Eight months after announcing a climb to the Football Bowl Subdivision and 11 months before that challenging switch occurs, University of Delaware officials are even more certain they’re making the right move.
Delaware becomes a member of Conference USA next July. That will involve 14 of the Blue Hens’ 22 athletic teams.
But the change is all about football.
The ascent to FBS ends Delaware’s long and periodically prolific membership in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision, formerly Division I-AA. Previously, Delaware was in Division II following a long stint in what was termed “the college division.”
Delaware won six national titles and competed for many others under those various classifications, which had always been viewed as the second level of college football.
Ironically though, Delaware moves to the FBS when it has become significantly segmented, with a major divide between the Power Four conference schools and those in the Group of Five, which includes CUSA.
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So the Blue Hens may still be second-class citizens in college football’s competitive hierarchy. Nonetheless, they are moving to a more prestigious, potentially lucrative, but also costlier address.
Athletic director Chrissi Rawak cited “the importance of having a seat at the table and being a part of the conversations and recognizing that college athletics is evolving.”
“We have,” she added, “the opportunity to be a part of that” with the change to CUSA.
That evolution includes a growing dependence on name/image/likeness opportunities for student-athletes, plus pending court and government rulings regarding paying and sharing revenues with athletes and increasing scholarships that would further increase expenses.
Nonetheless, when it enters CUSA on July 1, 2025, Rawak said: “We’re going to walk in like we’ve been there.”
Right place, right time
Being in a tougher, deeper league will certainly provide challenges that football coach Ryan Carty believes Delaware can meet.
“The biggest things you’ll see in terms of successes and failures are, it’s like anything else,” Carty said. “It’s do you have good enough players? Do you have the right resources? How does the scheduling look?
“Those kinds of things, that can kind of propel you. Are you ready?”
Carty has no doubt Delaware is equipped for a successful move, having the ideal leadership and financial backing.
Now he and his staff just need to find bigger, better, stronger and faster players, and more of them. At least 10 rising high school seniors have already verbally accepted scholarship offers to be part of that transition.
“Making a move like this was something that we didn’t jump at,” Carty said. “Trying to make sure that we fit and could do this successfully were thought out before the move and then after the move.
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“We still have a lot of discussions on how this can go better or worse, based on the things that we do, and to put ourselves in a place to do it correctly,’’
While certainly challenging and more costly, Conference USA is viewed as a much more suitable home than the Coastal Athletic Association, where Delaware teams have resided for nearly a quarter-century. Membership changes in recent years have undermined the CAA’s status.
Importantly, going to CUSA will also significantly increase Delaware’s national notoriety, an effort in modern-day brand building that will be aided by CUSA’s TV contracts with ESPN and CBS. Playing in parts of the country it has rarely visited and regularly appearing on national telecasts will make the Blue Hens significantly more familiar than they’ve been.
Delaware thoroughly examined the advantages of the move and its potential perils for months leading up to last November’s official announcement. In doing so, it earned the approval of UD president Dennis Assanis and its Board of Trustees.
As sure as she was then that the move made sense, Rawak said she is “so much more confident that it was the absolute right decision for us. That doesn’t surprise me. It just validates the choice.”
A worthy investment
It hasn’t come without a cost, and there will certainly be more.
There is a new $5 million admission fee to the FBS, which Delaware recently paid off after raising money from more than 160 supportive donors.
“I felt like,” Rawak said, “from a resource perspective, the fundamentals, the sophistication of who we are and where we are and where we’re trying to go, it all made sense.
“We are not having to invest a ton more because we have the resources. The way we’re structured, we have the systems and the processes in place. This is putting us in a position so that, come July 2025, we truly are ready.”
Delaware will be joining a league that presently includes Liberty, Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee, Florida International, Jacksonville State, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State, Sam Houston, UTEP and new member this year Kennesaw State. Missouri State will join Delaware in increasing CUSA membership to 12.
While travel and its accompanying costs with more flights will certainly increase for Delaware teams, Newark’s proximity to the Philadelphia and Baltimore airports was a significant factor in CUSA wanting Delaware on the league map.
The aspect of the move that has required “the most effort and work,’’ Rawak said, is improving Delaware’s in-house broadcasting capabilities because of the significant increase in events that will be streamed and televised.
“Is it going to be easy?” Rawak said of the move. “No, but it wasn’t easy before and we’re not changing who we are. We’re just competing at a higher level [in football].
“We are not changing the goal of great student-athlete experiences and championships. They should not and are not mutually exclusive. That is not changing regardless of what conference we’re in, or regardless of what division we’re in . . . We just have a greater platform to share with the entire country how awesome this place is.”
The right fit, not just financially
Delaware’s operating budget for athletics has been $36 million and will rise to roughly $40 million annually, Rawak said.
Those increased costs have already been covered, she said, by the $1 million Delaware received from CUSA as part of its media rights package for joining the league and gate guarantees for football dates at Power Four schools. Delaware has games scheduled at Colorado and Wake Forest in 2025, Vanderbilt and Virginia in 2026, Penn State in 2027, Maryland in 2028 and Pitt in 2029.
Delaware is already on par with, or better off than, its future league foes when it comes to financial backing.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s annual Equity in Athletics survey, which takes into account additional categories in determining its figures, Delaware’s $44.9 million in revenue and expenses for 2022-23 were surpassed only by Liberty’s $62.5 million among CUSA schools.
Florida International was closest at $41.4 million, followed by New Mexico State ($35.8 million) and Middle Tennessee ($35.5 million).
Delaware did, however, rank ninth among CUSA’s future dozen schools in football expenditures from that 2022-23 data, though that will certainly increase.
Rawak emphasizes that CUSA success goes well beyond having the right financial backing. Equally imperative is what she termed the overall “infrastructure.”
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“From a resource perspective, the fundamentals, the sophistication of who we are and where we are and where we’re trying to go, it all made sense,” Rawak said of the FBS move.
“We are not having to invest a ton more because we have the resources. We’re structured the way we’re structured, we have the systems and the processes in place. This is putting us in a position so that, come July 2025, we truly are ready.”
Rawak particularly touts what she terms “the student-athlete experience” as being a valuable, all-encompassing benefit in Delaware’s favor.
That includes name/image/likeness opportunities, top-notch facilities, coaches and staffers tuned in with the athletes and, said Rawak, “the education you get and the campus you have.”
As for NIL, Delaware recently announced the formation of the 302 Collective, operated by two Delaware graduates, to further find and create money-making opportunities for UD athletes.
“I know that we are ahead of many of our Group of Five peers,” Rawak said.
Nonetheless, college athletic is poised to undergo potentially tumultuous change.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on,” Rawak said. “The revenue sharing we’re going to have to consider and study, like we’ve done with all the things that have evolved into college athletics. It’s not something that we’re going to shy away from . . . It’s evolving and I want to be a part of it. I don’t want us to feel like it’s being done to us.”
Lessons from others
Some have made smooth transitions from FCS to FBS, particularly Delaware’s ex-CAA rival James Madison in the Sun Belt Conference.
Former JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne has assured Delaware leaders, Rawak said, that ‘You’re so ready for this” referring to Delaware’s investments in athletics, staffing and administrative expertise.
Last year’s two new CUSA programs enjoyed vastly different experiences in football.
Jacksonville State, which Delaware beat in a spring 2021 FCS quarterfinal, went 6-2 in the league, 9-4 overall and played in a bowl game last year.
“It’s a really good league and getting better,” Jacksonville State coach Rich Rodriguez said of Conference USA.
Sam Houston State, however, where former Delaware coach K.C. Keeler is coach and Carty was offensive coordinator for its 2021 spring FCS title, went 3-9 overall and 2-6 in the league while experiencing five harrowing defeats by a touchdown or less.
“We lost five games on five plays,” Keeler said.
Sam Houston State has spent far less on football than its CUSA counterparts, including just $5.4 million in 2022-23 according to DOE data. It is set to launch a $60 million upgrade to its stadium while still playing catch-up.
“All those little things that some of us take for granted, you can’t take those things for granted, because you’re in so many 50-50 games,” Keeler said of being in FBS and paying closer attention to details such as player nutrition, conditioning and preparation.
“Delaware is going to walk into an environment where they’re going to be playing teams just as good as them every single weekend and that’s what we found this past year.”
Certainly, Delaware has had a slew of games on its schedule most seasons that appeared to be potential mismatches. Not anymore.
The Blue Hens will also have to adjust to far more significant travel demands and mid-week games in October.
Kennesaw State coach Brian Bohannon looked at the move up, he said, as “a three- to five-year, at a minimum, build” with incremental improvements in areas such as finances, facilities and the roster.
“Financially, this is a major jump in all areas,” Bohannon said of his program’s transition. “You’re just trying to navigate the transition piece of it.”
That does present major challenges for the Blue Hens.
But as they begin preparation for their final FCS season in 2024, which Carty hopes is a springboard to future success, he feels Delaware is well positioned.
“Like anything else, we need to make sure that we’re ready for it, and I think we are,” Carty said. “. . . I have complete faith that, wherever we need to be to be successful, we will get there.”
Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.
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Publish date : 2024-07-30 08:07:12
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