UIW and HCU will have "bigger" budgets because they will be able to consider their tuition to be part of the budget (and their tuition/fees are significantly higher, so even if we included ours, it wouldn't add as much as they do). If we want to move up into the top tier of FCS, we're going to have to increase what we're paying players. I hate to tell people they need to give up more of their money, but to get into that top tier, Lamar's going to need to increase that amount to closer to $7M and stay there. (not talking about moving to FBS- I think we need to start averaging over 10K fans and winning playoff games before that sort of talk) Might this require the paycheck games to get bigger? Maybe. Texas State (last year) and UNT (this year) write big checks, but Big12 and SEC schools write bigger ones. I know that O'Malley and Rossomando don't want to hurt our chances in conference by getting beaten up by the bigger boys, but an extra $200K (for example) is a difference-making amount. 

Glad that the Cardinals made the game was "getting late early" for the Tigers. Other than the one series where TSU scored, the defense really stepped up and made sure it was obvious we were the better team.  Honestly, more than the final score (since the offense didn't need to do much in the 2nd half), I liked how they played like they knew they were the better team. We could have executed better but there was no reason to do too much. They knew they had 2 weeks to prep for UCA so there was no reason to do anything more than just get the win. We don't need style points against a team that had already lost to Prairie View.

Yes. Nice to not play down to the competition.  Maybe North Texas is better than we thought. The Central Arkansas game should be interesting. Despite their loss to Tarleton, it's a better program than TSU. It would be another measure game against a peer before going into conference play.