Houston Christian University Athletics

In an effort to provide a little more background information about the recent announcement that HBU is joining the Southland Conference and preparing to start a football team, the following questions and answers might be informative.
 
1) How soon will HBU compete in the Southland Conference?
HBU will become an official member of the Southland Conference on July 1, 2013 and will immediately begin to compete for championships in all of the sports that HBU currently sponsors with the exception of men's soccer who will continue to compete in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.
 
2) How soon will HBU compete in football in the Southland Conference?
HBU will compete in the Southland Conference beginning in the fall of 2014, but may possibly play some non-coference contests during the fall of 2013.
 
3) What are the different levels of football played in the NCAA?
The NCAA is divided into three different levels of competition, Division I, II and III. The difference in these divisions is the amount of scholarships offered at each level, with Division I offering the most. As a result, most of the best athletes and, therefore, most of the best teams, can be found competing at the Division I level. This is the level that HBU historically competed at and has chosen to return to, as it allows us to garner the most national attention and associate with the types of schools HBU strives to benchmark itself against.
 
4) I have heard the terms FBS and FCS used to describe different NCAA Division I football programs.  What do those terms mean?
Within Division I there are actually three different types of schools. These are Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools, Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) schools and non-football schools. FBS schools are schools such as Texas (Big 12 Conference), Rice and Houston (Conference USA). They compete in post-season bowls and the national champion is crowned in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) national championship game. FCS schools are schools like Sam Houston State, Stephen F. Austin, Nicholls State and Lamar, who are all in the Southland Conference. The FCS postseason is much like the NCAA basketball tournament, with a selection committee picking 20 teams to compete in a single-elimination playoff format to determine a winner.
 
5) What is the difference in how scholarships are awarded between FBS and FCS schools?
The difference between FBS schools and FCS schools is in the number and type of scholarships awarded. At the FBS level, each football athlete receives a full scholarship consisting of tuition, room, board, books and fees. This is called a “head-count sport,” as each person counts as a full scholarship. They can award 85 of those scholarships. At the Division I level, men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, and women’s tennis are also head-count sports. All other sports are called “equivalency sports.” These are sports that award a given number of scholarships that can be divided in any manner among a larger number of athletes. FCS football is one of these sports. FCS football has a maximum of 63 scholarships that can be awarded to 85 athletes (although at the FCS level there is usually up to as many as 10 non-scholarship players also, for a total squad size close to 95). This means that often each student is paying at least a portion of the total cost of attendance to the school.  At the FCS level, football is much less expensive to operate both in terms of the number of scholarships and total operating expenses. FCS schools do not spend anywhere near as much on football as schools such as Baylor, Rice, TCU and Texas do.
 
What HBU announced was the desire to start a football program at the FCS level.
 
6) Can HBU actually ever play an FBS team like Texas, Baylor or Rice?
Yes. Once certain NCAA rules have been met in terms of the amount of financial aid awarded to HBU football scholarship athletes, then HBU could schedule any FBS team that agrees to play us.   Games pitting FCS teams against FBS schools often result in large guarantees being paid to the FCS team, but almost always take place at the home field of the FBS school.
 
7) Could HBU field a football team at the Division ll or lll level instead of the Division I level?
No. NCAA rules prohibit a school from “playing down” a level in one sport while continuing to play all other sports at the Division l level.
 
8) What are the benefits of playing football to an institution at the FCS level?
There are several benefits to a university that competes in FCS football. One such benefit is increased male enrollment at the institution. A study done by Nebraska-Kearny showed that for every male football player brought to campus, two extra males enrolled. 
 
A second benefit of adding football is that it makes HBU’s athletic department more attractive to higher caliber, more regionalized leagues. Division I leagues have seen a lot of shifting of members in the last couple of years, with even HBU’s current league, the Great West Conference, being affected. Former Great West Conference member South Dakota will begin competing in the Summit League this fall, and North Dakota will leave the Great West to join the Big Sky Conference in the fall of 2012. HBU’s football announcement positions the University to take advantage of potential openings in other leagues, as most conferences require football as a component of membership.
 
A third benefit is that having the sport of football helps to increase the retention of existing students by providing another series of fall events that can serve to help build school spirit, much like the women’s soccer championship did on campus last fall.
And finally, the addition of the sport of football will allow for greater engagement of HBU’s alumni and friends as the University seeks to better attract attention and donors.
 
9) Can HBU actually afford this?
The study that was commissioned and approved by the Board of Trustees showed the sport of football actually could provide continuing revenue to the University after five years through the tuition, room and board gained from additional students – both football players and others – and additional revenue from the NCAA gained by playing the sport. Increased fundraising to offset some of the start-up costs is anticipated but was not figured into the very conservative study.
 
10) Would HBU begin playing football games the year that the program is started?
No. The timeline that HBU established to start the sport calls for the hiring of several coaches, who would then recruit football players to campus, in the first year. The second year would entail adding more staff and facilities, coinciding with the start of football practices with mostly freshmen players. The third year would feature the first actual intercollegiate competitions in the sport, utilizing mostly freshmen and sophomore student athletes to field the team. 
 
11) Where would HBU play?
That has not been determined yet. The long-term goal is for the Huskies to play on campus, but in the short term HBU plans to utilize another facility in Houston.
 
12) What has been the response?
The response has been overwhelmingly positive from those that have voiced their feelings in person, in the news or through social media. The media coverage was widespread and very supportive locally and even stretched across the country as other markets picked up the announcement.