UALR is doing a feasibility study on starting a football program.
http://lrtrojans.com/news/2017/7/12/...ity-study.aspx
UALR is doing a feasibility study on starting a football program.
http://lrtrojans.com/news/2017/7/12/...ity-study.aspx
Mayor & Chamber have been pushing for this. I'd say there's a 50/50 chance.
1) Mitigate loss of Hog games to local economy
2) Justify War Memorial's continued existence
3) Build local pride in home team, community, etc
4) Jockey for position in next round of re-alignment
If I'm not mistaken according to its bylaws the Sun Belt would have to take them as a full conference member. They truly do have a clear path into the FBS.
At the same time it was just a year ago when Karl Benson was touting the fact the league was at its perfect number - 10 for football - after adding CCU and dropping NMSU and Idaho. If they were to stay at 10 I wonder who they would replace?
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I don't think this is simply sudden ambition on UALR's part. i expect there's been some conference nudging in order to keep the football membership at 10 after a couple of years pass. Of course any school that might be dropping out of FBS would deny it. And I also have no idea who that might be.
I've wondered why UALR didn't make the move years ago. I think they could pull it off, providing Fayetteville wouldn't block them.
As I think more about this ... it's probably already been decided.
Either they're not gonna do it, and this study is just to show that they did their due diligence; OR
they're gonna do it, and this study is just to show that they did their due diligence.
(Not to be cynical or anything ... I've just been in the public sector in LR for awhile now.)
Louisiana has only about 700 thousand more population than Arkansas yet it has five FBS division schools while Arkansas has only two. Adding another would hurt Arkansas State's (and Central's) recruiting and would also hurt ours in southern Arkansas (a la Dixon, Dancy, and Lovett). We also get a lot of students from the El Dorado area who might find UALR more attractive with a football program.
You reckon? I knew a bunch of El Dorado folks back in the day. Not a SINGLE one of them has ever considered being a Tech fan since their last day at Tech, but they LOVE the Razorbacks.
Saying that, over the years some of the best Tech fans I know came from Arkansas and don't care for the Pigs at all now. Never heard one of them say they chose Tech over ULAR for any reason other than Tech being a better school.