When Presbyterian College failed to have its paperwork in proper order with the NCAA, thus ensuring the Blue Hose would endure a fifth year of transition from Division II to Division I, much of the attention was directed at the men’s basketball program.

That’s understandable. Blue Hose coach Gregg Nibert made his plan to compete in 2011-12 very public. He redshirted three of his best players when they were juniors so they could be eligible this season and compete for a spot in the NCAA tournament. And Presbyterian was considered to be a legitimate threat to win the Big South tournament, considering the same group led the Blue Hose to a 9-9 conference finish as sophomores.

The football team was sort of an afterthought in all of this, because the Blue Hose weren’t perceived to be close to competing for a conference championship. In two years of Big South membership (the Blue Hose‘s games in 2008 did not count in the league standings), Presbyterian has won league game, beating Gardner-Webb last season in Boiling Springs, S.C.

Football is a much more difficult sport to transition with, simply because of the numbers. When PC began this journey, it did so with 35 scholarships, and trying to compete against schools like Liberty and Coastal Carolina, both of which allot the full 63 scholarships, was difficult. Still, no football team enters a season with the mindset that it cannot compete. So the fact that the Blue Hose will spend another year in NCAA purgatory with nothing to play for but pride is difficult for the team to handle.

“No doubt, it was very disappointing,” third-year coach Harold Nichols said at Big South football media day in Charlotte. “There’s no way to sugarcoat it, and no way to dance around that question. It was difficult for all of us. This process of going through this transition, there’s a lot more involved than there was 15 or 20 years ago when Wofford or Elon or Gardner-Webb was making the move. It’s a totally different process.

“That’s why I’m so thankful Brian Reese is our athletic director. He’s really taken steps forward in order for us to make this transition and get over the hill, as I call it. It’s tough, very tough. I had to tell our football team on a Friday before we went up to play VMI. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but you can either sit around and say, ‘Woe is me and why me?’ and all that kind of stuff, or you can move on. Our kids are resilient and our coaches are resilient. I feel very confident in our president and our board of trustees that we’re going to get there and let the process take its due course.”

—For the first time in Nichols’ coaching tenure, he had tangible results to point to during the spring to use as motivation with his team. The Blue Hose were 2-9 last season, but that was a heck of a jump from 0-11. Having some positive results to build on was huge for the Blue Hose as they went through spring drills.

“Food tastes better, your wife talks to you more, everything is a lot better,” Nichols said of winning. “I’ve got a vision of what it’s going to look like, but it’s hard, the day-to-day process of grinding it out. That kind of showed our players how to prepare for a game, put yourself in position to win a game and then actually bring it home. I think that’s good for any of us. For a young team to be able to go on the road and win a game like that was huge for us. Those were learning experiences. We were in a lot of football games last year and we weren’t quite able to close them out. … I think our young players earned some valuable lessons on some big stages.”

—Speaking of big stages, Presbyterian will play on one this year at San Francisco’s AT&T Park when the Blue Hose face off against California of the Pac-12. Cal is playing San Francisco while its stadium in Berkeley is undergoing renovations.

Nichols said PC will earn between $425,000-$450,000 for the trip West.

“When the WAC changed their schedule and all of those teams left, it kind of threw everything in flux out west,” Nichols said. “California had an open date, and the previous administration there had not made a plan to play a guarantee game in ‘11. We happened to have matching dates, and that’s how it worked out.

“That’s the landscape of FCS football, as you well know. You’ve got to make money. That’s a piece of it.”

The Cal game falls in the middle of a brutal stretch for the Blue Hose, who will only play once at home between Sept. 17 and Nov. 12. They’ll travel to Cal, Furman and Stony Brook, come home for Gardner-Webb, then travel to Georgia Southern, Liberty and Coastal Carolina before finishing with home games against VMI and Charleston Southern.

—Nichols has a couple of options at quarterback this season, including returning senior Brandon Miley and Ryan Singer, who came on as a freshman last year.

“Ryan ended up playing a good bit for us there at the end of the year,” Nichols said. “He was not ready to play at the beginning of the year. It’s hard to play a true freshman quarterback in college football. But I think he made a lot of strides, maturity wise. He was able to grasp more of the offense and put himself in a position to be successful. He gained the trust of his teammates, all of those things that go into being a leader and being a quarterback.

“Brandon Miley has played a lot of football for us, and I’m not ready to take him out of the mix just yet. He’s a competitor, and he’s not going to give up that spot very easily. It’s a great situation. We have some depth at the position, which a lot of people would like to have. It’s a blessing. I think both of those young men are going to give it due justice. I do.”