts of money the schools generate.

Other problems that would stop Appalachian from making the jump to Division I-A include lacking a stadium that seats 30,000 people (Kidd-Brewer seats 16,500 - down from 18,500 in 1992.), and an average of 17,000 fans in a four-year period.  Appalachian’s average attendance last year hovered around 8,000.

No doubt the money needed to make the jump would come from prostituting the team out to larger programs.  Appalachian, which usually wins about seven or eight games per year, would only manage to win three or four games per year.

Another roadblock in the way of ASU reaching Division I-A status is the status of 421 between Boone and Yadkinville.  With things the way they are now, no one wants to make the drive up to Boone to take in a game.

Other Division I-A schools with major football programs have something that ASU does not have: decent roads.

Take Clemson, for example. Clemson has about 17,000 students (5,000 more than Appalachian), they have better roads leading to their university and, more importantly, to their football field.

It seems rather idiotic to consider the jump until the roads are in place to support a Division I-A program.

Another argument for making the jump to Division I-A is Marshall’s success in making the jump.

Marshall made the upgrade to Division I-A and went to the Motor City Bowl in Detroit in their first year as a Division I-A school.

Of course the Motor City Bowl is a third-world bowl, but the success was enough to make ASU alumni jealous.

An often overlooked aspect of Marshall’s move to the Mid- America Conference was that they fit in better with the MAC geographically.  The move was not made just to improve the program to Division I-A status, but to put Marshall in a conference where they were closer to the other member schools.

My argument is not that Appalachian should remain Division I-AA indefinitely.  Eventually, it will be suitable for ASU’s football team to make the jump to Division I-A competition.

The upgrade should be done when the school is ready to make the jump, not when the alumni are ready.

Thanks to Kevin Costner and the movie, “Field of Dreams,” there is the belief that if you build it, they will come.  Boone is not the next field of dreams for football.  Right now, due to many reasons, people are not coming to the football games.  Throwing a lot of money at the problem is not going to fix it.
 

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