2025 General Football Thread

[mat1992]

Villanova to the PL has been rumored for over a year now.

[TuTigers2012]

46 minutes ago, AtlantaTiger said:

 

Nova is gone beginning 2026. Announcement expected tomorrow.

Joey D ladies and gents!   Towson will be the last one out of the building... someone remind Eigenbrot to turn the lights off behind him

[Tiger93]

49 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

Nova is gone beginning 2026. Announcement expected tomorrow.

Joey D ladies and gents!   Towson will be the last one out of the building... someone remind Eigenbrot to turn the lights off behind him

Yeah, there really are no places left to go. Patriot League wouldn't take us back, we don't have enough cache to move up, SoCon and CAA are pretty much in the same situation. We need a 2-3 year level of sustained success to generate some enthusiasm, and let the chips fall where they may. It hard to believe it has only been two years of the Pete Shinnick-era. I think it has been alright, but need a quality jump this year. The Delaware (2023) and Stony Brook (2024) home losses the last two years each took all the air out of what was in the balloon. It really should be a winnable conference at this point, but I know that is probably not what we will get. 

[mat1992]

There’s no perfect solution for Towson but I’d be shocked if Steve isn’t looking into other options for football and possibly all Sports. The ship be sunk. 

[Tiger93]

16 minutes ago, mat1992 said:

There’s no perfect solution for Towson but I’d be shocked if Steve isn’t looking into other options for football and possibly all Sports. The ship be sunk. 

I am sure he is been out ahead of this for a while, but it is going to be a tough nut to crack. I truly believe we are a higher caliber than what this league is becoming, but the first part is we have to go prove that on the actual field. There are a lot of other aspects, but we have to show that we can put a quality product on the field.

It has happened in fits and spurts with this program, and it is important for the future of this program that the next couple of years bring some success with them. I know that might seen overdramatic, but with all of this shifting we need to prove we stand out from others in the CAA. Right now, we don't seem like we have any better of a future than Stony Brook, Monmouth or Bryant (when it comes to football and overall). That needs to change on the football field this year. 

[TSU88]

23 minutes ago, mat1992 said:

The ship be sunk. 

Great homage to Michael Ray Richardson 

I hope there’s a plan because by my way of thinking, we’re in purgatory-we can’t plausibly go up, what with attendance avg around 6K a game and we wouldn’t be accepted in the Patriot League because we don’t fit their academic profile. Meanwhile, the CAA is a shell of its former self. I guess UNH & Rhode Island are the crème de la crème, with us & Stony Brook somewhere in the mix. Yikes.  What other options are there? I don’t see any special cache as to the SoCon. Maybe that would be a slight upgrade, but if that’s the case, what’s the point? 

Whither football at TU 
 

[Tiger93]

11 minutes ago, TSU88 said:

Great homage to Michael Ray Richardson 

I hope there’s a plan because by my way of thinking, we’re in purgatory-we can’t plausibly go up, what with attendance avg around 6K a game and we wouldn’t be accepted in the Patriot League because we don’t fit their academic profile. Meanwhile, the CAA is a shell of its former self. I guess UNH & Rhode Island are the crème de la crème, with us & Stony Brook somewhere in the mix. Yikes.  What other options are there? I don’t see any special cache as to the SoCon. Maybe that would be a slight upgrade, but if that’s the case, what’s the point? 

Whither football at TU 
 

You summed it up pretty well. I think there will be some limited opportunities as the landscape continues to shift, but we have to have make ourselves more attractive on the field too. I imagine as leagues fracture there might be new ones built out of them or pieced together, but we have to be proactive and show that we can be a quality program

We have never really had any sustained success. Just fits and stops. Between that and the consistent lack of excitement of athletics that our community, student body, and alumni have show historically, FBS always seemed like a pipe dream when were talking about it. 

[AtlantaTiger]

I’m mostly bummed because TU leadership has been largely reactionary, passive and unimaginative in the modern collegiate sports landscape. Rather than taking the bull by the horns and actively shop our program around for a better opportunity our President, AD, admin, etc. seemingly sit on their hands and wait for things to happen around them. While making a move to SoCon might not be the sexiest play to make, it might be the only play left to make and I happen to think it would be a significantly better group of (football) schools to be associated with than the patchwork remnants of the CAA. Who knows if that’s even an option but if I were Steve I’d be on a plane to wherever their league offices are and be groveling for entry into SoCon. 

Edited June 3, 2025 by AtlantaTiger

[TuTigers2012]

1 hour ago, Tiger93 said:

Yeah, there really are no places left to go. Patriot League wouldn't take us back, we don't have enough cache to move up, SoCon and CAA are pretty much in the same situation. We need a 2-3 year level of sustained success to generate some enthusiasm, and let the chips fall where they may. It hard to believe it has only been two years of the Pete Shinnick-era. I think it has been alright, but need a quality jump this year. The Delaware (2023) and Stony Brook (2024) home losses the last two years each took all the air out of what was in the balloon. It really should be a winnable conference at this point, but I know that is probably not what we will get. 

The CAA should be won every year with the losses of: JMU, Delaware, Richmond, Nova and WM in the last 5 years...

Funny you mention those two games, those were the last two I attended (since the playoff shit show again Duquesne).  Safe to say, left before the first quarter was over against the hens and just after half against Stony. 

I'll stay away from games this year! Promise!

[TSU88]

I wonder how long UNH & Rhode Island are going to stay? And Maine too. Just wondering if those 3 NE schools could cobble together a New England centric conference, that they may bolt too.

Meanwhile, the PL is going to have a helluva football conference, with all these CAA additions. I’d beg them to let us join, for football, but I doubt they’d take us.

I hate to be gloomy Gus here, but at the moment I’m not bullish on the future sustainability of TU football. We can’t go up (I forgot to mention earlier that FCS programs now have to pay like a 1 time multi million dollar fee to move up to FBS. Even if we wanted to do that, which I doubt, where’s that money coming from?) 

The cost of maintaining a football program has to be daunting, especially when the program doesn’t generate any revenue on its own. We’re not too big to fail. There are other universities with good sized enrollment (can anyone say George Mason) that eschew football in favor of focusing more resources on basketball. Forget GMU, we don’t have to look any further than C of C and UNCW as examples.