Football programs at Historically Black College and Universities could be sacked for a huge financial hit if other major conferences adopt the Big Ten’s proposal to stop scheduling football games against schools from lower level conferences.
The Big Ten is one of 11 conferences that make up the NCAA’s Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the top tier in college football.
HBCUs that are members of the SWAC and MEAC, along with Tennessee State and other schools that play at the next level—the Football Championship Subdivision—can earn guarantees well over $500,000 for playing teams from the top level. More often than not the games are blowouts—many of epic proportions—in favor of the FBS schools, which schedule the contests because they give them an additional home game and a soldout stadium.
Savannah State’s 84-0 loss to Oklahoma State in 2012 is the largest margin of victory for an FBS school against an FCS foe since these matchups began in 1978, the year that the NCAA split Division I into two levels. It eclipsed Arkansas State’s 83-10 victory against Texas Southern in 2008.
FBS schools were 1,838-396-18 for an all-time winning percentage of .820 in games against FCS schools entering the 2012 season, according to FootballGeography.com
Last season, 79 of 122 FCS members—including 14 of 22 Division I HBCUs—played at least one game against an FBS opponent. South Carolina State, Morgan State and Savannah State each played two. Ironically, Big Ten kingpin Ohio State will pay Florida A&M $850,000 for a game on Sept. 21 that may well be one of the conference’s last games against an FCS opponent.
“While the Big Ten may say that (it won’t schedule FCS opponents), others will do what’s best for their conference,’’ Bethune-Cookman athletic director Lynn Thompson says, sounding a note of optimism that other FBS conferences won’t become copycats of the Big Ten.
