UTRGV might become the most interesting FCS expansion team ever

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Last week, the athletic department at UTRGV, in an email sent to their campus community, announced that they would like to start an FCS football program. Their football proposal is just one part of a larger proposed expansion of the athletic department, one that would also create a women's swimming and diving program, expansions of "spirit programs", and the creation of marching bands.

Yes, marching bands, plural.

Part of what makes this football proposal so unique is that UTRGV is one of the most unique schools in all of D-I.

UTRGV, after all, has only technically existed since 2013. The school was created after a merger between UT-Pan American, in Edinburg, and UT-Brownsville, about an hour away.

The bulk of UTRGV's athletic department is based in Edinburg, but undergraduates can and do take classes at both campuses. UTRGV's total enrollment is over 30,000, but because of their unique geography, it carries a special charge...to build community not just around a single campus, or even multiple campuses, but the entire Rio Grande Valley region.

So that's why the school wants to start two marching bands, and play football games at two locations.

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