KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
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Another college football season kicks off Saturday. For Missouri State, it will be the school’s last in the Football Championship Subdivision.
Dr. Biff Williams took over as Missouri State’s president July 1, about six weeks after the Bears announced they were joining Conference USA and moving to the Football Bowl Subdivision, the highest level of college football, beginning in 2025.
“Alumni are really excited,” said Williams, whose hiring was announced in March after a decade at Utah Tech University. “As you know, Bears are really proud of their school and taking this to the new level. When I was interviewing for the president's position, I got more phone calls — ‘When you come here, we need to go FBS, we need to elevate athletics, elevate academics, elevate the university.’ So, people are really excited.”
That includes former Bears left tackle Travis Brown, a Lee’s Summit North graduate who played at Missouri State from 2000 to 2004 and remains a big Bears fan.
“It’s a totally night-and-day difference between 20 years ago when I was there and where it is now. They’ve really made it a fan-friendly experience. They’ve brought the fans closer to the atmosphere. They’ve brought the fans and the tailgate up to the field, so the fans feel like they’re participating and the team has a connection with them.”
Brown loves seeing the strides Missouri State has made since his playing days.
“I can’t tell you how jealous I am,” he said. “There are so many new amenities there. They’ve put a lot of money into the program. They’ve built up the student section. They brought in a jumbotron. All these different things that I didn’t see, so it’s a really cool experience and it’s feeling more like a big-time college every time you go there.”
But the move to FBS — and the brave new world of NIL collectives and transfer portals — will require even more investment from donors, alumni and the university.
“That infrastructure is in place,” Williams said. “We're going to enhance it and really ramp it up, because we'll be competing at a higher level. It will probably spread out to a lot more sports. Before in FCS, the collectives were women's basketball, men's basketball, men's football. Now, we're going to really expand that to all of our intercollegiate sports, so we're focused on that. We have our collectives in place, we have targets of what we want to accomplish with NIL money, how we'll handle the transfer portal, but, more importantly, how do we create a culture.”
With the exception of Plaster Stadium, which “we’ll need to give some love,” Williams said Missouri State’s facilities, including Great Southern Bank Arena, already are competitive with C-USA.
The Bears will join Mizzou, which did not provide a comment, as the only FBS programs in the state next fall.
“I think the Bears are ready,” Brown said. “... Missouri State is ripe for that — and Mizzou probably won’t like it — but here we come.”
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