Moglia maintaining focus on present, not future

Joe Moglia predictably wanted no part of the suggestion that this season may take on even heightened importance for his Coastal Carolina football team as it will be the Chanticleers’ last chance to compete for an FCS national championship.

With Coastal Carolina’s historic announcement Tuesday that the university has accepted an invitation to join the Sun Belt Conference and move up to the NCAA’s FBS level, the Chants will officially enter a transition period the next two years and be ineligible for the FCS playoffs in 2016 and ineligible for any bowl games in 2017 during their first season in their new conference.

But this season remains unchanged. The No. 5-ranked Chants’ goal remains unchanged, and as Moglia insisted, nobody in his locker room is going to be thinking beyond the team’s season opener Saturday night at Furman.

“I haven’t addressed it yet because we just had our press conference today and everything we’ve been focused on is kind of getting ready for our opener,” Moglia said Tuesday afternoon.

“So all of our effort is going to be involved with Furman. Gene Spivey, the chairman of our athletic committee on the board, actually said, do I have any concern whatsoever with keeping our guys focused? Well all we’ve ever done is keep our guys focused. We’ve had distractions [of all types] from the time I got here and our job is to make sure our guys are focused. The worst thing our guys can be thinking about now getting ready for Furman is what’s going to happen in 2016. So this is about what we’ve got to do this week.”

For the seniors on the roster, the conference change next year won’t impact their collegiate careers and quarterback Alex Ross said he hadn’t spent much time thinking about it yet.

“I haven’t really felt that much of a buzz [within the locker room] yet since it’s all so new and we were in meetings all day, but it’s exciting,” he said while tying his cleats before practice and mostly maintaining his game week tunnel vision while addressing the question. “It’s exciting to be a part of the program that helped get Coastal to where they are today and that’s moving on to the FBS and I think it’s a great opportunity for the school.”

Said junior running back De’Angelo Henderson: “It’s kind of cool. You always grow up wanting to play for an FBS program, but right now our focus is Furman. We’re thankful for the opportunity, but right now our focus is on Furman.”

Meanwhile, for Moglia’s assistant coaches, who have to also stay focused on recruiting and preparing for a significant transition as the Chants will add 22 scholarships over the next two years as part of the move up to the FBS, the reality of the program’s new future can’t be ignored.

Speaking before practice Tuesday afternoon, Chants recruiting coordinator Cory Bailey said the Sun Belt announcement was already having an impact on prospective players.

“There are some guys that reached out to me as recently as five minutes ago that we thought we weren’t going to have a shot at, but all of a sudden they’re like, ‘Hey, you guys went to the Sun Belt. That’s pretty cool,’” he said. “So there will be some of that.”

Coastal Carolina presently has nine verbal commitments for its 2016 recruiting class and Bailey said the coaches still feel comfortable with the guys they’ve pursued even as the program now prepares to move up a level. Part of that is because the Chants have tried to recruit up a level as is these last few years, targeting players that are also being pursued by FBS leagues like the Sun Belt and the MAC.

Now, Bailey said, he and the coaching staff will aim even higher.

“I think what our objective was before was to really recruit against the mid-majors. You always try to recruit up, so what this does now is gives us an opportunity to recruit up, which would be now recruiting those mid-level power-five [conference] type guys,” he said. “Hopefully it will give us the opportunity to go after and have a legitimate shot at a little better [recruit] than what we’ve been used to.”

Again, though, the tradeoff is that after this season, the Chants will be stuck in that mandatory two-year transition period for programs moving from the FCS to the FBS. In the big picture, it’s a huge opportunity for a program with the upward trajectory and potential Coastal Carolina possesses, but there are sacrifices in the short-term.

Coastal Carolina will essentially be an FCS program still next year but without the chance to make the playoffs. And in 2017, the team will debut in the Sun Belt and be eligible for a conference championship – but not a bowl game.

“Honestly it does kind of [sting] not being able to play in a bowl game [before graduating], but that just gives me a reason this year to go an extra gear and fight for that road to Frisco,” sophomore safety Kerron Johnson said of playing for an FCS national title. “Next year we’ve still got business to handle. I’ve still got each game to play, I’m not going to play [any] less.”

Moglia said he would address those matters with the players Thursday and expects some may have concerns, but he certainly doesn’t want anyone thinking about it when the team arrives at Furman for its season opener Saturday.

“We still have to compete this year,” he said. “Every one of our sports has to get ready for the 2015-16 season and our job is to compete and win championships this year. So the focus still has to be on what we’re doing right now.”

This story was originally published September 1, 2015 at 11:07 PM with the headline "Moglia maintaining focus on present, not future."