How CCU and App State’s rivalry serves as a microcosm for college football’s future
With a cursory bit of research, it becomes clear that Coastal Carolina University and Appalachian State fans don’t like each other.
The ingredients are there for a solid rivalry. Google Maps shows Conway, S.C. and Boone, N.C. are less than five hours apart. CCU and App State are both in the Sun Belt Conference and clash each year in games that usually close and matter in deciding a conference title winner.
The mutual animosity has grown so that App State fans flipped off CCU players and threw trash at them during and after Coastal’s victory against the Mountaineers in 2023. CCU celebrated their first-ever triumph in Boone, N.C., by hanging a picture of Mountaineer fans giving Coastal players the bird during the game.
Coastal Carolina and Appalachian State will renew this rivalry Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024, in Conway. However, the two schools will still be locked in an arms race, affecting much of college football and athletics long after the end of the game.
The introduction of players making money using their name, image, and likeness (NIL) and the easing of transfer portal restrictions have brought new competition and strains on athletic departments to keep up with their competitors. CCU and App State are affected by these trends, too, but while college athletics have always had high stakes, looming changes could bring even more significant stakes.
The Athletic reported in October 2024 that some university administrators and business leaders are considering a college football super league. The proposal would split the FBS into two conferences. Most Power Four conference teams and some Group of Five would compete in a primary top conference.
A second conference, mostly Group of Five schools, would be a secondary league to the top conference. The best teams in the secondary league could be promoted to the top level of competition, as is the case in European soccer.
Coastal Carolina and App State reside amongst potential Group of Five schools that could jump to this theoretical super league or be relegated to a secondary league. There’s no guarantee that college football will become like a super league, but both schools feel that a critical time is approaching.
Appalachian State Head Coach Shawn Clark said a potential change in the college football landscape is frequently on his mind, as is the Mountaineer Athletic Department.
“You have to be relevant when the time comes, and it will change again,” he said. “If you’re not relevant, you’ll get left behind. So we’ll make sure we keep winning football games, doing things the right way, and have a strong athletic department.”
The resources fuel winning. The question becomes who has the advantage.
Does CCU have a problem recruiting in its own state?
While both teams remain competitive in regards to raising NIL revenue, App State may have a distinct advantage in recruiting talent, particularly in South Carolina.
Coastal Carolina has frequently faced challenges recruiting in their home state. Programs like Clemson and the University of South Carolina usually get the best high school athletes in the state. Indeed, along the Grand Strand, it’s as common a site to see Tiger and Gamecock fans as Chanticleer ones.
However, out-of-state programs like App State and Georgia State have successfully secured some of the Palmetto State’s best players at the expense of Coastal Carolina. Clark said that App State has four coaches that recruit players from the state and are constantly looking for talent in the area.
“In the last 30 years, some of our best players that played here came from the state of South Carolina,” Clark said. “We recruit it heavily.”
Coastal Carolina Assistant Director of Recruiting and Operations Matt Pearce said that the 10 assistant coaches on staff are each assigned an area of the state to recruit in, with receivers coach Perry Parks serving as one of the program’s top recruiters in the state due to his experience as a high school football coach in South Carolina.
Pearce added that CCU’s prime recruiting focus is in the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia. However, playing football about a half hour from the beach most appeals to players from up north in New Jersey, Pennslyvania, Ohio and elsewhere. Pearce added this is helpful for Coastal because its competitors in the Sun Belt Conference primarily reside in smaller towns, except for Georgia State, which calls Atlanta home.
“I think it sells itself,” Pearce said. “That’s the kind of advantage we have of, yes, Myrtle Beach is right there.”
However, that perceived location advantage hasn’t consistently paid off yet for Coastal. For the 2024 recruiting class, CCU did secure offensive lineman Julius Tate, who 247Sports ranked as the 14th-best player in South Carolina for that year. Pearce said that Tate signed with CCU after he de-committed from Northwestern University, who in July 2023 fired their head coach after reporters uncovered alleged incidents of hazing on the team.
Coastal Carolina has no commitments from top South Carolina recruits in the 2025 class, according to 247Sports.
Meanwhile, App State has found success in the Palmetto State. For the 2025 class, CCU and App State offered Westside High School players Armoni Weaver and Chamarryus Bomar two of the top 15 best prospects in South Carolina 2024, according to 247Sports. However, the two Anderson, S.C. athletes elected to commit to App State.
Georgia State also earned the commitment of JL Mann High School running back Ladainnian Martin, as the Greenville, S.C. athlete is the second-best running back in the 2024 South Carolina class 2024, according to 247Sports.
Pearce said that recruit rankings don’t matter. Considering the best recruits are out of both schools reach, he said that securing top high school athletes ultimately doesn’t matter either.
“The ultimate result is on the field, absolutely out there during the season,” Pearce added. “That’s what ends up mattering, which might sound a little weird for me to say as a recruiting person, but that’s what it is.”
App State also has the advantage regarding facilities. Kid Brewer Stadium in Boone has an all-time attendance record of more than 40,000 fans, while Brooks Stadium’s record high is more than 22,000. App State Director of Athletics Doug Gillin said that the athletic program derives 30-40 percent of its revenue from home games at Kidd Brewer.
App State also hold an advantage in average attendance per year. According to App State Senior Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Communications Joey Jones, the Mountaineers have averaged at least 30,000 spectators at each home game since the 2021 season. Meanwhile, since the 2021 season, CCU home games have drawn between an average low of 15,600 fans in 2022 and a high of 19,441 in 2024.
While App State might have a track record of recruiting in South Carolina and a bigger stadium to draw in revenue, the Mountaineers have fundamental concerns that could stifle their ambitions to contend at the top of college football. Indeed, both schools do.
How television markets could hamper App State and Coastal Carolina
A school’s television market and alumni network size are critical areas both schools contend with.
This ambition for athletic excellence has drawn some scrutiny already.
CCU’s athletic department spends tens of millions on athletics each year, and some observers raised concerns about the financial burden placed upon its students, although the university dispute those claims at the time.
Other experts believe Coastal’s fundamentals serve as a definitive roadblock to their athletic ambition. Marc Edelman is a tenured law professor at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College. An expert in sports law and antitrust and how they impact the NCAA and college athletes, Edelman said in a March 2024 interview Coastal’s continued commitment to sports might not be a good idea, as he believes they can’t catch up to schools with “over a 100 years head (start).”
Edelman added that this is especially true considering the lineage of other S.C. public universities and the high start-up costs of establishing big-time college sports. For him, Coastal’s best chance of competing is in sports with smaller rosters like basketball.
“We have way too many people in this country that have the title of college president that would rather be a general manager of an NFL team than an educational leader,” Edelman said in an interview with The Sun News. “Even if Coastal were to develop a dominant college football program, given that a majority of athletes in the state school are recruited within the state, it would seem that some of the players would be recruited to Coastal and away from schools like Clemson and the University of South Carolina, simply cannibalizing the performance and well-being of other state institutions.”
Yet some outside experts contend that Coastal’s high spending is a misguided venture and that CCU’s realistic outlook is staying competitive with its Sun Belt Conference rivals.
Christopher Corr is an assistant professor at Troy University, where he studies subjects like NIL and football recruiting in college sports. Corr said Coastal’s and App State’s athletic potential might be limited because of its regional status, which does not include NIL capabilities.
While the Myrtle Beach area is growing, Corr added that CCU’s home base of Conway isn’t compelling from a media rights standpoint compared to schools like SMU in Dallas, UNC Charlotte or Sun Belt Conference rival Georgia State in Atlanta.
“It doesn’t matter how much success App State has at the (Division One) level; they’re still in Boone, North Carolina. I think similarly for Coastal,” Corr said. “What is the strategic add if I’m a (Power Four conference) to add Conway, South Carolina, to my repertoire from a multimedia rights distribution standpoint? I don’t think there’s a real sell.”
The problem of being a smaller market isn’t new to sports. Many professional teams in smaller communities have had to contend with having less attention on them. For Gillin, he believes the physical limitations of Boone can be offset by having a strong national brand that draws attention.
Garnering attention requires winning, which not all big market schools do anyway.
“You look across the country at different leagues, at different levels, and you see empty stadiums. They could be in a big market, but you see empty stadiums,” Gillin added. “What we’ve really done is create and build a national brand, albeit in a small community.”
Why having a small alumni base could hurt Coastal Carolina
Aside from Television markets, CCU must contend with a smaller support base than other prominent universities.
Coastal is a younger school than other institutions in the rest of the Carolinas, with deeper athletic histories and larger alumni bases. It’s a massive factor in NIL, and CCU’s fundamentals and relatively small base put them at a structural disadvantage.
University of South Carolina Professor and Director of the College Sport Research Institute Richard Southall said a rabid, loyal fanbase fosters a strong climate for NIL in an April 2024 with The Sun News.
From this perspective, Appalachian State has an advantage. It opened in 1899, more than a half-century before Coastal Carolina did.
A former Mountaineer and NFL football player, Joshua Thomas is the general manager of App State’s NIL Collective TIGMA. Indeed, Thomas said in an October 2024 interview that App State has more than 150,000 alumni at his disposal to fund other areas of need, such as NIL. Fellow CCU rival James Madison also has more than 150,000 former students. Coastal Carolina’s website shows the university has more than 44,000 alumni.
The alumni issue led to Coastal Carolina’s first NIL collective folding at the end of 2023, as the group struggled to solicit donations from alumni.
For Coastal, this difference could be overcome in time. In a September 2024 interview, CCU Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics and University Recreation Chance Miller said that as CCU’s prominence grows nationally, its enrollment and alumni will also grow.
Miller compares CCU’s possible trajectory to UCF, which burst onto the college football scene in the mid-2010s before becoming part of the Big 12 Conference in 2023. While the new athletic director frequently praises the Sun Belt Conference, he said this growth will propel CCU forward.
“I look at that growing community, that growing moment, and I think we can really take the foundation that was here and the winning success and capitalize off of that,” Miller said. “ how can we start positioning ourselves to grow and grow in a positive way, to where we can position ourselves as kind of that leader in the pack of that next group.”
Miller’s predecessor, Matt Hogue, also occasionally hinted an interest in moving into the Power Four Conferences. Hogue mentioned considering a move to the ACC if asked in a March 2024 interview.
However, the UCF model does have some caveats. The Golden Knights didn’t have to contend with NIL when they first rose to prominence in the mid-to-late 2010s.
UCF is also one of the biggest schools in the United States. In 1990, UCF had more than 20,000 students. During the 2023-24 school year, UCF had close to 70,000 students. Meanwhile, CCU reached more than 11,000 students for the first time during the 2024-25 school year.
CCU’s model for growth could also face challenges from its rivals like App State, and many other promising schools also have an eye on being a part of that potential college football future.
To do that will require winning, and in a zero-sum game like football, Coastal Carolina and Appalachian State will have to out-compete each other on the field and financially.
This story was originally published November 5, 2024 at 7:36 AM.
