College football, by and large, is a place where you’re supposed to earn your stripes. We don’t usually think of it as a place for hand-outs.
With enough hard work, dedication, skill and maybe a smidge of luck, after all, even Davids can have their day against Goliaths. Once in a blue moon, The Citadel beats an Arkansas football program, an Appalachian State topples a Michigan or Montana knocks off Washington.
Yes, six FCS/I-AA classified teams have upset ranked FBS/I-A teams since 1983, but for the most part these kinds of games turn into bloodbaths. Consider that SEC teams are 19-0 against the SWAC since 2009, with the average score of those games being 54-7.
These days, in the wake of so much conference realignment and expansion, Football Championship Subdivision programs can serve as relatively last-hour replacements for the Power 4 big boys.
“The breaking of schedule agreements is more frequent these days and can leave a team scrambling to fill a vacancy,” Tom Layberger wrote for Forbes in early June. “Such instances could result in a team scheduling an opponent, such as one from the Football Championship Subdivision, it otherwise would not,” he added, apparently rubbing his hands over a pig-shaped crystal ball.
Indeed, Layberger looks like a soothsayer given this week’s news that Missouri State had cancelled its 2025 game with Arkansas in search of a higher payday, likely in the seven digits, as it joins the FBS next season. Arkansas has tabbed SWAC program Alabama A&M as Missouri State’s replacement, potentially saving in the ballpark of $1 million in the process.
Arkansas Football Sacrificial Lambs
Scheduling a program like Alabama A&M is, for all intents and purposes, signing up for a third and final scrimmage of fall camp. As our own Andrew Hutchinson has proposed, it would make more sense to play such an opponent as part of an exhibition spring game(s) than pretend like an expected blowout of this magnitude is supposed to mean something.
Bobby Petrino, Arkansas’ offensive coordinator, has been on both sides of the issue. In 2022, he almost led an FCS program to a victory over the Razorbacks as head coach of Missouri State when his Bears lost 38-27 in Fayetteville.
But he’s not looking forward to having to play FCS teams now that he’s back in the Power 4 level. “I don’t really like the matchup,” he said in a press conference Tuesday night. “I don’t think it’s really what we want in college football.”
This viewpoint is in line with Nick Saban, the former Alabama head coach who often had a hard time scheduling non-conference opponents due to the Crimson Tide’s dominance during his tenure. “We don’t want to play those types of teams,” Saban said in 2014, referring to FCS programs. “Sometimes we don’t have a choice.”
Almost all college football coaches are on board with playing FCS programs, even if they do so grudgingly like Saban did. Otherwise, there’s no way that all but 15 of 134 FBS teams would be playing an FCS opponent this season.
Some, though, have embraced it far more than others.
A prime example here would be Mark Richt, the former Georgia and Miami head coach. Richt cared most about what would help cultivate the game of football on the whole, and so saw supporting its lower levels helping the higher levels, as well as visa versa. “If we don’t have those games with the FCS schools, a lot of them have a very difficult time making their budgets,” Richt said at SEC Spring Meetings in 2014. “I think college football is too important at all levels to hurt them by setting criteria that will not allow you to play them.”
On Tuesday night, Petrino alluded to Richt, who’s now battling Parkinson’s Disease in retirement. “When Mark Richt used to come to all the head coaches meetings, he was the person that stood up for college football at every level,” Petrino recalled. “He had a lot of really good ideas how we could keep college football going at all the different levels that there is, not just at that very, very top.”
Petrino Not in Sync with Jimbo Fisher
Jimbo Fisher, the former Texas A&M head coach under whom Petrino worked last season as offensive coordinator, was more in the camp of Richt. Fisher, like his mentor Bobby Bowden, came up in the FCS ranks at what’s now called Samford University in Alabama. He knows well how much these programs need the payments often equating to about $500,000 per game from Power 4 schools.
“We need to play a (FCS) game,” Fisher said in 2022. “I came from that league, Bobby Bowden came from that league. How do those schools make budget” otherwise?
Funny you should ask, Jimbo. Your former OC has a simple solution: the haves in college football should just hand over the equivalent of what those FCS programs would have received in a guarantee game, and then play better opponents instead. “I’ve always felt like big conferences should just take money and give it to the FCS and everybody play a more competitive schedule,” Petrino said.
There you have it – some mandated sharing of the obscene wealth that the higher reaches of college football generates to save the day. No more ridiculous SEC vs SWAC showdowns, but the little guys still get helped. If there was ever a time to inject a little socialism right into the veins of America’s beloved past-time, this may be it.
Yes, there may be a $2.8 billion settlement with NCAA student-athletes coming around the corner, but SEC schools will absolutely still be able to muster the funds needed for Petrino’s idea even in a future of tighter finances.
Make no mistake: there is still plenty of margin left.
Red-blooded, look-out-for-your-own-interests capitalism is no imminent danger.
Jimbo Fisher, whose firing led Petrino back to Arkansas, has 77.6 million reasons to agree.
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For the umpteenth time, Irwin addresses Bobby Petrino as next Hogs coach at 21:20 here:
More on Arkansas football from BoAS:
