On Tuesday, Stony Brook’s Athletics Department announced that the football team will be joining the Big South conference as an associate member, beginning with the 2008 season. The initial agreement runs for four years, is renewable, and contains a buyout clause, for an undisclosed amount. The deal first came together with the Big South contacting SB, having heard that they were ‘thinking about ugrading,’ according to Kyle Kallander, the Commissioner of the conference.
SB had been a member of the Northeast Conference (NEC) since 1999, and left the conference following a second-place finish last year. They won the championship in 2005. SB will play the 2007 season independent of any conference. SB will continue to compete at the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level. The FCS was formerly called Division I-AA. SB’s 19 other teams will continue to play in the America East Conference. The Big South conference has sponsored football since 2001, and will grow to six teams with SB’s addition. It will gain another active member in 2011, when Presbytarian College makes the transition to the FCS level.
To be eligible for an automatic bid into the FCS playoffs, a conference is required to have six teams playing together for three years. SB’s addition moves up the eligibility from 2013 to 2010, provided the system remains the same. The conference has become more competitive with each year, and had two teams ranked in the top 25 simultaneously last year for the first time. The other schools in the conference are: Charleston Southern University, Coastal Carolina University, Gardner-Webb University, Liberty University, and the Virginia Military Institute.
The football program intends to continue moving up, and will play a Division I-A program every year beginning in 2011. Over the next few years, their non-conference schedule will include games against some of the high-caliber programs in the Northeast, including the University of Massachusetts, who they played in 2006. They’ll also continue to play local rival Hofstra, as well as Albany, and Central Connecticut State University, the team which ended their championship chances last season.
The move to the conference also carries benefits for recruiting. Head Coach Chuck Priore said, ‘In the past two years, we’ve had to recruit with ‘we’re gonna be there’. Now we’ve arrived.’ As Fiore put it, ‘You need animals to have a circus.’
Fiore also commented on the future for athletic scholarships. By the time they begin playing I-A teams, they intend to be up to the maximum of 63 scholarships. As per the Title IX requirement that women’s sports get equal treatment, they will gain as many scholarships as the men’s teams, including football, gain. The money for the scholarships will come from revenue generated by the Athletics Department, from things such as donations and ticket sales. He added that there are no plans to add or drop any women’s sports.
Another financial concern was the increased travel, as SB will have to make several trips to the south each year. Fiore said that financially, this was accounted for, as travel was going to increase anyway, with the NEC adding Ducane, a school in Virginia. Where the team has taken a bus to games, they will now often find themselves flying to away games. Fiore said that there won’t be negative effects on the players, and that their welfare on and off the field is always the first thing Athletics thinks about when making decisions that affect them.
Priore feels that despite the fact that they’ll now be flying, and getting home much later, the ‘opportunity outweighs the negatives.’ Priore said, ‘SB’s vision is to be nationally exposed.’ The move will help them there, in that Big South schools have appeared on ESPN’s family of networks four times. Last year, the five teams in the conference averaged over 6,800 fans attending each game. Last season, Costal Carolina earned an FCS playoff spot, becoming the first team in the conference to do so.
