If we concentrated on the really important stuff in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles"
When you play football, you gotta like the taste of blood, And 50 percent of the time, it's your blood.
It is characteristic of the unlearned that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.
"The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
The size of the town where the school is located is irrelevant. There are a lot of big schools in very small towns. Proximity to larger markets can be a factor though because a large portion of your fan base will be alumni who are still close enough to attend games. The market size will help for smaller schools who draw fans who just want to support a successful program (i.e. Duke for basketball, Stanford for football).
IUPUI has 30k students in the middle of a city with 1.5 million people, but they struggle to get 1000 people at their games. Clemson, South Carolina, has a population of 14k. But they have a large student body, active alumni base, and history of success. They are also 2 hours from Atlanta, Charlotte, and Columbia so alumni can easily make the trek to a game.
Here are the smallest enrollments for FBS teams:
Tulsa (3174)
Rice (3708)
Air Force (4413)
Navy (4576)
Army (4624)
Wake Forest (4775)
Duke (6484)
Stanford (6878)
Vanderbilt (6879)
SMU (7000)
Louisiana-Monroe (7519)
Tulane (8338)
Notre Dame (8371)
Northwestern (8425)
Boston College (9088)
Louisiana Tech (9137)
Idaho (9330)
TCU (9518)
Most of these are private schools so they are more likely to have engaged students who become active alumni.
what is mankato's enrollment?
I am going to grad school here now. From what I can see, I honestly have no idea why they are not D-1. From the hallways and such everyone is wearing MSU stuff, alot like the pride I saw walking around NDSU. I don't know sporting attendance, but I feel they are working on it (and 2 11-0 fb seasons can't hurt). Plus the basketball team is ranked (14-3? When I looked?). Plus nearly 16,000 students on a campus similar sized to NDSU.
Drawbacks? From the looks of it the city/area doesn't seem to have the support that Fargo gives NDSU (although i'm not sure many other schools have that relationship like we do.) The BB facility is NICE, but the FB stadium needs some love to be up to MVFC standards (try nicer than SDSU (what isn't), but similar to WIU by looks).
Honestly, MSU-Mankato looks like a D-1 school or is trying to pretty hard. I also think they're trying to ditch the '-Mankato' and just be Minnesota State, too.
Mankato's problem is the MVFC will never add a MN school. So they'd either need to cut football or go non-scholarship.
That said, I'd actually love to bring them into the Summit.