Couch: Big Ten makes right call in saying so long to teams like Furman

EAST LANSING – Major college football is riddled with competitive injustices. There’s no realistic way to change the financial inequities. Purdue will never have what Ohio State does. Central Michigan will never be Purdue. 

But at least they all have access to the same number of warm bodies. They’ve all chosen to play in the same division of college football — the Football Bowl Subdivision, aka FBS, once known as Division I-A. They all have 85 scholarships.

Michigan State’s opponent in Friday’s opener — the Furman University Paladins — does not. They’ve got 63. They play in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), which maybe you once knew as Division I-AA.

You’ll never likely see them or any of their FCS brethren again at Spartan Stadium. The Big Ten is mandating its members stay away from these lower-division opponents from now on. 

Spartan Speak: Furman preview, Week 1 MSU depth chart

Fairness was cited in the decision. But this is about what best serves the Big Ten — television contracts, attendance and making sure the league never gets left out of the College Football Playoff because its best team played a weak schedule. It also coincides with the Big Ten instituting a nine-game conference schedule, which begins this year.

It’s the absolute right move — even if the nuances of college football scheduling and finances make it less of a slam dunk than it appears.

“I think the reason to get away from it is there’s ample competition available that’s more like what our program is,” MSU athletic director Mark Hollis said Tuesday. “The real balance comes in what’s attractive for the fan, what’s attractive for TV, what are you comfortable having your student-athletes playing in week in and week out. And then making sure you can support 25 sports in the process.”

Know this: An FCS opponent helps the bottom line. It costs about $500,000 — give or take $100,000 — to bring an FCS team to your stadium. These market-driven paydays to smaller programs have escalated in the last decade. Mid-American Conference schools, by comparison, are often commanding north of $1 million these days.

In that case, why not Furman?

“They bring a MAC-type credibility with them, to me,” MSU coach Mark Dantonio said Tuesday of Furman, “which I've watched MAC teams every year rise up and beat people (major conference schools).”

The data, though, shows there is a difference between the MAC and Furman’s level and, not surprisingly, that scholarships matter.

FCS opponents like Furman became an attractive — and sometimes necessary — option in 2006 when college football schedules expanded from 11 to 12 games. 

In the 10 years since, Big Ten teams have played 90 games against FCS schools. The 63-scholarship, lower-division programs have won five of those games, slightly more than 5 percent, with another 12 games winding up within a touchdown. In other words, about 19 percent of FCS-Big Ten matchups are competitive. 

Meanwhile, Big Ten teams have played 152 games against schools from the MAC and Sun Belt Conference, a similar mid-major league. MAC and Sun Belt teams are 22-130 in that span, winning about 15 percent of the time. Another 17 percent of the games have finished with the MAC or Sun Belt program within a touchdown. Doing the math, about one-third of the time those matchups are competitive.

The average scores since 2006: 

Big Ten 34.1, MAC/Sun Belt 15.7

Big Ten 40.8, FCS foes 13.9

Furman will be MSU’s fifth FCS foe in the last decade, joining Montana State (2009), Youngstown State (2011, 2013) and Jacksonville State (2014).

There are differences among the FCS teams, just as there are at the highest level. The ability to transfer from an FBS program to an FCS school without sitting out a year has given oomph to FCS rosters. Some schools take advantage of this well. And there have been a few memorable games. One especially: Appalachian State’s 34-32 win at Michigan to open the 2007 season. More often that not, however, that’s not how it plays out.

Furman’s senior offensive lineman Jackson Buonamia broke it down like this:

“Sixty-three scholarships to 85 scholarships, for an offensive line on my level to play a defensive line on that level, we have five, maybe six guys who will be solid players who will play the whole game. That, versus a D-line where their guys are playing two, three plays tops and they’re going full throttle the whole game and they’re rotating out. Rotating fresh guys is tough when you don’t have the same level of depth. At my level, I’m used to playing against maybe four total D-linemen the whole game, whereas I’m sure Michigan State has way more they’ll play.”

Furman isn’t complaining. They’ve faced Virginia Tech, South Carolina, Clemson and LSU over the last four years, one each year. They want these sorts of games to continue, not only for the sake of experience but also for financial survival. They need the paydays. Luckily for the Paladins, other major conferences aren’t following the Big Ten’s lead.

“They’re very important (games),” said Furman athletic director Mike Buddie, who came to Furman from the ACC’s Wake Forest a year ago. “We’ve got limited opportunities for revenue, and that’s one of the greatest sources for us. And then, obviously, it’s a great opportunity for our student athletes to have an experience that you don’t get every week at the FCS level. To get a chance to play in a Big Ten stadium against a top 10 team, those are life stories that those guys get to tell, and then, obviously, our fans get a chance to travel to a venue like that.

“I think for the most part, the Alabamas, the Notre Dames, the teams that are truly going after a national championship, I understand the reasoning behind protecting your strength of schedule. But there are a lot of schools in the power five conferences annually that probably aren’t realistically going to have a chance to play for a national championship, and I think the FCS opponents are still pretty attractive to those schools.”

It’s a win that counts toward bowl eligibility and, as Hollis pointed out, sometimes a physical breather from the pounding of a long season. 

For MSU this Friday, being that it’s the opener and under the lights, the anticipation for Furman probably isn’t much less than it would be for Bowling Green.

But the scholarships are less. It’s a different level of football. The results over the last decade make this clear.

“Those games gave you a lot of opportunities to bring teams in, to have (an inexpensive) home gate,” Hollis said. “But in my opinion, we’re headed in a better direction.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

Couch: Headstrong as ever, Malik McDowell again has his mind made up

Couch: Tyler O'Connor leans on advice from friend Andrew Maxwell

MSU vs. Furman

When: 7 p.m. Friday

Where: Spartan Stadium, East Lansing

Tickets: MSUSpartans.com; 517-355-1610

TV: Big Ten Network