Nick from KSU Owls Nest wrote to remind me of an extensive and detailed set of resources on Kennesaw State football: the school's own Explore Football sub-site. I haven't used KSU's site in years, but from experience I can imagine how this page went undetected and/or forgotten about until the Nest dug it back up.
You can review the names of exploratory committee members (every roundup needs a Doc Holliday, but I'm not ecstatic to see 22 percent of the committee on the Positive Alternatives subcluster) and so forth, but here's the good stuff.
The hypothetical football budget [PDF] lists a hypothetical football budget, sure, but more interesting is the proposed timeline:
- Year 1: the academic year in which the head coach is hired (December or January). He will fund-raise, set a recruiting base, do community outreach and consider which assitants to hire.
- Year 2: hire the top four members of the coaching staff and recruit for Year 3, which includes walk-ons, JUCO and four-year transfers along with high school players. A spring practice for recruits and walk-ons.
- Year 3: hire the remaining staff, including coaches and recruit. Hold fall and spring practices/scrimmages.
- Year 4: initial year of competition with a maximum of 50 scholarships.
- Year 5: add five scholarships for a total of 55. Second year of competition.
- year 6: add five scholarships for a total of 60. Third year of competition.
- Year 7: add three scholarships for the maximum total of 63. Fourth year of competition.
It mentions the possibility of cutting out a prep year, meaning we could start as early as 2013 by my Kennesaw State algebra-flunking math.
This doc also includes:
- finding a football conference ASAP and leaving all other sports in the Atlantic Sun
- scheduling some cupcakes and a couple bigger names
- securing Georgia State as the school's major rival
- a $180,000 head coaching budget
- the Big East as an ultimate conference goal
- an estimate of $1.2 million for facilities in addition to the already complete stadium
- the addition of women's rowing as a Title IX consideration
- and like ninety pages of line-item budgetry.
The other interesting find, NCAA D1 Football Options [PDF], breaks down whether to go for non-scholly, FCS, or straight to the big time. Experienced fans can rule out two of those without even looking, as we're neither Yale nor Alabama, but it's a good primer for football non-nerds. One portion lists conference ambitions, with the Ohio Valley, Big South, or Southern serving as an eventual avenue to the Sun Belt, Conference USA, or MAC, all leading to the Big East.
Getting into the Big East, a BCS conference, seems pretty damn lofty, but South Florida pulled it off in only its ninth season of football. That program, of course, is an incredible exception. Plus Georgia State has and will continue to build quite a head start -- two Atlanta teams in a primarily northern conference might be too much, though any conference would be wise to expand South as much and as quickly as possible due to college-football-crazed TV money, goldmine recruiting, and the American population's Southern migration trend.
That last paragraph: are we getting ahead of ourselves? Oh, by a light year. But I'm 99.9 percent sure football's happening -- we'll find out for sure tomorrow, and we might as well start talking like football fans.
Get ready for Kennesaw State, the Big East's 2022 Chick Fil A Championship Playoff-And-Bowl-Game Mishmash Tournament entry against top-seeded Pac-28 champion Penn State.