Years ago, when teams had a bad season and were relegated, it could snowball into getting relegated each year. Established operations like Leeds United tumbled down to the third division after being a stalwart at the top. They didn’t have the financial riches of Chelsea and Man U. They had spent more money from everything from stadium upgrades to marketing, to personnel upgrades or fan experience, and couldn’t stabilize the organization with that overhead of debt. They had to sell off players to pay bills, the next group of signings didn’t work, and they were just as bad in a lower division. Meanwhile the top teams kept finding new revenue sources , particularly internationally, that were not available to the smaller teams, and the gap grew. The FA eventually added payments to relegated teams to give them a better chance to cover their bills after the shock of relegation from the Premier League.

Our flagship program is stuck in relegated pattern. There’s no softening payment coming our way. I think the NCAA mandating 2 years at first school could help, but they seem averse to anything limiting athlete movement now. Since people started bringing Dan up, his 2nd season stopped the bleeding going back through Larry Reynolds’s era. But it’s a new world with transfers. Before you could find some talent that was green, and they could grow together. Good luck nowadays. It started with Dan becoming stagnant, and Acker has really stumbled. In an age where Pac added no football Gonzaga, and GCU to Mountain West, we have little to no upward momentum that might be the final chance before big changes in NCAA to stay at the top level.