As the president of Tulane, Scott Cowen might seem one of the winners in the pursuit of big-time football status. Cowen’s institution was recently invited to join the Big East, one of the six elite college conferences that divide up the most lucrative postseason game revenues. But Cowen cautioned those universities eager to join the chase for the brass ring of college athletics.

“What any school moving up in football should ask itself is this: what are the real costs of the benefits?” Cowen said. “You will get more visibility and exposure, and at first, that seems like a very good investment. The problem is that once you wade in for keeps at the F.B.S. level, you face facility improvements, escalating coaching salaries, added staff and more athletic scholarships.

“The cost curve is extremely steep, and unless you’re in a power conference, the revenue is flat.”

This year, Texas State and Texas-San Antonio (as a transitional member) joined UMass as first-timers in the top tier of college football. Georgia State and the University of South Alabama will make the move next year.

Old Dominion, which reinstated football in 2009, and North Carolina-Charlotte, which will play its first football game next year, will be full-time F.B.S. members in 2015. Liberty, Appalachian State and Georgia Southern would like to make the move and are awaiting an invitation from a F.B.S. conference, which is required to join the top tier. But such invitations are not hard to come by in a climate in which conferences restructure almost weekly. Other universities that have discussed taking a leap of faith upward include, among others, James Madison, Delaware, Northern Iowa, Cal-Poly, Villanova, Jacksonville State, Northern Arizona and Sam Houston State. There are already about 125 F.B.S.-level football teams.

Making the Move

The motivations for the institutions making the step up are as diverse as their locales. Adding a football team, or moving up a notch in competition, is a far different undertaking in Texas than it is in Massachusetts.

When Lynn Hickey, the director of athletics at Texas-San Antonio, was asked why her institution started playing football last year and will fully jump to the F.B.S. level next year, she said: “We are in one of the largest cities in the nation, we had an empty dome across town and we’re in a state where football is king. But in Texas, you have to play football at the highest level.”

The empty dome was the Alamodome, and Texas-San Antonio, led by the former Miami coach Larry Coker, is averaging nearly 30,000 fans at its home games.