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Georgia, Notre Dame, Southern California - all those kind of folks." - Coach Erk Russell
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The Reclassification Mess

by NWGaEagle & Eagle22

So the year was 2000, GSU had just pulled down the goal posts in Chattanooga amongst the pepper spray, horse-mounted security, and thousands of their friends and fellow fans. The NCAA meetings for the year came and went and the impression was that football as fans knew it was about to change. Division I-AA was to be no more. A letter went out to current Southern Boosters members giving them insight in to the upcoming changes.

A plan had been hatched and by March of 2001, it was decided that we would instead see a BCS Tier and a Championship Tier which was to be implemented by August 2003. The BCS Tier would be the upper tier of football, it would require a $25M athletic budget, average attendance greater than 35,000 and 85 scholarships. The Championship Tier would be schools that had an athletic budget between $9M and $15M, average attendance of 17,000 and 75 scholarships.

At the time, this was going to be our 'move up'. Southern Boosters Chairman Mike Long and the Boosters organization worked with the athletic administration and the University to implement a plan for addressing the future needs. Thoughts were that we would see plenty of the non-BCS I-A teams drop down and we'd have much greater football competition. So Southern Boosters went to work with a new "Double Up to Leave Double A" campaign to increase the GSU athletic budget by $1.25M.

One thing that letter describes is what was 'believed' to transpire, at least as far as what the NCAA would ultimately do. There was mention of a committee, then eventually some implementation in 2003. Well, the changes that took place in December 2006, the change in nomenclature from I-AA to FCS, and other minor changes to enhance the FCS, were all that evolved out of this movement nearly six years ago. It should be also pointed out that the non-BCS teams in 1-A were successful in blocking nearly all legislation aimed at weakening their position, [1] which was the only way they would be effectively shuffled 'back' into a lower classification.[2]

The resultant work was watered down and delayed by the schools and conferences and by the time the 2003 legislative session hit, the deadline came and went. The final pieces of the plan were implemented in 2006 and what we got was a very minimal change in the I-A/I-AA classification. [3] All that really happened is that they renamed the divisions and we saw NO teams drop back to I-AA, excuse me, FCS.

At the time that letter came out, the SoCon had progressive leadership in Alfred White. He, along with Greg Sankey and Doug Fullerton (Southland and Big Sky commissioners respectively), were on the forefront [4] [5] [6] in working towards these changes. Evidently they saw clouds on the horizon, because it wasn't very long before White moved to the Asheville franchise in the NBA's Development League, and Sankey left for the SEC to be an associate commissioner in charge of compliance.

We lost at least 5 years of momentum banking our program on that ordeal and the time to remedy that is now. Alfred White is not going to be able to help our University. Schools like Troy State, MTSU, Central Florida, UConn, South Florida, Western Kentucky, North Texas, Marshall, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, and others have seen this and WE SHOULD SEE IT NOW.

SouthernFACTS.org is a call to fans and boosters to get behind the administration to re-implement the "Double up to leave Double A" program. Make it an 18-month plan just like it was intended. We can no longer rely on the NCAA to help out as they have shown that they do not have the power to enact change anymore. We must take this by the horns and MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Set the goals and let's go for them! The time is now!