It’s been fun at the mountaintop, Mountaineer fans, but it appears Appalachian State football is moving to greener pastures, thus surrendering its stature as a powerhouse program.
On Monday, the university took a significant step toward an upgrade when a feasibility committee voted unanimously to recommend to Chancellor Ken Peacock that ASU pursues moving its football program from the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision.
If Peacock gives it the thumbs up, final approval falls into the lap of the school’s board of trustees.
The financial aspect will probably be too much to resist, but the dollar signs shouldn’t blind competitive common sense.
Increased revenue as a result of a move to an FBS conference would come from -- among other things -- bowl game and television revenue shares, bigger paychecks for road games against FBS opponents and possibly a 12th regular season game.
The move up would add between 14 and 22 more scholarships and generate a new buzz, but at what price?
Like the Mountaineers, who captured three straight FCS championships (2005-07) and won or shared the last six Southern Conference championships, Marshall University was an elite program in FCS, formerly I-AA.
The Thundering Herd won two national championships (1992, ’96) and finished as the national runner-up four other times (1987, 1991, ’93 and ’95) before making the jump in 1997, when they left the Southern Conference to join the Mid-American Conference.
Marshall, now a member of Conference USA, played in eight bowl games since that time and, to its credit, won six of those.
But is the program on the national championship radar like it was before the shift?
No, and it probably never will be.
It’s one thing to make national headlines by stunning Michigan like the Mountaineers did in 2007 with their 34-32 victory over the fifth-ranked Wolverines in front of 100,000 fans at the Big House.
What if three or four Michigans are on the schedule in the same season?
Realistically, the win-loss record tumbles.
A move up also makes it tougher to stomach a loss to a nonconference team like Wofford would become.
Being an FCS national championship contender with an opportunity to pick off one of the big boys from the FBS each year has a nicer ring to it than the cha-ching of the cash register just to be an also-ran.
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