Although the thought of moving up to the highest level of college football had long percolated at Missouri State, it didn\u2019t start to formalize until the run-up to a game at Arkansas State in 2015.<\/p>\n
The Sun Belt Conference had just invited Coastal Carolina from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), and member Arkansas State liked the idea of adding a peer only 200 miles away in Missouri\u2019s third-largest city (Springfield) to the conference too. There was enough mutual interest between Missouri State and the conference for preliminary talks. The matchup wasn\u2019t supposed to be a trial run for the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), exactly, but it quickly became a four-quarter feasibility study into the Bears\u2019 immediate potential in the highest subdivision.<\/p>\n
They lost 70-7.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just got the hell beat out of us,\u201d said Clif Smart, then Missouri State\u2019s president. \u201cIt was a humiliating, awful game. We went home from that going, \u2018We\u2019re not anywhere close to being ready.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
They are now. Or at least they\u2019d better be.<\/p>\n
Missouri State became a Conference USA member this summer<\/a>, joining Delaware as the newest programs in the 136-team FBS. The Bears\u2019 FBS debut is at USC on Aug. 30.<\/p>\n 2025 Conference USA football members<\/p>\n TeamLocation<\/p>\n Newark, Del.<\/p>\n Miami, Fla.<\/p>\n Jacksonville, Ala.<\/p>\n Kennesaw, Ga.<\/p>\n Lynchburg, Va.<\/p>\n Ruston, La.<\/p>\n Murfreesboro, Tenn.<\/p>\n Springfield, Mo.<\/p>\n Las Cruces, N.M.<\/p>\n Huntsville, Texas<\/p>\n El Paso, Texas<\/p>\n Bowling Green, Ky.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a big jump for any team, going from recent home openers like Lindenwood and Lincoln University of Missouri to No. 16 SMU. But it seems especially ambitious for a losing program (.483 all-time winning percentage) with only one (shared) conference title and six winning seasons this century. To make it happen, the Bears needed more than the usual administrative commitment and hush-hush politicking to grab what they thought could be one of the last FBS spots available.<\/p>\n They needed one of college sports\u2019 biggest lightning rods to show proof-of-concept that a basketball school in a basketball region can, finally, win in football.<\/p>\n They needed Bobby Petrino.<\/p>\n The Bears\u2019 glory days came in a 15-year stretch, mostly away from the gridiron and under a different name, Southwest Missouri State.<\/p>\n From 1987-99, only four current mid-majors made the NCAA Tournament in men\u2019s basketball more than the Bears (six appearances): New Mexico, Murray State, Princeton and UMass<\/a>. They hung with Kansas and UNLV, knocked off Clemson and upset Wisconsin and Tennessee to make the Sweet 16 as a No. 12 seed in 1999.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody was going to basketball games,\u201d said Ned Reynolds, a Springfield sports broadcaster for the last 58 years. \u201cEverybody.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the program has fallen to 221-226 over the past 14 seasons, basketball still resonates. The Bears opened a new arena in 2008, and a budget working group ranked hoops ahead of football in a 2017 document obtained by the Springfield News-Leader.<\/a><\/p>\n The women\u2019s program is even better. The Lady Bears have made 17 of the past 33 NCAA Tournaments, led the nation in attendance in 1993 and made the Final Four in 1992 and 2001. Jackie Stiles was Caitlin Clark before Caitlin Clark, becoming the first woman to score 1,000 points in a season and graduating as the NCAA\u2019s all-time leading scorer (3,393 points, which still ranks fifth).<\/p>\n Football flashed with back-to-back FCS playoff appearances in 1989-90 \u2026 then lost 191 of its next 320 games. The 70-7 debacle at Arkansas State was the program\u2019s worst loss in 94 years and showed the FCS\/FBS gap in facilities, talent, commitment and everything else. As losing seasons mounted, fans weren\u2019t the only ones questioning the program\u2019s existence.<\/a> School officials considered cutting it.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cForget about FBS,\u201d said Kyle Moats, who was Missouri State\u2019s athletic director from 2009-24 before going to Eastern Kentucky. \u201cWe had a serious thought as to, are we going to continue to keep going this route.\u201d<\/p>\n The doubts led to the next turning point in late 2019. As the Bears stumbled through a 1-10 season, Moats got a call from Petrino, who was a year removed from being fired at Louisville. Petrino had high-level success with the Cardinals (77-35 over two stints) and at Arkansas (21-5 over his final two seasons) but also had high-profile exits<\/a> at both stops. He wanted back in the game, and the Bears wanted to give him a chance to answer the program\u2019s existential question.<\/p>\n \u201cCould you win at football at Missouri State?\u201d Smart asked.<\/p>\n Turns out, you can. Petrino brought the Bears to the FCS playoffs for the first time in three decades with back-to-back appearances and a share of the Missouri Valley Football Conference title before returning to the FBS as an offensive coordinator.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of a sudden, we believed \u2014 we actually believed \u2014 we could move to FBS and compete,\u201d Smart said.<\/p>\n Which led to the next question. Should the Bears move to FBS if given the chance?<\/p>\n