Lehigh Football Nation

Coastal Carolina is nuts. The Sun Belt is crazy. These will not be among the official statements you will be reading today in regards to Coastal Carolina's whirlwind acceptance of their athletic program into the Sun Belt. The Sun Belt did not make this decision because Coastal Carolina was the most qualified candidate.  They were not convinced by an impressive attendance number or a plan of action that stated exactly how the Chanticleers were going to be able to pay for an expensive, permanent upgrade to the costs and expenses of FBS football. They picked them because they were in the right place, and were willing to go. And that's precisely why someone at the NCAA needs to put a stop to the the madness that is the current structure for drafting FBS teams.

Unless you've been living under a rock the last five years, you've probably heard about "realignment", or, as I like to call it, "realignmentageddon", in Division I athletics. Led by Nebraska's departure from the Big XII to the Big 10, the dominoes have tumbles all through Division I, directly affecting pretty much every conference's membership with the exception of the Ivy League. Central to "realignmentageddon" is football, whose value to television executives is broadly accepted as the reasons why, say, Rutgers and Maryland abandoned decades-long relationships with their old conferences in order to get larger chunks of TV money. But why is it only individual schools?  Why wouldn't a conference which currently sponsors FCS football just decide, one day, to become an FBS conference? The short answer is: the NCAA rulebook is written than way. But the long answer is that the NCAA rulebook, essentially, forces the current FCS ...

Sometimes, I wonder what I'm going to write about the world of FCS on a Friday afternoon. But then, an idea drops in from out of the sky. Almost literally. That's after I discovered, thanks to Andy Staples of Sports Illustrated ,  of Georgia State's effort to buy fans get students and fans to show up at a football game featuring a nationally-ranked opponent in FCS facing off against your 0-5 team. That's to have - get this - a halftime drop of cash . The Facebook promotion to my left is no joke.  No joke at all.  At halftime, Georgia's Own Credit Union is going to be dropping $10,000 cash from the rafters in order to booster attendance at their game against nationally-ranked New Hampshire this weekend. It's probably not the dumbest idea in all of sports, but it's certainly up there.