It’s been an eventful holiday season in the Group of 5. Coaching changes, bowl games and figuring out what to label Oregon State and Washington State. You had a lot of questions, so let’s get into a holiday edition of the G5 mailbag.
With Tulane hiring Sumrall, do they have a chance to remain top in the G5? — Christopher B.
Tulane has made it clear it has no plans to go away. With the departure of Willie Fritz to Houston, after the departure of athletic director Troy Dannen to Washington, I wondered whether that commitment would still be there. Would Tulane try to continue to build off the success of the last two years or let things slip away like after the undefeated 1998 season?
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Sumrall seems destined for an SEC job, and he had a great thing going at Troy with no reason to leave. He was the highest-paid coach in the Sun Belt with the highest-paid staff, and Troy was going to up that quite a bit. But Tulane stayed on Sumrall and put together enough of a deal to sway him to leave (after a strong deal to try to hold on to Fritz). That’s a commitment to staying around the top of the G5. Next up is upgrading the facilities and getting the practice bubble built.
But Tulane is also losing quarterback Michael Pratt to the NFL, and his backup Kai Horton is in the transfer portal. This one year after losing star running back Tyjae Spears. Players like that don’t come around all the time. Sumrall will still need to recruit and develop at a high level.
Then again, Sumrall turned Troy around instantly, from three consecutive five-win seasons to consecutive 11-win seasons.
According to 247, USF has the top-rated recruiting class in the G5. What are the chances that the upgraded talent along with the improvements from the current roster will lead to the Bulls finally winning a conference championship? — Justin A.
People need to take notice of what Alex Golesh is doing at USF. He took a program that had four wins over the previous three years and went 7-6, capped by a 45-0 blowout of Syracuse in the Boca Raton Bowl. Sophomore Quarterback Byrum Brown looks like a budding star, with the first 3,000-yard passing season in program history and 37 total touchdowns, and he’s said he’s sticking with the Bulls next season.
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Now Golesh pulls in the top Group of 5 high school recruiting class, one that ranks in the top 50 nationally and includes four-star tight end Jonathan Echols, who flipped from Tennessee. Part of that top-50 ranking is because of a large 27-member class, but it’s ahead of schools like Oklahoma State, Arizona and Louisville.
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After years in the wilderness, there’s finally real momentum at USF. Plans for an on-campus stadium continue to move, with renderings recently released, though the opening was pushed back to 2027. The school also became a member of the AAU, a prestigious academic research group. It’s the best possible time to have a football program figuring things out.
— Michael Kelly (@MKellyUSF) December 21, 2023
With the transfer portal as active as it has ever been, has the staggering number of Group of 5 players entering now provided false hope and, eventually, disappointment for some? I can’t imagine everyone finding the perfect next step. There has to be more than a few that transfer then sit — not able to crack the starting lineup and thus become bench depth. Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for the continuously great coverage. — Jeffrey S.
It is admittedly a dispiriting time to be a Group of 5 fan right now, with the number of high-profile G5 players transferring to Power 5 schools continuing to increase each year. Every player has a different reason for moving. It could be playing time, could be getting closer to home, could be wanting a bigger stage, could be name, image and likeness money. You can’t fault a player for any of that.
But is it paying off? My colleague Max Olson just recently dug into the numbers. Of the 186 scholarship G5-P5 transfers in 2023, 72 percent saw fewer snaps for their new team and 37 percent didn’t start a game this season.
There were a fair number of success stories as well, but these numbers should be a flashing red light about the risks. Is it better to move up if you could get less playing time? As Western Kentucky wide receiver Malachi Corley put it to me last year when explaining why he didn’t transfer, is it better to be a spoke in the wheel or to be the wheel? It’s not like G5 players are hard for scouts to find.
Again, there are different reasons for different players to leave, and you can’t blame one for taking a payday if it’s on the table. But if it’s simply about wanting to play on a bigger stage, the numbers have shown the chances of that happening are not overwhelmingly positive.
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In a scenario where the Pac 2 invite/merge with only the top 6 schools from the Mountain West Conference, who are those schools? Which are the most valuable and which ones would be at risk of not getting an invite? — Brad B.
I’m still not quite sure what the plan is and I don’t think Oregon State and Washington State yet know what the plan is. We did get some clarity in the past week, as the Washington Supreme Court denied a request to hear an appeal, granting control of the league back to the two schools, and both sides came to a settlement. For the time being, the two will spend most of next season playing Mountain West schools in football and parking most of the other sports in the West Coast Conference. The legal fight is mostly over.
What happens in two years? The NCAA grace period for conference membership ends, requiring the Pac-2 to have at least eight members. It’s also when the Mountain West TV deal ends. If there’s a time to rebuild the Pac-12, that’s the time to do it. But the MWC believes its exit fee policy extends in perpetuity, because there isn’t a grant of rights, so there would still be a price to pay and at least one year’s notice to keep the cost on the lower end. If a few schools were to be left behind in a massive move, it would probably include Hawaii and possibly New Mexico State, San Jose State and/or Nevada.
But at that point, is it worth paying millions to go join the Pac-12 and leave a few schools behind for the sake of branding? The new Pac-12 won’t have a College Football Playoff auto-berth. The easiest solution continues to be OSU and WSU joining the MWC, bringing the brand, changing the conference name and figuring out how to share the assets. OSU and WSU still have 2 1/2 years to figure out what to do, and I imagine a lot of scenarios will be discussed. (I also don’t see the benefit to other G5 teams joining.)
The MAC eliminated divisions in basketball, what about football? — David G.
The MAC has also eliminated football divisions. Announced before the MAC Championship Game, the conference will split into four pods next year, with the two teams with the best conference records playing in the league championship game:
Buffalo, Akron, Kent State
Ohio, Miami, Ball State
Toledo, Bowling Green, Northern Illinois
Eastern Michigan, Central Michigan, Western Michigan.
That leaves the Sun Belt as the only conference with divisions in 2024, and people in the league continue to tell me there’s no momentum to change that. The regionality and drivability to division games is why the conference expanded the way it did, and the fans like it that way. It helps that the divisions have balanced out, too.
If Liberty wins over Oregon, do they get more respect as a top G5 program? — Kyle S.
The Flames just earned the top Group of 5 spot for the postseason, so that respect is already there. A win over an Oregon team that will have Bo Nix and Bucky Irving playing is going to be an incredibly tall task, but an upset would give a boost of legitimacy to the G5 as a whole heading into the 12-team CFP era.
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There is undoubtedly a belief the G5 has taken a step back after losing Cincinnati, UCF and Houston, and for good reason considering they reached five CFP/NY6 games combined between them and the Bearcats made a four-team CFP field. But for the G5 as a whole to get the respect back, a strong performance in this game would go a long way.
For a team like Ohio that lost quite a few players to the portal, how does that affect their ability to attract players from the portal? I understand that every player makes the choice for their own reasons, but would it be viewed more as a negative or positive? (Kind of like asking at a job interview “Why is your company always hiring?) — Michael S.
I don’t think it plays much of a negative role. Especially because it means Ohio can sell more playing time to fill the spots that have opened. And if you’re a school that sees numerous players succeed and go on to Power 5 schools, perhaps that’s a positive. If we end up in this world where players can transfer every year without penalty, it’d be like a lesser version of showing you produce NFL Draft picks.
Please write a eulogy for Grayson McCall and all he did for G5 football. — Samuel B.
What a fun player. I’m excited to see how he does at NC State. When that Coastal Carolina offense was clicking, it was as exciting as anything else in college football. I still maintain that 2020 Coastal Carolina team should’ve gotten the Fiesta Bowl bid over Iowa State. It was the closest we’ll ever get to seeing two Group of 5 teams in the NY6/CFP. McCall got banged up the last two years, so I hope he can stay healthy more than anything else. I remember reading previews of that 2020 Coastal team. McCall was third on the depth chart. He truly came out of nowhere to take the starting job and become one of the most fun college players we’ve seen in the last few years.
(Photo: Stephen Lew / USA Today)
