Tresolini: Assessing Delaware rise to FBS and C-USA, these thoughts come to mind

The Blue Hens are getting out of the small pond in which they’ve been a ferocious football fish for 80 years, shaking off their feathers and joining the big birds.

Delaware’s climb to the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision has appeared likely for more than a year, with Conference USA – once considered too geographically unfriendly – emerging as the likely destination this fall. That is indeed where the Blue Hens will land, the school announced late Tuesday afternoon.

This is a league in which Delaware is already on nearly equal competitive footing with many of the football teams, several of which have also recently made the jump from the Football Championship Subdivision.

More importantly, Delaware has the financial firepower, academic strength and astute leadership to ascend and succeed.

There remain plenty of unanswered questions and concerns, some of which will be addressed Wednesday by UD and C-USA officials, such as how do you pay for it. Others will just require the passage of time.

In the meantime, here are eight random thoughts/suggestions/curiosities about Delaware’s football-driven move to C-USA.

If C-USA has any marketing brains . . .

The league will make the Blue Hens’ first C-USA game on a September Saturday in 2025 against Sam Houston State at Delaware Stadium.

Fans would flock and TV would revel as former Delaware linebacker and coach K.C. Keeler, the Bearkats’ coach since 2014 two years after his stunning UD firing, has a homecoming against a team coached by his former Hens quarterback and Sam Houston offensive coordinator Ryan Carty.

It’s not OK to be ordinary

Delaware has a national reputation in football due to success at its level, winning national college-division titles in 1946, 1963, 1971 and 1972 wire-service polls, then in NCAA Division II in 1979 and FCS (then I-AA) in 2003.

Three straight coaches – Bill Murray, Dave Nelson and Tubby Raymond – are College Football Hall of Famers. Nelson hatched and Raymond honed an offense – the Delaware Wing-T – that became iconic and acclaimed for its clever formations and ability to fool defenses.

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Before going 4-8 in 2008, Delaware was one of four Division I schools – along with Ohio State, Michigan and Tennessee – that had never lost eight games in a season (Only the Buckeyes can now make that claim).

Now Delaware, initially anyway, will be no better than Middle Tennessee or Western Kentucky, two of its future league foes. That's not right.

The challenge is to try to become extraordinary again, somehow, at its new level, which will be very difficult.

This is really a potential steppingstone

Delaware has long viewed itself as being peers with many of the East’s and South’s large state universities. It has certainly evolved and grown over the past 25 years to climb within that realm.

Those other schools are in the major leagues of collegiate athletics in places such as the ACC and Big Ten, which bring considerably more clout, cost and income.

Should any grand visionaries eye Delaware eventually landing in one of those ritzy neighborhoods, or even a notch below, the only way to start is at the bottom rung of the FBS ladder in Conference USA. And with all the crazy conference realignment and movement that has taken place the past few years, nothing should be ruled out in the near or distant future.

Who will Delaware play next year in football?

There are two nonconference games already set – publicly anyway -- on UD’s 2024 nonconference schedule. They are at Delaware State and home against the Hornets’ MEAC rival Norfolk State in what is a 12-game season.

The only locked-in Coastal Athletic Association games would be at Villanova and home against Towson, Delaware’s two annual foes in the CAA’s rotating schedule.

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Despite being ineligible for its title or FCS playoff qualification, the CAA said Tuesday that Delaware will play a league schedule, though games won't count in the standings. Massachusetts, Old Dominion and Georgia State each played complete CAA schedules after announcing moves up to FBS in 2011 and 2012 despite being ineligible for the league title.

Kennesaw State, which is in the same transitional position this year that Delaware will be in next year going from FCS – the Atlantic Sun Conference in its case -- to Conference USA, has a 9-game 2023 schedule. It's a potpourri of 5 FCS schools, two from Division II, a non-NCAA team and future C-USA rival Sam Houston.

What happens to other UD sports?

This was a move made first and foremost with football in mind. That’s the way college sports operate now, except at a few basketball powers.

But Delaware has 21 athletic teams, 13 for women and eight for men. In addition to football, for teams Delaware fields, C-USA does sponsor baseball, softball, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s tennis, women’s soccer, women’s volleyball and women’s cross country and indoor and outdoor track and field.

That leaves seven UD teams needing to find new homes -- field hockey, men’s soccer, men's and women's swimming, men’s and women's lacrosse and women’s rowing.

It’ll be interesting to see where they land. Stay in CAA? Atlantic 10? America East? Big East? Most leagues have associate members that may have full-time membership in other conferences.

James Madison, for instance, which left the CAA for the Sun Belt Conference in 2022, has played two seasons as a field hockey independent and will join the Mid-American Conference as an affiliate member next fall. The Dukes, who won the NCAA women’s lacrosse title in 2018, are in the American Athletic Conference in that sport.

Delaware was NCAA field hockey champ in 2016 and a frequent NCAA qualifier since and must have the right home to continue or expand that success.

It will be interesting to see where men’s lacrosse, in which Delaware won the last two CAA titles and did well in NCAA tournaments, lands in 2025-26. The are just 72 NCAA Division I men’s lacrosse teams, Several of the 10 conferences have affiliate members, including the CAA with Fairfield.

Staying in the CAA and maintaining its feisty rivalries with Towson, Hofstra and Drexel would be fine if possible, but men’s lacrosse may have interesting options.

Will fans come to football games?

That is certainly the hope and expectation, without guarantees.

Delaware’s 2023 home schedule left much to be desired and was undermined by some bad weather. The Villanova game, however, between rivals tied for first place, did attract a throng of 17,718 on Nov. 18, which was a good sign.

But then just 4,039 attended last Saturday’s FCS playoff opener against Lafayette, including a slew of Leopards fans.

Playoff games on Thanksgiving weekend with few students on campus have always attracted smaller crowds. But there were 19,765 on hand that weekend for the historic first Delaware-Delaware State game in a 2007 first-round playoff, which shows the drastic attendance drop-off Delaware football has experienced since.

UD officials no doubt believe FBS games will bring more attention and larger turnouts, though in the far-flung C-USA no visiting fans will have two-hour or 45-minute drives like those from Lafayette or Villanova.

FBS membership is more about TV money anyway, and C-USA’s contracts with ESPN and CBS include nationally televised mid-week games that may not be particularly popular among many stalwart UD rooters.

Does this get Temple back on the schedule?

That would be fabulous.

The Blue Hens and Owls were passionate rivals – perhaps more for UD fans – through the 1960s, ‘70s and into the ‘80s.

Then-Division II Delaware’s frequent success against Division I Temple fueled the rivalry but also led to its demise, as Temple didn’t benefit the way Delaware did. Similarly, frequent recent attempts by UD officials to schedule Temple again have been rejected.

Now, with Delaware becoming an FBS cohort, perhaps Temple, an American Athletic Conference member, would be more willing to schedule a local skirmish. Maybe nearby Navy, also an AAC member, would, too.

Does Conference USA add anyone else?

When Delaware made its move from America East to the CAA in 2001, the charge was led by then-UD athletic director Edgar Johnson and included the Blue Hens’ primary rivals Drexel, Towson and Hofstra. That's why it worked.

There has been no public indication C-USA is on the verge of plucking another Eastern immigrant, though Massachusetts, forlorn as an FBS football independent, is widely viewed as a potential target.

Perhaps one of Delaware’s CAA rivals – Towson, Stony Brook or William & Mary, for instance -- sees what Delaware is doing and decides such a path would benefit them as well.

Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Random thoughts, queries on Delaware Blue Hens move to Conference USA