As he did mention, the current home for Central Washington and Western Oregon (the Great Northwest Athletic Conference) dropped football in 2022 after schools in the conference kept dropping their programs leaving three schools left - the two teams mentioned earlier and Simon Fraser, the only school from Canada to play in the NCAA. The Red Leafs (they were the Clan before the nickname change) dropped their program after the 2022 season because of distance and just not being good.
Slight correction: Simon Fraser's administration *publicly* said that they were dropping football due to distance and lack of success. Behind closed doors, they pretty much axed the program because the athletics department didn't like football. It's been an ongoing saga for months now and if SFU was a Div 1 program there'd be 7000 word writeups about the corruption in the school administration. SFU fans, players, and alumni have been trying to save the school's football program, and it looks like they may be returning to U Sports (Canada's analogue to the NCAA, which plays Canadian rules football) next year.
Fun Fact: Memorial Stadium played host to the Dallas Cowboys' training camp from 1998-2001. It was even part of the main plot in a King of the Hill episode. ("Hank's Cowboy Movie" - Season 3, Episode 19)
“It has a roof…it’s got a roof.” This literally made me laugh out loud! You should check out the GLAC division 2 stadium, some really nice ones in it. Including a wooden dome.
I got to see the very first college game to be held at Greyhound Stadium in 2016. For a newly built stadium that holds about 5,000 people, close to 6,000 people showed up and both the berns at either end zone had people sitting on their blankets and the portable seating area that the university brought in 3 days in advance due to the large crowds and huge numbers of alumni members who showed up!
Texas Permian Basin (UTPB) is actually playing the majority of their home games this season at Astound Broadband Stadium in Midland, although I think a game or two is being played at Ratliff in Odessa.
Better stadium and it has the facilities to facilitate a division 1 program. UTEP was going to move to play at grande before they canceled their season due to Covid.
West Texas A&M is shooting for D1. Thats why they pumped in all that money into facilities. Also Angelo State's stadium looked way better before the reno in my opinion.
Considering how many FCS schools in Texas have moved up to FBS even as the SEC and B1G are putting more and more distance between themselves and the other FBS conferences, the southern/southwestern FCS conferences would almost certainly be looking for schools like WTA&M to fill out their rosters.
WT's old stadium was sold to the local school district. The Angelo State stadium was originally a track facility before the football team moved from the nearby high school stadium, a sunken bowl shaped like the old Tampa Stadium or the Memphis Liberty Bowl that sits next to the Jetsoneque John Glenn Middle School.
West Texas A&M was the only school to be once a major college member being in the Border Intercollegiate Athletic Association and then later the Missouri Valley Conference. However both of those conference dropped football altogether.
The Border Conference didn't drop football. It dropped everything, wrapping up its existence in 1962, its members either joining the new WAC, competing as independents, or in the case of Hardin-Simmons, dropping straight to Division III. West Texas State Teachers College, as WTA&M was called until 1990, spent the next decade as a D-I independent, joined the Missouri Valley in 1972, and dropped to Division II in the mid 1980s.
Utpb is planning on a football stadium on campus capacity ay 9,000 maybe more for standing room should happen in the next 3 years will be going after west texas atm stadium honors ..to be #1
