The funny thing about UMHB being concerned about having a smaller budget than the other Lone Star Conference schools is I get the impression that most of those schools administrations barely tolerate athletics while UMHB's administration has been rather supportive. I feel like that could go a long way in closing the financial gap as those schools struggle to keep good coaches.

This will be a rough year to try to move up. With D1 imposing roster limits the transfer portal is probably going to get flooded with roster cuts

Quote from: TheChucker on December 15, 2024, 05:32:21 PMI'll just drop this here for fodder since the season is over for all ASC schools. I found some guy over on the D2 board claiming to have inside info that UMHB was looking into the GAC conference.

Disclaimer: the OP comes across in that board as being a bit of a...well...eccentric. His enrollment figures are way off too. It could all be BS, so take it with a grain of salt.

https://www.d2football.com/forum/forum/football/super-region-4/lsc/851623-insider-information-on-umhb-conference-shopping

I'm not sure this guy's angle. If D2 is the goal for UMHB, I can see aiming for GAC because it is the class of our geographic region. To succeed at that level we would need to compete with the likes of Harding and Owachata. The Lone Star Conference is struggling to keep up with them in the playoffs. I can see UMHB becoming competitive rather quickly in the LSC, whereas the GAC will probably be a challenge but could bring us better long term success if we step up to the competition, and probably provides better potential future rivals.

I can see a near future where the top D1 schools are only recruiting the 5 star players out of high school and filling the rest of their recruiting by plucking stand outs from smaller schools. Could lead to more ETBU situations where more talented players are available to D3 teams, but run the risk of being plucked by D2/FCS schools trying to reload after the transfer portal depleted them.

My only surprise is they didn't give TLU or Trinity an easier matchup to increase the chances of a 3rd round Texas bus trip.

If UMHB truly reached out to everyone to schedule a game and only 1 team accepted, nobody has room to complain. Any bubble team that thinks they have a better team than UMHB was given an invite to prove it on the field.